Another August has come and gone, so that means it's time to share some ghost drawings!
Yes, for the FOURTH year in a row, I participated in the #AuGHOST drawing prompt!
But first links to the previous entries: 2020, 2019, 2018.
#31 - Future
"IT'S LIKE I CAN TOUCH YOU!"
My approach for this drawing was "Wow Ghost is looking through VR goggles." I hope I got that message across. The goggles looked better in my head.
...Wait, that's it?! Yeah, sorry folks. This month had been pretty busy and stressful, so I didn't want to really commit to a daily drawing this year. And to be honest, I got intimidated by some of the prompts. I know I wasn't bound to do every prompt, but the completionist in me demands an all or nothing approach. How the hell was I supposed to draw a catapult, anyway?!
In any case, maybe I'll go back to do the rest eventually? Drawing this one earlier today was pretty fun. I'm still rusty, but I bet I can improve once I realize I need to spend more than ten minutes on these things.
But I'll tell you about something else I did last week!
Pokemon cards have really exploded in popularity over the last year for some reason. Maybe because people were cooped up in their houses and decided to buy new stuff, and sell what they had because they were bored? Maybe new sets had some really cool looking (and valuable) cards in them and people went into a frenzy?
I'm pretty sure the spark came from one of the youtube douchebags that decided to auction off some unopened Base Set packs and it launched a frenzy that I think is starting to finally dwindle down. Seriously, packs and boxes that sat on shelves for months disappeared in the span of a week to the point where places like Target either watch those packs like a hawk, or stopped selling them altogether.
Between Pokemon, Yugioh, and all the sports cards are rising in popularity, this hobby hasn't seen this level of enthusiasm in years. Seriously, the last time Pokemon reached "we're putting limits on this crap" status was nearly twenty years ago when the cards first came out.
And naturally, I was one of those kids that got sucked into it. I was in middle school and just discovered the concept of disposable income. Nobody could really stop me from going to the card shop in town and just cleaning house...within reason. Back then, buying a few packs every so often wouldn't do it for me, so I started buying them by the box to scratch that itch.
Eventually, I wanna say mid 2001, I just...stopped being interested in cards. It was a combination of buyer's remorse and the gambling bug being much too strong for me to resist. The Neo line for the Johto games had started coming out, and I guessed I wondered why I kept bothering. I kept buying packs, and I knew the cards were never gonna stop being made. It was getting repetitive and draining my wallet, so I stopped keeping up with it.
Jump to last year when I got caught in that frenzy again. I didn't do much, just bought a few packs here and there, not really liking what I got out of the packs. The company that made the cards changed from Wizards of The Coast to the Pokemon Company itself several years ago and I had some catching up on all the new kinds of cards they made.
In the old days, you wanted holo cards, if you got lucky. The Japanese sets guaranteed one in every pack. Not so much the English versions. Now the holo cards are just "okay." What everyone wants are full art cards, VMAX cards, alt art cards, rainbow cards, gold cards. It goes on, and frankly I no longer have the patience for that.
But two sets caught my eye. One was Shining Fates. It wasn't a normal set that you could just go down to the store and get, no problem. No, this set (along with Champion's Path and Hidden Fates) could only be bought out of multipacks and things called Elite Trainer Boxes.
Or these boxes with giant promo cards. Oh, and since they get snatched up the moment they get onto shelves, you pretty much have to pay out the ass on eBay for these.
What's special about Shining Fates is that there's a crapload of shiny pokemon cards. Hidden Fates has them too, but I love the art in this set, and frankly it's newer and cheaper, so I naturally gravitated towards this set.
The other set that caught my eye is the newest one that got released, Evolving Skies. These days about two Japanese sets are used for every English set, and this one used a set for dragons, and another one called Eevee Heroes. That name, as you could guess, is all about Eevee and its evolutions.
I found a few packs of those a month ago, and got some gorgeous looking cards. I love me some Eeveelutions, most notably Vaporeon and Sylveon, I had to get my hands on these as soon as I could.
So on Saturday I stumbled on a collectable store that I had never been in before, and they had just about everything. Most of the Pokemon stuff was priced out the ass...but not this booster box. Maybe because it was brand new? Either way, much like twenty years ago I had money to burn and the set was full of cards I fell in love with. This was a VERY dangerous combination and it came home with me.
BOOM! Rainbow card! Only eight packs in, too. That's also the danger of gambling, there's a hit every once in a while to keep your interest going as long as possible. The odds of pulling one were roughly 1/108 packs, and this set has SIXTEEN of them.
And BOOM! The other big hit: Alt Art Umbreon. This really is a nice looking card. The odds of pulling an alt art card is roughly 1/101, and I got both of these in the same box.
And here are the other hits. They're still really impressive, and pretty to look at. Out of 36 packs, 17 of them gave me anything worth writing home about. I never wrote down the ratio of what it would've been back then, but the odds seemed the same, if my old collection was any indication. It means that pull odds aren't very good, and it's a good way for people to buy LOTS of packs, or buy them off someone else. I'd say they were meant to be traded, but who honestly trades these cards anymore?
Also worth noting is that every pack contains a reverse holo. Meaning, every part of the card is holo except for the art. That means ANY card can be holo, even the ones that normally are, like the Entei seen above. None of them are worth much, moneywise. I just think some of them look cool, like these two.
And isn't that the most important thing about collecting Pokemon cards?
The answer is no.
