It's the end of March so my birthday has come and gone. 34 is a weird age and I don't like being reminded of that.
I'll tell you what I did get!
My first vaccine shot! I'm halfway to turning back to normal! After lots of frustration with New York's appointment system (I got serious flashbacks to when I waited in virtual queues to buy New York Comic Con badges), my parents managed to get through and got me an appointment back on the 20th. My parents and I tried my best, and one of us managed to get through. The vaccine appointment wasn't a lot of fuss. Just go to the site that looks like the government wants to take away my magic alien friend, show them your ID and the ticket you got for reserving the appointment, and you get a shot. I was in and out in 45 minutes. Since it was only the first shot, I had a small headache for a day and my right arm was sore for about three, but other than that I've been fine. They say the second shot is the one that sucks, but I'll know when I go back on April 10th.
Oh, I got my 1400 bucks from the government, and I did the stupid thing and put it in the bank. Most of it (plus my tax return) is most likely going to pay off my car insurance, just like last year. Boo.
Well, okay, I had to spend some money on SOMETHING, and I bought this:
An Elite Trainer Box from the new Shining Fates set.
I haven't seriously collected Pokemon cards in roughly 20 years, but I've been slowly getting back into it thanks to some friends, and the things suddenly exploding in popularity. Maybe it's because some of the recent sets had special Charizard cards that have been going for big money on eBay? Everyone likes Charizard for some reason. Been that way since Day One, and hasn't let up.
Maybe it's because everyone's been stuck in quarantine for a year and that affected production so there's been shortages, and the resell market's been booming from the desperation. It's also likely because one of those popular Youtube idiots decided to sell some old cards and everyone went ballistic over it.
Whatever reason it was, cards are back in style and I haven't seen them in more demand since their heyday back in the late 90s. As in "people rush stores at wee hours in the morning for the first chance at them, so stores have to implement hard limits on these things" popular. For people that actually work for a living or don't really care much about them anymore, we're at the mercy of the scraps and the inflated prices online.
Well, these boxes normally retail for about $40 or so. This one cost me...a little more than that. Under a hundred dollars, and that's all I'll say.
What's special about the Shining Fates line is that the set revolves around shiny Pokemon, and while sets tend to feature one or two of those at the most, this set has 120 of them. That's crazy, and that's on top of the 70 regular cards, plus the five promos that you only get from special gift boxes like the Elite Trainer Boxes or the gift boxes with four packs in them.
And have I mentioned that these special boxes are the only way to get them? This, much like the earlier Champion's Path set are more for the collectors and aren't really meant for playing in the game. It's more for the art and the gambler's high you get from opening packs. Add in all of that plus there's, you guessed it, a Charizard in this set, and you can see why these are tough to get your hands on.
Elite Trainer Boxes are special since they have TEN packs in them, and outside of outright buying booster boxes (if you could for this set), they're the best bang for the buck.
These were the good pulls out of then packs. The game has really changed since I stopped paying attention to it. Back in the day, you were lucky if a pack had a holo card in it. Now there's full art cards, rainbow full arts, V cards(?), VMax cards(??), secret black and gold cards. It's all weird, but the art has been fantastic. I didn't get the Charizard this time, but I liked what I got.
And here are the "lesser" pulls from the box. Just about every pack these days contains a "reverse holo," where the card is holo except for the picture on it. And just about every card in the set can be one, even run of the mill energy cards. They still look really cool, though, so I can't really complain.
I missed the thrill of opening packs so much. It's rather intoxicating, but I can safely say that my itch has finally been scratched after ages and ages. I MIGHT blow some money on this again...but I don't have the urge to. Not for a while.
Before I go, I was scrolling through old posts and realized I never followed through with a promise I made back in November.
The McRib came back! These were some of the first pics I took with the new cell phone, and doesn't it look much better?
Well, it's still the McRib, still the same sauce, still the same taste. It was good to have again, but I only had it about two or three times before I forgot about it and it went away again.
Well, I promise to come back in a month. Thanks for reading!
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