This is more of a fun post. I see people showing off their collection, so I thought why not I talk about mine. I have been playing cards for almost 14 years now, I started with casual yugioh and pokemon back in the days but I would buy packs only to trade my whole collection for a simple Rapidash or Dark Magician. I had no concept of value back then. My mom would buy me a pack or 2 every few months so I was a slow collector. I remember the best day was christmas and it was when I got a trio delta species pack set with the Pokemon coin. And I never pulled an EX card, I only got ahold of 1 EX which was Camerupt, and that costed me about half my cards. I remembered during elementary school I would stuff MY WHOLE COLLECTION IN MY POCKET. Yes my whole collection was about 50 cards, but thinking that was my best back then now days makes me laugh. Jump forward to when I was 10, I started my first collection, using my shoebox. 
This here is my original Pokemon card collection, as you can see from the Grimer and the Growlithe behind the Gengar, I have some very old cards. I have a Swablu addiction too which explains why I have all those Swablu cards. After some wear and tear, my shoebox fell apart and I moved it to a more solid container which is the one shown in that picture. I quit Pokemon and never touched that container again until today to take a photo. It had spider webs, I cleaned it but it is still rusty. Will I ever return to Pokemon, I dont know but one thing for sure is I wont get rid of my collection.
Yugioh and the Golden Age
Yugioh came after, and I was a bit more mature with the card life. I did not make as many dumb trades but there were times when I did. I was never competitive, I remembered I visited my card shop with my dad and he saw some poster of some game… and that was the last day he let me go there. It wasnt another 5 years until I went to a card shop but I would compete. I would go to major tourneys without any card shop practice. To my surprise, I would do good, going to day 2 or top 64 with just youtube and articles to help me, no other practice. I dont remember what I used but it was for sure not meta, some homebrews and good cards put together. Of course it was easier to get away with that than now days. After wind ups became a thing, that was when I got serious. Jump 5 years in I visited the card shop for my second time but to compete, with my homebrew burn build. I went 1-4, never will forget, and my one win was against my friend who had his dad drive me. Fast forward a bit and I decided to reward myself with a nice Secrets of Eternity box. Upon that box I landed on a card that caught my attention, Qliphort Monolith. I saw a Tumblr post about some tower card and took action fast. I consider myself one of the pioneers of Tower turbo because I started playing it before anyone won with it. I won a few locals like that, and soon after someone dominated YCS using Tower Turbo. Those were what I called, the Golden age of card games for me. My binder was full of value rather than random junk and I was taking the game seriously with practice too. Then I heard news that the banlist would come one month early, and that was when I sold my deck for 150%. My Yugioh days were starting to fall, no other deck would do me good. I felt as if I actually connected with Qli, that deck was everything to me. And now that Disc that I bought for 70 is worth .99 cents. It was the end of an era, the Qli era and my Yugioh era. To this day, the one deck out of every card game that I long for and will miss is Qli. I will never forget the devastation and power that deck had. All I can do is look at the dollar box at my card shop and weep every time I come across a Qli secret rare.
I was in a state of disorder. My top deck was gone, my title and credibility vanished away, I am now a nothing. I went to my card shop a month later and instead of the normal everyone happy to see my greeting it was as if no one knew who I was… the guy who use to beat all of you now is long lost. Crying and crying, nothing would return the joy to me as much as I wanted.
Age of Restoration- Anime saves the day
At this point I was living a normal life. All my card friends saw how I was shattered and followed suit by quitting cards. We all lived normal lives now, I would socialize instead of being a geek and not focus on cards. I saw my money was starting to come back since I wasn’t spending it on cards, and I dated a girl. While dating that girl I fell in love with anime deeply. And SAO, AoT, Fairy Tail were the top hits, it was real nice. I was watching some anime before but now I would watch more and more. One day I was on some website and I was looking through Attack on Titan merchandise since that was my favorite anime, and I stumbled upon a card. Not really a card, more like a promotion for a card. A card game. Weiss. It happened to be that Attack on Titan was announced to have a set in this game, and it was coming to English before Japanese which caused an uproar of some sort since it is usually the other way around. I had 0 knowledge about this game but I was afraid it would be Yugioh all over again. I didnt want to take risk but I knew no one played the game and I never visited my card shop ever since Qli got hit a year ago. So all I did was get a box, did not hurt much. And after 1 box came 2, then 3. Before you knew it I had a deck and was looking where can I play this game. With deep research I found a new card shop that was rather new back then but is well known now and is still my go to card shop, especially since it is only a bike ride away. I remembered walking 2 hrs to that place one day only to ask when was the Weiss tourney, then walking 2 hrs back home with nothing accomplished except knowing when the Weiss tourney is. The shop was full of gifted people and I started playing more and more Weiss. Soon I was a good competitor in the game and I pushed my knowledge and won 1st place during the 2016 Houston regional. That was thanks to my good friends who gave me parts of their decks, I won using my deck combined with 2 friends. Hopefully that same thing will happen someday, except without having to beg my friends for their decks to use.
Hope you enjoy the story, I will slowly add more and more details as time flows. I am just rather tired and will end it with this note to remind you to check back in the future for more additions to the story. Tell me your thoughts and hopefully you have your own story gathered up to tell someone someday.
The Crystal Cavern 