The Goldmine I Didn't Realize I Was Sitting On

Back in my younger days, I loved playing card games.

By card games, I mean collectible card games. Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, and especially Magic the Gathering.

I fucking loved those games.

The amount of my parent's and my own money that was spent on those cards was incredible.

The amount of money wasted was just as high.

I started with Pokemon cards, like many folks my age. As anyone who was around at the time knows, you could ruin friendships quickly with those cards.

So much so that my school had to ban the cards because of the fights that kids were getting into over them.

Kids with older siblings knew how to rip off us naive children for the best cards.

I'm sure I got ripped off my fair share.

We'll get to it later, but I would eventually become the shark in the water.

But my love of Pokemon subsided as with all fads and I moved on.

Eventually, I got into Yu-Gi-Oh cards. (You'll sense a pattern here).

I loved playing, but I eventually lost interest in the passing fad.

But then, I found Magic the Gathering.

This was probably third or fourth grade.

I loved playing Magic the Gathering (or Magic as us in-the-know folks call it).

I was pretty good at it too. Well compared to my friends.

I spent an ungodly amount of time creating decks, researching the best cards, and coming up with strategies to beat my friends.

I began playing at local card shops.

There was a used comic/book/record/CD store called Jelly's with a few tables in the back area. I spent countless hours at these tables.

I was easily the youngest kid there, and easily the worst player. These were all high-school kids.

I eventually lost interest in Magic and gave up the game.

I kept my cards in a box under my bed.

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Fast-forward a few years and I'm now a freshman in high-school.

For some reason, Magic got popular again.

Why? I'm really not sure, but a bunch of my friends started playing again so I dusted off the old decks and ran them out.

I was severely overmatched now.

Cards got more powerful and my clunky strategies that worked on 5th graders were now obsolete.

I dove in.

I researched cards, built better decks, and splurged for better cards.

I wasn't the greatest again, but I was solid.

Good enough to convince my friends that we should play in "Friday Night Magic" at a local card shop with our decks.

I have some very fond memories at these FNM's as we called them.

I loved playing and I loved learning about the game. I read a ton about Magic back then.

My life was pretty much school, Magic, and volleyball. That was it.

I would stay up late reading the latest articles on the new tech.

I didn't win all that much in these higher stakes tournaments, but I loved every minute I played.

I'm sure a lot of you have similar memories if you played at all.

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I played for a couple more years and then gave up the game.

I never completely gave up on Magic, but I was never as into it as I was back then.

That brings me to the reason I wrote all that about Magic.

I realized that I still had all of my cards locked away in the attic of my childhood home.

I grew up in Honolulu, Hawaii and now live in Spokane, Washington.

I asked my mom to send me some of the cards that I knew were worth something.

I'm still waiting on the final package, but she sent me some of my Pokemon cards as well.

I've sold two cards for over $60 combined.

I have a Japanese Jace vs Chandra duel deck that I bought many years ago for the sole purpose of waiting to sell it.

It's still in the box and just sold for $57.99.

I write all this not to brag. I really don't care if you think it's stupid...

I'm making some money (albeit not a ton) by getting rid of some stuff that would have eventually been thrown away or donated to the local Goodwill.

I write this because I know you can do it too. You just have to know where to look.

I can't wait to see what the next package from my mom holds.

All in all, I think I'll make upwards of $700 if I remember correctly.

Crazily, I think this money will end up going towards a rental property down payment.

Who said trading cards was never going to lead to anything...?

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