Retro fridays and pokemon booster packs

Something about the feel and smell and sound and texure of pokemon booster packs takes me back to the days when the cards first came out. For nostalgia reasons this will focus on the 1st 3 sets as after that the pokemon fad lost a lot of steam(I still played the games though) which picked back up with pokemon go for some reason. The cards came out before the games did and for many of us it was our 1st exposure to the pokemon themselves. I remember going to the santa fe springs swap meet and there was a stand that had baseball cards and pokemon cards for $3 so I usually got 1 or 2. I loved the designs on the holograms and the little tid bits of information and things like the height and weight. I really got into the fad(yes pokemon cards were a fad) and I had a lot of rare cards such as blastoise and venusaur and clefairy and gyrados and mewtwo and even an ancient mew. One card that eluded me and still does is a holographic charizard

One summer day I was at the swap meet when they had new cards that had a jungle on them and the 1st edition mark and that is when I got 2 and got a holographic persian and a non holographic jolteon. I got hooked some more and I would later buy more booster packs at a store at the whittwood mall called game quest. They sold board games and trading cards and childhood memories. Another time I rode my bike to that store and got a starter deck which is....well....a deck to get you started playing. It had energy cards and a holo rare and a place mat and cardboard pikachu coin and rule book. Things on the playground got intense and I would usually trade my duplicate rares for others and I amassed a big collection of cards. I still wish I had my childhood ones but I don't and it's sad. After jungle was fossil and the trend was losing steam fast thanks to the release of the pokemon games, then more cards came out and I stopped being interested after the team rocket series came out

In it's prime, pokemon cards were everywhere and I still have a sealed booster pack that I may or may not open. Nothing beats that feeling of ripping open a pack and seeing which cards you got(ok there are some things)