English Listening - Pokemon Cards
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Welcome to the Listening Time Podcast. Hey everybody, this is Connor, and you're listening to episode 201 of the Listening Time Podcast. I hope you're all doing great. I hope you're having fun on your English learning journey. And in today's episode...

We're going to talk about kind of a funny topic because it's not something that you would probably expect me to talk about. And that is Pokemon cards. So why in the world am I talking about Pokemon cards in this episode? Well, I just recently found my old Pokemon cards from when I was a little kid and

And this has been on my mind all week. Also, because I'm actually currently selling these Pokemon cards. I've been in the process of trying to

sell a lot of them. So this has been on my mind and I thought it would be fun to talk about this topic and maybe relive my childhood a little bit. So I

That's what we'll talk about today. I hope that it's interesting for you, even if you don't care at all about Pokemon. Honestly, I don't care about Pokemon nowadays either. But hopefully, it's at least good practice for your listening. And please check out my advanced podcast episodes if you haven't done so already. In those episodes, I speak fast.

So it's great practice for your listening. I provide the transcript for every episode. You can sign up for those by becoming a Listening Time family member. The link to sign up is down below. And check out my U.S. Conversations podcast, in which I talk to native speakers from around the country about

about all kinds of different topics. It's a lot of fun. It's really educational. You'll learn a lot about the U.S., and of course, it's fantastic practice for your listening. So that link is also down below. And as always, please give this podcast a five-star rating and write a review if you can. All right, let's get started. Are your ears ready?

You know what time it is... It's listening time!

Okay, let's talk about Pokemon and Pokemon cards. It's funny for me to just say that into this microphone. I never thought I'd be talking about this. But let me talk a little bit about my history with Pokemon. So when I was six years old, this is when, at least for me, it seemed like Pokemon became really big.

It might have been big before then. I can't remember. But I turned six around the time when Pokemon was becoming a sensation all around the U.S. and maybe around the world. I don't know. But it was really big. Everyone was talking about it and getting into it.

And one of my first memories, I think maybe my very first memory that has anything to do with Pokemon...

is when I got my Game Boy Color. I don't know if any of you had one of these when you were younger, but this was one of the first Game Boy devices. It's not the first, but it's one of the really old Game Boy devices that came out many years ago. I remember getting my purple Game Boy Color

And it was awesome for me. I had so much fun with that thing. And my first games, my first Game Boy games that I had were the Pokemon games. So the yellow version, the blue version, and the red version. I had three different Pokemon games. And if I'm not mistaken, I think...

That was my first real introduction to Pokemon. I think that's when I started to learn all about the Pokemon world, the different Pokemon. I think it started with that game. And I think at that same time, I started to collect Pokemon cards like most kids my age at that time. And

And so I got some cards. I started to get interested in the show because there was a Pokemon TV show. I don't know if any of you remember that, but I watched the original Pokemon show. I can still remember some scenes from that show that

that are still in my head. So I got really into that. And I also bought these Pokemon figures, these little toys, which I actually found, uh,

as well. I found my Pokemon cards and my Pokemon figures, these little Pokemon toys. And I remember buying these different toys from the store. I think they came in packs of like three or five or something. And I remember being so excited to

to go to the store and buy those Pokemon toys with my mom or whoever it was. But I loved those things and I found them. So that's pretty interesting. So I would say that Pokemon toys

was one of the top things from my childhood that still today I kind of feel a little nostalgia when I think about it. I'm not into Pokemon, but when I think about Pokemon, I remember being a little kid and trading the cards and opening the booster packs. These

These were those little packs of cards that you would buy and you didn't know what you were going to get in that pack. And I remember being so excited to open up that booster pack and see what cards were inside. And of course, the Game Boy games, the other games that I had, those figures, everything

This is one of the top three most nostalgic things from my childhood, I have to say. So when I discovered those Pokemon cards and toys, it definitely brought back some memories. So like I said, I found my old cards recently, and I have hundreds of them.

maybe even over a thousand. I don't know. I haven't counted them all. But that first night when I found them, I just kind of went through them and remembered all the different names of the different Pokemon and had a little bit of fun with that. And I saw that I had some holographic cards. So we might just call them holos, holographics.

nowadays or holographic, meaning they have this shiny surface that glows. These aren't normal cards. These were like rare cards. When you came across a holographic card in one of your booster packs or something, that was awesome. You really liked that. I think nowadays with

newer generation of Pokemon cards. I think holographic cards are probably much more common, so it's not the same. But when I was a kid, those holographic cards were awesome. You didn't come across them all the time. So now those cards are actually made

fairly valuable depending on what card it is. And I also found that I had some first edition cards, meaning these cards were among the first edition that was printed, like the original edition. So there aren't many of those because there's only one first edition.

edition after that is a different edition. So I found that I had some of those first editions among my Pokemon cards and I had a lot of Japanese cards as well because Japanese

Japanese Pokemon cards were and are a big thing in the U.S. as well. So people here like Japanese cards too. So I found a lot of Japanese ones.

And I realized that I could make a little bit of money if I sold some of these more valuable cards. And I decided that it would be a good idea to sell some of these cards in order to help finance whatever my next vacation is.

I don't want to just sell these cards and just put the money in my bank account and kind of forget about it. I discovered these cards and I didn't plan on...

selling anything and making money from something like this at all. This is like a surprise to me. So I think that I should use the money to do something nice. Maybe for our next vacation, I can use this money to help pay for it. It's not going to pay for the whole vacation, of course. I don't have really valuable cards, but

there's a little value there. And so why not give myself that little treat and sell some of these cards, make some money so that I can use that for our next trip. So as you can tell, I'm not attached to these Pokemon cards. Obviously it's fun to look at them and remember my childhood, but again,

I've moved on from that. That's not part of my life now. And so I would prefer to just sell them and use that money for something cool like a trip. Again, it's not like I'm going to be able to finance the whole trip, but you get my point. I can pay for part of it with these cards. I'm

I'm not going to lie. You're slacking. You're slacking on starting that business you've been holding off on. It's just living in your head. And if you don't act now, that idea is going to leave or maybe someone's going to take that idea. And there's a tool that I personally use. And that is Shopify. You don't need to be a web designer. You can just start.

Moving, zooming in, adding the text you need, adding pictures you need. And Shopify has so many templates you can use from. Get it out of your head and onto a website with Shopify. Shopify makes it simple to create your brand, open for business, and get your first sale. They make it easy to manage growing your business. They help with details like shipping, taxes, and payments from one single dashboard, allowing you to focus on all the important stuff like growing your business. With Shopify, your first sale is closer than you think.

Established in 2025 has a nice ring to it, doesn't it? Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.com slash sonoro, all lowercase. Go to shopify.com slash sonoro to start selling with Shopify today. Shopify.com slash sonoro.

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So I spent a couple days finding the value of these different cards. And I spent too much time, to be honest. I didn't do other things that I wanted to do because I was looking up these individual cards. And really, I was learning all about this market thing.

I knew nothing about the Pokemon market nowadays, the Pokemon card market. So I had to learn everything about the market, like all about holographic cards and first editions and the different sets and decks of cards and which ones were rare, which ones aren't rare. So

I had to learn about all that. I had to learn about how these cards are sold, a lot of things. So it took me a while. I discovered a whole world. I didn't know about this Pokemon card market world. This is a huge thing, actually. And so it took me some time to get familiar with Pokemon.

this whole world and learn what I needed to learn. And I decided to sell almost all of my holographic

and my first edition cards to a local card shop, a local shop where they sell and buy different types of cards like Pokemon cards. And this isn't the most lucrative option. It's more lucrative, meaning you make more money if you sell them individually online or in certain groups. But that's,

That's a lot of work. I don't want to spend a ton of time on this. And so I just took these cards to a local shop and I sold them for about half the price that they're worth. That's what many of these shops will do. They'll give you half the money that they're worth. So

For each card, like if that card is worth $15, he'll give you $7.50 for it. And so, yes, you're losing a lot of money there. But number one, it's not money that I even expected to have. This is something I discovered, right, just a few days ago. And it's something that saves me a lot of time.

I don't want to deal with selling things online and shipping them and doing all that. I really don't want to do that. I'd rather just take the discount and get it over with. So I went yesterday to one of these card shops.

and I sold some different cards, and a lot of them were just kind of like, okay, yeah, I'll take that. I'll take that. He wasn't super excited about most of the cards, but there were a couple in there that he got a little excited about, like, whoa, this one's really nice, and it's in good condition. Oh,

That's the other thing is the condition is one of the most important factors when it comes to this type of market. When it comes to trading cards is how good of a condition is it in, right? Is it in good condition, bad condition? If you have a card that's

that is a rare card and it's holographic, it's first edition maybe, and it's in really, really good condition, like it looks new, that card can be worth a lot of money. Trust me. But that same card, if it's damaged,

Might not be worth much at all. The difference is huge. I had one card in my collection of Pokemon cards that was a first edition holographic

kind of rare card it was the only one that had both of those things or all three of those things like it was kind of rare it was holographic and it was first edition and if that card were in perfect condition i probably could have made uh many hundreds of dollars off of it uh

I don't know how many hundreds, but hundreds of dollars. But unfortunately, that card was damaged. It was clearly damaged. It had this big crease in the middle of the card like it had been bent or folded almost. It was clearly damaged. And because of that, it's worth almost nothing.

And so that's a little disappointing. It could have been hundreds of dollars, but instead it's worth nothing, right? So that's the kind of thing that you have to take into consideration when you sell these cards. So I had a couple of cards that were interesting for the guy at the shop that he kind of got excited about. But for the most part, they were just...

Cards that he sees not super often, but he sees them sometimes. So nothing that crazy. But I made two hundred and two dollars from the cards that I sold yesterday. So I think that's a pretty good amount of money for pieces of cardboard. Right. That I didn't really need to work for to earn. Like these were just things I had.

in a drawer. So that's pretty cool. Um, but, uh, I still haven't sold, uh, the two most valuable cards that I have. I'm actually, uh, scheduled to sell them to someone tomorrow. So these two cards, I decided to sell privately just to, um, not lose too much money on them because the guy at the card shop was going to pay me, uh,

a lot less for them. Uh, and the higher the price, uh, the more money you lose if you're only being paid half the amount, right? So, um, I,

I have this person scheduled to buy them from me tomorrow. I had to join this group on Facebook for Pokemon cards in San Diego, and I did not like having to do this. I hate...

selling things like this and messaging people through Facebook and having to send pictures and coordinating a time to meet up and to exchange the cards.

I spent a good amount of time doing that today and it wasn't fun. I really don't like doing this type of thing. So I did what I had to to sell these two cards. I haven't sold them yet.

they're going to be sold tomorrow, hopefully. Uh, but, uh, after I sell those, uh, a couple of cards, um, I'm still left with like a

lot of cards that really aren't worth that much individually. Like most of them are probably worth less than a dollar, let's say. But if you actually count the number of cards there are and you add up the price individually, it's actually a decent amount of money, but it's

It's just so much work to sell these cards and to ship them to people, meaning you send it to them and you have to deal with all of that and the websites to sell them and you have to wait for people to buy them. And most of these cards aren't

really interesting or rare. They're just old, which is cool. People like them, but they're not really rare cards. So it might be hard to sell a lot of them. So it's a little frustrating because on the one hand, I want to try to get

the most money for them. But on the other hand, it's unrealistic to think that I'm going to sell all of these cards individually. So I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do. I might just sell the whole bulk, meaning all,

the whole stack, the whole collection of cards to a local shop as well. And they pay very little for them, but Hey, I don't need them. Uh,

Uh, and if I can make a little money, maybe, uh, it's worth doing. I don't know. I haven't decided exactly, but I might try to sell a few more that are worth, you know, more than a dollar or whatever. So I'm still figuring things out. But, uh, um, this is an interesting experience because, uh, I didn't know anything about, um,

this whole market before, it's really surprising to me how many people, uh, are still into Pokemon. Uh, like I did that when I was a little kid and just kind of forgot about it for many, many years, but this is still a really huge thing nowadays. I've, uh, realized that. So, um,

Pretty interesting, I should say. But also, in addition to the Pokemon cards that I found...

I also found my old Yu-Gi-Oh cards. I don't know how many of you remember Yu-Gi-Oh, but Yu-Gi-Oh was not as popular as Pokemon, but for me, Yu-Gi-Oh was like one of the coolest things when I was a kid. It was another one of like the top three things that I...

really liked from my childhood that kind of gives me a little bit of nostalgia right now. So I found those cards and I can still remember using and playing with so many of these cards. It's pretty crazy. I have such vivid memories of playing with these Yu-Gi-Oh! cards and

And I actually played with the Yu-Gi-Oh cards a lot. So I didn't really play with my Pokemon cards that much. I just collected them. With Yu-Gi-Oh, I actually played the card game. So these cards...

uh, had a little more significance to me in the sense that I didn't just collect them. I used them. So that was a pretty interesting to go through those old cards and, um,

There are just a couple valuable ones that I still have. I sold one of them along with my Pokemon cards to that guy at the local card shop. I have one other one that if it were in perfect condition...

It would be worth good money, but unfortunately, it was my favorite Yu-Gi-Oh card. And so I played with it all the time, and you can tell. You can tell that that card was used...

a lot. So it's in pretty bad condition. So it's not worth that much, but it's still worth something. So I'm going to try to sell that individually. And I also found some Magic the Gathering cards. I don't know if any of you ever played that game, but that's still a big thing, I think. I never got that

that into that game, but I have some cards that I found. So I think there are only like a few cards that I have that are worth anything. So I'll try to sell those and then I don't know what to do with the rest of them. So this has been a pretty

a pretty interesting week. I've done a lot of reminiscing. I've been thinking back and remembering my childhood. It's been pretty interesting. So I wanted to talk about that in this episode because it's something that's on my mind.

right now. But hopefully this was interesting for you and hopefully it was good practice for your listening. I want to remind you that you can sign up for my advanced podcast episodes in which I speak fast. You can do that by becoming a Listening Time family member. That link is down below.

And you can also sign up for my US Conversations podcast in which I talk to people from all over the country at normal speed. It's a lot of fun. So make sure to check that out. That link is also down below. And please give this podcast a five-star rating if you haven't done so yet and leave a review if you can. All right. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. And I'll talk to you on the next episode of Listening Time.

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