Have you ever collected cards? I noticed that most people who are into anime, collect cards (or have collected before)
For me, i started off by collecting sports cards, then anime, and now a mix of both. Its a real fun hobby i think. Opening the packs to see if you pulled off a great card is a fun experience. Time to go look for some boxes of cards on ebay
PS (is it just my computer or does the poll function not work? )
I collected Topps 1979 baseball cards. Then about ?eight years later I started collecting basketball cards (and a few baseball cards) after I seen them back at my local comic book store. I should have bought those fifty dollar Michael Jordan/Magic Johnson rookie cards when I could have in the mid- 1980's, but it seemed an outrageous price back then.
I collected basketball cards until the card companies seriously started overproducing them in the early 1990's?. Then I switched to collecting old comic books (1940's to 1960's) and then to older movie star autographs in the mid-1990's. Then to anime cels in 1997-1998.
But I still have all my basketball and baseball cards.
I'm a comic junkie, so I had that phase where I collected any and all X-men cards (which turned into a rather large collection). I also tried the YYH game....still don't understand how to play...but I got Youko Kurama (yes that's extremely important to me for some reason )...
I collected Football Cards, then comics, and then lithograths. I then collected cels, sold everything and moved. Then started collecting cels again. The only thing that never changed was watching anime.
*looks at all the boxes of cards and comics* Nope, only collected anime cels. =P
Hmm, if you want to call it a progression it was:
Baseball Cards
Football Cards
Comics
Magic the Gathering CCG (still have my free deck of red/blue trash cards)
Star Wars CCG (Deciper, not the new stuff)
Cels
I'm really getting back into the card deal with anime cards... I sorta agree that the rush of getting a rare or limited when opening a pack sorta gets to me. Or that rookie card that you know is worth some moolah (or the error cards).
I collected baseball cards for a few years when I was in jr high/high school.
Collected some of the comic-based cards (X-men, Marvel) when I was in
college. My friends got into Magic in college, so I also have a shoebox full
of those. Still have them all stuck in the top of my closet.
The Three Laws of Robotics:
1. A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
-I, Robot (Asimov)
In Elementary through early High School, I collected Marvel Super Hero, DBZ, Robot Carnival, Akira, and Magic the Gathering cards. There were also those pogs/bottle caps.
The only card games I played were Poker, Black Jack, and Crazy Eights. The Collectable cards were used like money. My favorite Magic Card was “Nightmare.” I even had a T-shirt with the “Nightmare” card image printed on the back. The horse looks cool.
The Three Laws of Robotics:
1. A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
-I, Robot (Asimov)
I've never considered myself a card collector, yet somehow I have over 300 to 400 of the things. Some I remember picking up because they were neat (Kenshin Tsuiokuhen, FF VII, NGE) or pretty (Ah! My Goddess lami/X1999 Arashi), but I don't remember why I have so many Lion King and Sailor Moon cards. The latter I know there are collectors who would probably love to have them, but I can never get myself around to photographing them.
I also have some baseball, basketball, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer cards. Maybe I'm a card collector in denial.
I used to collect trading cards, back when my local anime store still sold them (they've changed most of their stock from Japanese imports over to Sanrio and American-version stuff *big sad*)
So I've got about 300 Sailor Moon cards (American, Japanese, French, etc.) as well as about 250 Cardcaptor Sakura cards (all Japanese). I've got some Utena cards (that are actually on eBay right now), as well as a random assortment of things like You're Under Arrest, Slayers, Rayearth, etc.
I'd love to unload my trading cards, but the US resale market for anime cards is not so good...which is too bad because I've got some rare SM cards...
Time to go look for some boxes of cards on ebay 
)
