Category: Niko’s Soap Box

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One in Every Pack

After the flea market trip, I stumbled upon the Final Fantasy TCG on accident. I had heard about it, but that was years before it released. And, that was a Japan Exclusive. Little did I know that years later it would be released world wide. It was a little after Opus VI released that I saw it at the Gamer’s World at the mall. We had just randomly walked in, and I noticed the booster boxes behind the shelf. Squall, Cloud and Firion were just staring at me.

I just did what any grown man would have done. I bought a whole bunch of Packs and couldn’t wait to get back home to examine all these wonderful packs that I had just gotten. I felt like a kid again. Only this time it wasn’t baseball cards. I don’t even know why I was collecting baseball cards as a kid. I never watched the game, and still to this day I can’t sit and watch a full game. Maybe a couple of innings, if it’s on tv. Or, the 9th inning if its a close game.

Anyways, back on track. Where was I? Ah, yes. I tried getting the family to hurry up on our shopping trip, but to no avail. We had to get the kids clothes, and stuff. Winter coats and the like. I was about to start pounding my feet as we walked from store to store, but I am an adult. Carrying a baby in my arms. It would have been a sight to see if I had started doing that.

But, after what felt like 4 years, 8 months, 13 days, 6 hours, 27 minutes and 14 seconds, it was time to leave. We had finished shopping and were on our way home. Luckily we live 5 minutes from the mall, and got home fast. But, that didn’t mean that we were done. We had to get the kids fed, bathed and put to sleep.

And then, it was finally time to inspect these cards. I grabbed all the packs I had gotten and sat on the couch, nope not on the couch, on the floor. Right in front of the coffee table. I placed all the packs in order, and began to crack these booster packs.

I was excited, after all these years of collecting baseball cards, and then basketball cards, I had finally found trading cards that I would love to collect. Thoughts raced through my head. How many cards are there? 6 Opuses. Is that the plural? Where can I find the rest of all these cards? They had Singles in the display cases. How much are the good cards going for?

Cracking the first pack, it’s all a haze right now, but I know I was hooked. Looking at each card. One by one. I didn’t know about the rarities. I read each card, looked at the picture, and went to the next card. And then I reached the foil card. I thought I got lucky. A rare foil card in my very first pack. And, Then another in the next pack. I must be really lucky! And another ONE!!!!

Then I realized, there’s one in every pack.

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Bad Cards, or Bad Decisions

How did this all start?

Well, I guess it was one day that we had gone to the flea market. And we found some Pokemon cards, going for a dollar a pack. I don’t care what kind of cards they are, (not to knock Pokemon or anything) but at a dollar a pack I’ll be buying it. My first thought was that if they can sell them for a dollar, how cheap are they getting them. There must be some money in that, I can buy these dollar packs and sell them for two, and double my money.

We ended up buying a bunch of packs, Easy Money. Or, so I thought. When we got back to the house, we cracked those packs to see what we got. I noticed right away that the quality was terrible. I was thinking, this Pokemon company is printing this garbage and charging top dollar for it? I always knew it was mostly for kids but, come on. Some of these are even blurry, where’s the quality control?

I didn’t  realize it at the moment, but I knew something was wrong. So, I grabbed my sons Pokemon cards and took a closer look. They looked nothing like the cards I had just bought. These are all Fake. How could they do that to me? Who would have thought that they’d be selling fake cards at the Flea Market.

Lesson learned. But, at least I got off cheap. All I Spent was 4 bucks on those packs. And, a lesson. It was pretty easy to spot the differences once they’re next to each other, but sometimes you can tell right away just by looking at the cards. I spotted some fake cards in my Godson’s binder just flipping through the pages. I asked him what he traded for a certain card and was disappointed when he said he gave a Full Art for it. The word Fake on the bottom didn’t have much meaning after all.

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And, I thought I was done

And here I thought, that building the website would be easy. Well it was. Thanks to all the different plugins available and free themes and what not. It was fairly simple to get this website to where it is now. Not that were anywhere near finished, but we are on our way.

Trying to set up the storefront for the website took longer than I thought it would. Just because of all the cards I had to post to the website. And that’s one thing were still not done with. I sorted through all the cards, from the boxes that I opened and now it’s time to count.

Inventory.

128 different cards. 128 foils, and 21 Full Arts. All need to be added to each page, along with figuring out the price.

That doesn’t even make sense. I’ll just take a nap for now.

But, Nope.

Did not work out the way I planned it would. As soon as I went to post this post. Or, should i say article? I noticed that WordPress did not want to co-operate. Instead of a nap, I got to figure out what was wrong with the site. I was getting a blank screen whenever I tried to post something, or edit an existing page or post. Off to the help center I went. And for a couple of days, I was trouble shooting and trying to figure out what was wrong.

Changing themes, deactivating plugins, clearing cache and cookies.  All to no avail.

And, finally, I read somewhere that I should just install the Classic Editor. And that was all it took.

Now, it’s time for my nap.

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Niko’s Soap Box

Welcome to Niko’s Soap Box.

What is this, you ask? Well I don’t know yet. Probably just a place to post my thoughts and talk about cards. Tell you about the journey I’m taking on the way to opening up my card shop.

Slowly building our online presence. You can find Kardboard Korner on Instagram, and YouTube. Soon we’ll be adding our Facebook page, maybe even a Twitter. The YouTube channel is mostly unboxings of Booster Boxes. There’s our Bucks or Skunks daily video, where we open a pack a day.

The Instagram page is mostly showing what I picked up. As I’m still a collector. It’s always nice finding a deal, on the internet, Ebay, or at a random garage sale.

Well, I hope you’ll stick around, cause we’re on a journey.

Will you join us?