EPTI collected the cards, but I got into it later than everybody else at my school. I was 9 or 10, and kids would do bullshit trades with me telling me their cards were worth much more than they really were. I stopped trusting people after I traded my Venusaur for a Machamp, my Mewtwo for a Dodrio, and two Ninetales and some other card for a Clefairy (he didn't say it was Japanese, I didn't know until I got the actual card). I never got another Mewtwo or Ninetales card, but I did get two Venusaurs later on.
After that, I got my Dad to learn and teach me the game. I got two Charizards early on and I spent a hell of a long time trying to make Charizard a decent card to play. I had a deck with 4 Computer Searches, 4 Double Colorless energies, 4 Professor Oaks, 3 Pokemon Breeders (I didn't have 4), 4 Rocket's Dratinis and Dragonairs (Dark Dragonair's Pokemon Power enables you to select any evolution card from your deck, very useful for getting Charizard, or Charmeleon if I lacked a Pokemon Breeder), and my 2 Charizards with 4 Charmanders and 4 Charmeleons. Needless to say it was kind of effective considering Charizard uses up so many energies and is very susceptible to Energy Removal cards, but it still sucked as a deck. In the end I gave up on the endeavor, but that's what sticks out to me most when I think back on the card game.
Regarding the games... I got Pokemon Yellow as my first video game, I sucked. I didn't know you could deposit and withdraw Pokemon in the PC (I was afraid it make them disappear forever), and I didn't know how to switch Pokemon in the list. I eventually got my Pikachu powerful enough to beat Brock with Tail Whip and Quick Attack, and then I played through the game with a high level Pikachu and some low level Nidorans uselessly stuck in my party. I got up to the Silph building, but I could never beat the rival's stupid Jolteon, my level 60 Pikachu just couldn't survive against his party of 6 balanced Pokemon and my Nidorans didn't fare any better. I told my friend about it and he reacted like "wtf, start over newb." He taught me what I had to do. I put over 130 hours into the playthrough. I beat the Elite Four 39 times just so I could get the money necessary to buy 9999 coins for a Porygon at the Game Corner. I could beat the Elite Four without taking any damage if I was lucky enough not to miss any crucial attacks.
The Gold, Silver, and Crystal came out. Uber. Realizing how much I'm rambling in this post which no sane person would read, I'll just say that Gold, Silver, and Crystal were cool until their internal batteries died due to the time feature. Yellow still works, I play it if I'm feeling nostalgic because LoZ: Oracle of Seasons doesn't work anymore. As for the card game, I still have a shitload of cards which I doubt I'll ever sell, I played a game once with my Dad in the summer of 2006, I may still play another game sometime in the future if we run out of things to do. It's just unfortunate that you can't buy the old packs of cards anymore.
Edit: Wtf, I wrote five paragraphs about Pokemon, on a StarCraft forum. -_________-
