I got a starter pack for the Pokémon TCG for Christmas one year around the time the Fossil expansion came out. No one actually played the game at my school so I pretty much just played casually against my mom up until a little after the Team Rocket set came out. Then my parents made me sell all my Pokémon cards at a yard sale for $20. I don’t think I had any big money cards at the time, but it still sucks to have them gone…
The only card I kept from that era was the Pokémon The First Movie promo Dragonite, which I carried in my wallet for the longest time.
I got back into the TCG early this year through the online client, and while the game is great, I never got comfortable with how the secondary market works in that game and didn’t really buy into any real decks because of it… I tried writing up the rules to a singleton format because I enjoy those in other card games, but I don’t think Pokémon’s necessarily a good fit for it.