#82. Hard-to-Find Fossils (Friday, October 15, 1999)

What was your best day…of joining your friend in losing your minds over the latest hot thing?

Anyone who was of elementary-to-high school age in the fall of 1999 will remember what the big thing was at the time. This little video game from Japan, first released four years ago, featuring those little creatures you could capture and battle against each other – had spawned an anime, a trading card game, and billions of dollars in new merchandise.

In a matter of months, Pokemon became a legendary fad beyond anything anyone had seen before, and arguably, since.

And for most of us at the time, our preferred manner of accessing this fad was through the cards. Buying packs, and trading ruthlessly to get as many rare holographic Pokemon cards as you could; that became everybody’s favorite, and only lunchtime hobby. That fourth-grade year, the local school I started out at – Meadowlands – literally had half the school (me included) spending all of recess and lunch hour in this little area behind the portables exchanging cards. Just doing that. That was the life for all of us.

In mid-September, I had to change schools to Mutchmor, in downtown, for its Gifted program. And while the Pokemon craze was still going on there, within a few weeks the school banned the cards, claiming that too many kids were losing them¹.

At this time, the new Fossil set of cards had just been released in North America, and it was a massively big deal. It was the third of three sets that comprised the original 150 Pokemon (allowing us to finally “Catch ’em all ™”), and was the first one to come out when the craze had fully disseminated.

So naturally the stores sold out immediately. Two days before, my mom actually drove all the way to this store on the far East End of the city to get me one pack. I got a Magneton; and, for the next forty-eight hours at least, I cherished it like nothing else.²

But if that wasn’t enough, I found out the next day that another spot had opened up in the Mutchmor Gifted program – and my best friend Harry Liu (#100, #87) was next in line. In a few short days, we would be reunited as classmates!

On this Friday night, I invited Harry to come over to my house. But before he arrived, my dad called me over, reached up onto the shelf, and pulled out…another Fossil pack with an Aerodactyl picture on it; he said he had gotten his co-worker to get the pack for me³. And I just stared longingly at the precious pack right until Harry came in; at which point we rushed upstairs, he showed me the latest addition to his impressive collection of over a dozen holographic rares⁴, and we carefully laid the pack in front of us.

In great excitement, we opened it. And as my rare, I got a…Gengar. Now Gengar, the only fully-evolved Ghost Pokemon, was one of the coolest Pokemon at the time (though the card sucked big-time, and it was non-holographic); so we reacted like I had just pulled off the most insane miracle ever. We then went down to my basement and played Pokemon games for the next four hours until midnight.

A childhood memory that would stay with me forever.

(NB: I ended up trading that Gengar and that Magneton a few weeks later at Chinese school for a holographic Moltres, a trade I would regret tremendously – given how emblematic those two cards were of what my parents meant to me.)

(NB 2: Four months later, Harry would move to San Francisco with his family. And I never saw him again.)

My old school had issued a warning, directed to the older students (which apparently included me), to not rip off – i.e. accept lopsided trades in your favor with – younger students. The younger students had their shit together, obviously; all they cared about was that they were still allowed to rip older students off…no announcement came out on that, and a week later we saw a first-grader literally jump out of the school building during recess screaming that he had just traded an Oddish (cute, but only 25 cents) for the famous holographic Charizard ($100).
The same day, a rather troublesome classmate Jake, had climbed onto the top of the swing-set (which was a lot taller than the typical one); and Wesley dared him that if he jumped he’d give him an Energy Search. Jake jumped (was okay, I believe), got his Energy Search, got busted by the principal, then while standing next to her, (stupidly) waved at our friend Chris McCormick with his new Energy Search…which got promptly confiscated.
For the longest time after, that Aerodactyl became burned in my memory as an immediate trigger for me to feel grateful to my parents, and/or to feel guilty when I was being a misbehaving child.
Which he had ruthlessly traded up to from a measly $20 Starter Set.