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

#88. 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 and featuring 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, Pokémon became a legendary fad beyond anything anyone had seen before, and arguably ever 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 Pokémon 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.

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 them

Side Note: 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).

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 taken hold.

So naturally the stores sold out immediately. Two days earlier, my mom drove all the way to a 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.1

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 (#108, #94) was next in line. In a few short days, we’d be reunited as classmates!2

On this Friday night, I invited Harry to come over to my house. But before he arrived, my dad called me over, reached up to 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 me. For the longest time after, that Aerodactyl became burned into 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.

I stared longingly at the precious pack until Harry arrived; at which point we rushed upstairs, he showed me the latest addition to his impressive collection of over a dozen holographic rares3, 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’d just pulled off the most insane miracle imaginable. 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.)

  1. The same day, a troublesome classmate Jake, had climbed onto the top of a tall swing-set; and Wesley dared him to jump for an Energy Search. Jake jumped (was okay, I believe), got his card, got busted by the principal, then while standing next to her, waved at Chris McCormick with his new Energy Search…which got promptly confiscated.
  2. Also, it was my birthday on Saturday. Though, I awkwardly didn’t invite Harry to the party since it was only family friends. (Also, Harry’s transfer was delayed two days because of administrative issues. His parents called with the final confirmation literally ten seconds after I watched Robin Ventura hit his infamous grand slam single against the Braves in Game 5 of the 1999 NLCS.)
  3. Which he had ruthlessly traded up to from a measly $20 Starter Set.