Uncovered two full binders of cards! Proud of my younger self, but I do have some questions
Hello! Like many other threads, I uncovered a binder from my childhood (and a binder from a handful of years ago) that could have some gems in it, but I don’t really know what exactly I should be looking for, especially as far as dates go. The latest date in the blue binder looks to be 2001, so that means I’ve got a lot of every set going all the way back to the base set. Unfortunately, I was an idiot and sold a good amount of my rarer cards at a swap meet when times were tough, but I do still have a good amount left! After going through the binders (not one by one, but I’ll do that eventually), I had a few questions:
All this talk about swirls, is it just a boost in value? Is this a Mew with a swirl? Two Ancient Mews with a swirl each? What other series have cards with swirls? Do I look at all my holos for swirls? While selecting cards to take a picture of, I found this Espeon that looks like it has a swirl, too!
A good handful of cards look like they have water damage (Arcanine, Blastoise, Charizard, etc), so, those would just be kept for personal reasons and not to be sold for value eventually, right?
Shadowless first edition HP Blastoise value? What other shadowless cards should I be looking for, all of them?
Why does it seem like every thread with base set cards has a first edition Machamp??? 😅
Black binder is full of mostly cards from the 25th Anniversary boxes (There are also some baseball cards from around that time, old Dragonball Z cards and one from Gundam MS War). Looks like I’ve got three birthday Pikachus and I’ve heard the value of those cards has been going up, but a quick look at Pricecharting says an ungraded one of the cards pictured is only about $35 worth, correct?
Blue binder is full of cards from childhood, the Arcanine leaning against the binder is just there for height reference, I know it’s in horrible shape, lol. About a quarter of that binder are energy cards, with a first edition grass and first edition fighting, would those be worth putting aside?
Apologies if I’ve gotten anything wrong, PLEASE feel free to ask me to expand on any of these cards. I’m not trying to advertise and/or offload them (except maybe the hundreds of bulk/reverse holos) or sell them, I’m just wanting to know what exact value I have here. Thank you for looking!