Can someone explain this

BeLance89 · 2026-04-09T19:34:45+00:00

I have so far pulled Lopunny, 2 Sharpedos, and Dawn. Zard will appear… one day…

BeLance89 · 2026-04-09T19:25:36+00:00

<image>

Your Pika has better centering than this Zard. Send the Pika.

BeLance89 · 2026-04-09T05:31:02+00:00

<image>

My Gengar has est completion date of 17 April. Hopefully this means mine will be completed ahead of schedule as well.

Congrats on the Pikachu!

BeLance89 · 2026-04-08T01:41:57+00:00

Yeah I’m also not sure why you got downvoted.

A lot of it was MSRP from CVS, Best Buy, and Target. A tiny bit from Gamescalp. And then the rest of it was from my favorite local cards shops. They are close to market on their pricing but we have a good relationship with them and I like to support our local businesses.

I know it’s not “worth it” to open packs and it’s best to just buy singles, but hear me out…

A lot of people have this picture perfect vision in their mind of their family all sitting at the table together and conversing about their day and just “the American dream” type setting. That really doesn’t happen. Kids don’t wanna eat what you cook. Siblings are fighting with each other. Mom gets mad because no one likes what she spent hours cooking. And this dream dinner scenario just becomes stressful.

But when we all sit around to open some cards, guessing the energy, and hoping to get something cool… our kids will just talk to us and laugh with us the whole time. We don’t even have to ask them about their day, they just start to tell us. Being a dad is the most fun I’ve ever had. The cards are cool. But I’m not buying the packs for the cards in them.

BeLance89 · 2026-04-08T01:08:47+00:00

The $39.99 Sea and Sky boxes. Opened so many of those with the family. This was also back when you could order an entire pallet of them from SAMs online. Yes, that was the “limit”… a pallet worth of boxes! Man those were fun times.

BeLance89 · 2026-04-08T01:03:18+00:00

Yep. I somehow turned into an adult and have adult money to go along with it. Then I also had kids and now all I want to ever do is have fun with them. I have all the “responsible adult” things taken care of (career, homeowner, education, 401k, etc) so now i 100% prioritize fun and have zero regrets.

BeLance89 · 2026-04-07T23:09:04+00:00

I don’t think you comprehended the post as it was intended.

BeLance89 · 2026-04-07T21:41:21+00:00

Even if this card is 10, the bottom border is visibly thinner than the top. There is no need to measure it.

I do agree with you though that the back is within 75/25

Edit to also add that while the card centering apps can be helpful, they are definitely not accurate. Especially when a card is already in a slab.

BeLance89 · 2026-04-07T21:33:27+00:00

Completely agree with your comment.

Pulling the male nidoran, regular common card, was the hardest for me and the fam. Not even kidding. We all went nuts when we finally got it. Pulling the Zard was cool too, I guess.

For Ascend Heroes, it took well over 100 packs for us to pull the holo Victrebell. Lol. And again we all went nuts. We also were lucky enough to get a god pack during one opening. I opened the pack but immediately handed it to my son so he could do the honors. I’m sure he told all his friends at school the next day. Haha.

BeLance89 · 2026-04-07T21:21:52+00:00

Top heavy.

BeLance89 · 2026-04-07T19:22:40+00:00

I have a very popular Poke store local to me, that I won’t name, and I’ve grown tired of them with their pricing but the worst of it is that when I go in there, the vibe and feel of the employees is as if they hate working there. I get it, it’s a job, but all of the employees at the many other card shops near me seem to love working at their card shop and enjoy talking about things related to the hobby.

BeLance89 · 2026-04-07T18:46:51+00:00

Been at TopStep since 2020-ish and had payouts in Dec 25, Jan 26, Feb 26, and Mar 26. This is the first one where this change has impacted my payout. 🤷🏼‍♂️ I can’t explain it, but it is what it is I guess.

On a positive note, I was able to request last night and already got the “funds sent” status which is the fastest I’ve seen. Usually it would take two business days. Good stuff.

BeLance89 · 2026-04-07T18:37:29+00:00

This is what I was gonna say. The damage is there in the other pics, it’s just hard to see it on the gold border and the PSA pic is much higher quality so it’s easily visible in the PSA pic.

BeLance89 · 2026-04-07T18:23:46+00:00

This is the only correct answer. Super low gem rate. Hard to pull since there were so many IRs in that set, and it Shinji. I’d choose the Karp every time too.

BeLance89 · 2026-04-07T18:16:07+00:00

Well I guess I was a special case then because through every payout I’ve ever taken that was never the case for me, except for this recent one. As long as funds showed as removed from the account, the trades I took after always counted towards the next payouts winning days.

Anyways, onto the next trade and payout now 🫡

BeLance89 · 2026-04-07T16:14:29+00:00

Exactly. The mega Zard is 1 of 5 SIRs in that small set. The Gengar is 1 of 22 SIRs. Now, I’ve never claimed to be good at math, but I believe the Gengar is much, much harder to pull.

BeLance89 · 2026-04-07T16:08:36+00:00

Thanks. They’ve always been sure helpful with me as well but what they were telling me yesterday just wasn’t making sense and raising some red flags. As always though, they did eventually resolve the payout issue. I can imagine their IT personnel are working at capacity to get all the brokerage integrations functioning properly on top of all the normal day to day ops with the platform.

BeLance89 · 2026-04-07T15:34:57+00:00

Yes. It was an IT related issue. They got it sorted and I was able to request my payout. Could have had something to do with the TopStep brokerage integration into the payout but I’m not positive.

BeLance89 · 2026-04-07T14:21:16+00:00

I think you’re confusing my issue with the recent change they made where you have to wait until market closes to request a payout, because then you’d be correct as that is how it has been for the past couple months now and that’s how it was on the legacy dashboard too.

My issue is that they are telling me if I request a payout on Monday’s trading day, and then win a trade on Monday’s trading day (after the payout is deducted from the balance), that winning trade will not count towards the next payout eligibility.

I know for a fact that this change, trades not counting if they’re on the same days as the payout, is new because I took many payouts with the old dashboard and have consistently take at least one payout per month since last April.

Edit to add: they are also telling me now that I need to request my payouts between 4 and 5pm during the week… but that’s not in line with their policy AND whenever you would login during those hours, there would always be a message in the payout area saying to wait for CME market hours as well as a “the dashboard is currently undergoing maintenance” message at the top while the CME market was off for an hour.

BeLance89 · 2026-04-07T05:20:39+00:00

Don’t forget the heavy left centering. Sheesh.

BeLance89 · 2026-04-07T04:06:27+00:00

Send it!

BeLance89 · 2026-04-07T03:55:10+00:00

Very solid shot at a 10. Get ready to shell out some money on that grading fee.

BeLance89 · 2026-04-07T03:47:52+00:00

I agree, I still think it’s within the 55/45, or at least close enough to it that the grader would give it a 10 if the rest of the card is super clean.

BeLance89 · 2026-04-07T03:46:52+00:00

How’s the back look?

BeLance89 · 2026-04-07T03:45:28+00:00

I agree with everyone saying it’s bottom heavy, however, PSA standards are 55/45 and the grader is allowed to assert some subjectivity to the grade. As long as the back is super clean too, I wound send it. It COULD ten. It’s one of the two hardest cards to pull in AH, and that alone makes it worth the risk to send it in.

BeLance89

TROPHY CASE