Within the last year, I had my vintage Pokemon card collection stolen without any leads. I completed that with my grandpa shortly before he died when I was quite young. It was my last physical connection to that time.
This meme hits pretty hard, unironically.







It’s brutal, honestly. I mean some stuff I gave away or donated when I was younger, but having something I had intentionally kept safe like that stolen really hurt (it was stolen in a move when it was mistakenly put in a storage unit that was broken into within a week).
And it’s not something that I can ever actually replace because I’d only ever really care about the cards I collected with my grandpa.
Realizations like that are hard. I hope you can still find joy in the memories and sharing those experiences with others. It’s a tough journey (and I’m still pretty sore about my loss), but I’m hoping you can still enjoy your memories through emulation if it doesn’t still feel too sour/sore.
Edit: Also, the cost of replacing vintage anything from the 90s is so remarkably prohibitive lol (my collection was realistically worth $6-10k depending on how long someone would want to spend really finding buyers). It really made me feel negatively about the secondhand industries surrounding stuff like this if people are willing to just straight up steal and sell stolen childhood memories.