I was visiting San Francisco to see one of my friends. We went to a strip club, and while I was there I saw a TRUE Pokémon card collector, surrounded by women. He was throwing tons of money at them, but not just bills. It was stacks upon stacks of $10,000, sealed up with white paper bands like he had just come straight from a bank.
I went up to him and congratulated him on the success of his Charizard collection as of late (this was about a month ago), and he started laughing. He took a hefty swig from a bottle of Dom Perignon and said, "Yeah? You think I care, stinky?"
Confused, I asked what he meant, and said that he had obviously put a lot of work into his PSA 10 first edition Neo Genesis Lugia and he should be proud.
"Fundamentally, I don't give two fucks about Pokémon, kid."
He was about to say something else but one of the strippers tapped him on the shoulder. The TRUE collector pulled out from his pocket the biggest ziplock bag full of cocaine I've ever seen in my life. It looked like one of those gallon bags, almost bulging at the seams. The stripper ran off into a back room with it.
He then pulled out a Zippo lighter.
"You wanna know what I think about Pokémon?"
He snapped his fingers and a stripper handed him a bottle of Hennessy. He then pulled about 20 stacks of bills and a full mint base set from a duffel bag, threw them on the floor, poured cognac all over them. He flicked his Zippo and dropped it onto the pile. Almost instantly the whole stack caught.
I stared at him, speechless.
"It's called a 'PUMP and DUMP,' kid."
He laughed as he watched the pile burn before losing interest and going into a back room with his entourage of strippers following carrying duffel bags full of what I assume was money and coke.
This is the man you are supporting by buying Pokémon cards.
