Originally published at: Man used $57k of Covid relief loan to buy one Pokemon card | Boing Boing
…
4 Likes
For the obsessive collector, everything – regard for the community, friends, family, hygiene, common sense – eventually goes out the window in service of acquiring and preserving his precious items.
13 Likes
Given the current thing going on with the pokaymans cards I would doubt this guy is an obsessive collector seeking his personal holy grail.
A friend managed to sell his small assortment for something like 5 grand earlier on this year. And that was to an acquaintance who buys and sells stuff like this as a side hustle. After that guy had done the work in identifying, grading, and selling each card individually they apparently brought in over 6 grand.
The cards were nothing particularly rare or special. He was just old enough to have gotten the cards when they first came out in the US, then not played with them much. So early cards, in good condition with some reasonably desirable things in the mix. And I know a bunch of people in our age block who were actually into Pokémon who got a lot more out of it, one friend ended up having a down payment for a house in his storage locker.
So probably speculation.
4 Likes
Try to recover some of the money selling the card, but if it’s just not valuable, burn it in his face.
7 Likes
This grown man spent all that money on one card. If it was speculation he wouldn’t have realised very much of a gain on it in the short term had he sold (not that this is any way to make up a financial shortfall due to Covid). The lack of judgment and choice of “asset” stinks of the obsessive collector’s mindset, the need to possess that one special piece.
As it happens, I’m in the process of selling some old packs of Pokemon cards that someone gave me years ago when their store stopped selling them. I used to give them out to the kids in my life before they lost interest. I’ll probably get $3-5k for the lot – a nice windfall but I’m not going to retire or build/rescue a business on them.
6 Likes
Men like him are the same people who delay and block proven-to-work direct-payment social aid to people in need unless every penny is accounted for and limited in use, lest they “spend it all on drugs and alcohol”. They don’t trust people with money because they know they can’t be trusted with it. It’s always projection, in the end.
18 Likes
Counterpoint.
Bitcoin.
1 Like
At least he knew not to spend it on a NFT
3 Likes
Guys, you gotta catch em all, even if it means defrauding the government. He was just doing what had to be done
3 Likes
Cryptocurrency would have actually been a better choice if this was merely a case of reckless and illegal financial speculation. The prices are a lot more volatile than that of a single Pokemon card and there’s more room for diversification without sacrificing the gambler’s high. Still a crazy risk, of course, just without the added-on crazy of the gotta-catch-em-all collector.
6 Likes
I’m seeing a lot of grown men spending eye watering amounts of money on increasingly childish things like Pokemon Cards, Air Jordans, and crappy NFTs lately. So depressing when there is so much poverty and suffering in the world. More progressive taxation is clearly needed.
1 Like
And have you noted a particular shortage of idiots lately?
1 Like
Man, and I thought I was irresponsible with my Covid money.
If you ignore the specifics of what this guy spent his money on, the crux of the crime is that he lied about the number of employees his business had when applying for pandemic relief money. We might be sniggering less if it had been spent on hookers and blow, but the crime remains. It would be nice if there were to be prosecutions of some larger corporations who sucked at the government teat with even less need.
7 Likes
Can we just pause here and realize how absolutely toxic this meme is? How completely and utterly wrong she is?
The kid probably has something medically wrong with him. He needs medical attention. There is some reason that he is barely eating - it could be an issue with his digestive system that makes eating painful, it could be a mental issue that makes eating painful, but either way, it’s potentially a real problem that needs a real solution.
And the mother is completely abusive, is denying her kids medical care, and has serious issues that she needs to work out. She needs to get mental help before she completely messes up her kid. It sounds like she has a very toxic viewpoint of masculinity too. (But looking up who she is with her little blue checkmark, I guess she probably would. Poor kid.)
3 Likes
Sorry, I should have left a link to the previous discussion.
3 Likes
Conservative parenting in a nutshell.
4 Likes
4 Likes
for a seven year old, really tall, average weight.
2 to 20 years: Boys Stature-for-age and Weight-for-age percentiles
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
