Online Pokémon Marketplace ("Xangel")

Pokémon – Where My Collecting Began

A big part of my childhood was shaped by Pokémon. I actually started a bit later than most: my little brother received Pokémon Diamond as a birthday gift, and seeing how much fun he had, I saved up my own money to buy Pokémon Pearl as my very first Pokémon game.

One day, while exploring the grass as usual, I encountered a Ponyta — but instead of a fiery red mane, it had a blue one. At first, I was convinced the game was glitched. Thankfully, something told me to catch it anyway. Later I learned it was what's known as a Shiny Pokémon: an extremely rare color variation with, back then, only about a 1 in 8192 chance of appearing.

Not long after, I found a Shiny Gastly… and even a Shiny Starly (which sadly escaped — a pain fellow trainers will understand forever).

The idea that such rare variants could exist completely fascinated me. From that moment on, I wanted to collect them.

I soon discovered you could trade over Wi-Fi, which opened an entire world. I moved to Pokémon Online trading, where many players needed version-exclusive Pokémon to complete their Pokédex — and were willing to trade Shinies for them. After what must have been thirty to sixty hours of negotiating and trading, I had already collected twenty to thirty Shinies. And I was only getting started.

Then I found pokefans.net — at the time, the largest German-speaking Pokémon community. Under the pseudonym Xangel, I opened my own trading market. I traded and traded, slowly working my way up from single Shinies to hundreds. Eventually, my market grew into one of the biggest on the entire platform — and across the German-speaking DACH region, I could not find a comparable one in size.

As my network expanded, I started specializing not just in Shinies, but also in EV/DV-trained Pokémon (strong competitive builds) and rare event Pokémon that were often only available in specific countries. I built friendships with players in Japan who could obtain event distributions months before they reached Europe — giving me a strategic trading advantage that accelerated my collection even further. Over time, I accumulated hundreds of highly sought-after Pokémon: rare events, perfect genetics, and Shinies of almost every shape and glow.

Eventually, high school and other priorities took over, and I closed my online trading market. But the joy never disappeared — to this day, I still love revisiting the old games.