Britt Jones
A woman has been left shocked to the core after her partner’s hobby turned out to be a great money-maker.
Okay, so maybe it’s time we all revisit our favorite childhood games, because this is phenomenal.
So, when a woman realized that her hubby had been sitting on a cache worth real money for decades, she didn’t know how to react.
Madeline Brice had no idea that her husband Juan Pardo’s collection of rare cards could bring in so much money after he began his obsession when he was just five years old.
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The 31-year-old was confused when her husband, 29, decided to figure out how much his stash would be worth using an app to scan the first 670 cards out of his 1,500-strong collection.
When the app told the couple that it would be around $1,312.30, they were keen to find out what the entire collection would bring in.
Pardo began his childhood obsession after becoming infatuated with a hit anime TV show.
The cards that came out afterwards and the Nintendo games that followed allowed for an entire generation to pretend they were all within the imagined world and go on their own adventure.
Of course, it’s Pokémon.
For those who have been living under a rock, Pokémon was the 90s show that every kid was obsessed with.
It featured the main protagonist, kid Pokémon trainer Ash Ketchum and his pals, Misty and Brock who went on journeys which saw them battle other trainers for their Pokémon creatures and enter tournaments to see who the best of the best is.
The Japanese creation is still well and alive today, with a range of games available on Nintendo consoles.
You’ll also remember the Pokémon Go! hype that allowed users to use their mobile phones to find Pokémon and hatch eggs.
For Brice and Pardo, because he had stashed away original Pokémon cards for so long, they had significantly increased in value.
He now thinks that his ungraded collection could bring him in between $2624.60 and $3936.90.
If he chose to grade them, which includes sending them to a trusted grader to determine the exact value of the cards, he could be in for more rather than selling online to collectors at a flat price.
Brice, from Kansas City, Missouri, said: "I knew he was a Pokémon fan. But I was shocked when he told me how much they are worth."
At the time, a lot of those cards were purchased for Pardo by his mother from Walmart, with each box costing around $26.
Even though he regularly traded his cards and played with others, he did stop doing so when he went to college.
But his mom did an amazing thing and preserved his collection, and even kept it going.
Pardo said: "It's my collection but it's mainly her thing. I was totally shocked when I realised how much they're worth. I thought it'd only be a few hundred dollars."
Now he can either sell them for something nice or keep the collection to see if the price increases again.
It’s a tough choice.