Alex Smith

Pokémon is definitely the core of my collection, but I’m much more interested in the slightly weird, older and region-specific corners of the hobby than simply chasing the latest English-released set.

I collect vintage English and Japanese cards, and I’m particularly fond of old-back Japanese Pokémon. I also love vending-series cards, Carddass and Bandai releases, TOPPS Pokémon, and some regional issues like Indonesia’s Pikachu Batik and Indomaret cards.

I think a lot of what interests me about collecting is tied to place. Buying cards in Japan, for me, is just different from buying them in the UK. Collecting in Korea exposes you to a different type of market entirely, and Indonesia also has its own releases, sellers - and challenges. Moving between these markets is one of the reasons why I became interested in the infrastructure around the hobby: marketplaces, grading, shipping, fees, proxies, valuations, and the platforms that sit between collectors like me - and their cards.

One of my favourite collecting memories happened on my first ever trip to Japan back in October 2023. I was walking through Ikebukuro with a friend at about 3am, and we suddenly stumbled on this slightly dodgy-looking Pokémon vending machine. Neither of us really knew what we were pressing, but roughly ¥5,000 later I came away with a random Pikachu card - and a reignited interest in collecting Pokémon cards that had been lost since my childhood.

Professionally, I’ve spent more than a decade working independently across online publishing, consulting, direct-response copywriting, digital marketing and editorial.

My direct-response work has included projects for Agora, one of the best-known names in the industry, alongside work for other publishers and businesses in the UK, US and internationally.

I also spent a large part of my career around Casinomeister, including serving as Head of Editorial and working in a consulting capacity. GachaMeister’s name is, unsurprisingly, a small nod to my good friend Bryan - the founder and former owner of Casinomeister. His honesty-before-profits approach is exactly the kind of philosophy I wanted to build GachaMeister around, and his work also helped inspire GachaMeister's Black Binder concept.

Outside work, my time is split between Indonesia and Seoul. Indonesia has become especially important to me: my daughter lives in Jakarta so I spend a lot of time there, and when I’m not working, I head to the Nusa Islands for scuba diving.

I built GachaMeister because collecting has become far more complicated than it used to be, and while there’s a lot of good, independent information out there, relatively little of it focuses on the increasingly digital side of the hobby: online pack-opening platforms, marketplaces, vaults, grading services, proxies, fees, buybacks, blockchain-based opening, and all of the other systems that form part of the collectibles world.

That’s the gap I wanted GachaMeister to fill and for me, it’s a blessing that I’ve been able to turn one of my passions into a business.

My job here is not to tell people what they should - and shouldn’t - collect. It’s to make it easier to understand what a platform, marketplace, grader, seller, or service actually offers, what it costs, what evidence supports the claims being made about it - and where any uncertainties lie.

If you have a question about something I’ve written, think I’ve got something wrong, or have evidence that you think GachaMeister should look at, you can get in touch through our Contact page. You can also read more about how we work in our Review & Evidence Methodology and Editorial Independence Policy.