I took Ben to that game store today while Shandy and the baby were napping to kill some time while we were waiting for the sellers to finally vacate the new house - it was the last day of the leaseback and they were clearly unprepared and determined to drag things out all day. We didn't get the keys until 8:30 PM after telling us 5PM and cussed me out and left the house dirty when I challenged him on it, but we won't dwell there. I don't want this to be about that.

Anyway... There was a bin of cards in there that they had for 25 cents a piece - the card equivalent to the junk bin. After Ben got done asking for $40-100 figures and art pieces that I was not going to buy I started digging in the junk bin.

Much to my surprise there were several nice cards in there that featured prominently in the show and I started pulling those out and showing them to Ben and me and the owner were talking about the show and Magic Cards and anime.

It has probably been close to 15 year since I've gotten to just hang out and chat in a cards store while digging and searching - between undergrad, grad school and now parenthood. I was having a lot of fun and could have spent another hour or two happily digging and talking... but that's not how things work with a 5 year old.

But that is our happy place, right? Digging for gems / gold in the junk bin and chatting about our hobbies?

Ben by that point had gotten it in his head to buy a booster pack with a blue eyes dragon on it in the hope of getting a blue eyes- because he doesn't yet get how collectable card games really work. The best / worst part is that the cards in those packs are the Japanese cards and they aren't in English and he knows this because he got one with his mother.

So sensing that my time was up I picked 16 cheap cards for $4 and bought his pack for $3 (7 cards).

We barely got home and he was wanting to take like a 4th of my cards for himself or to "trade" for them. His mother woke up and he starts telling her about the ones I got. - He did get a really nice card in his pack... but it is in Japanese.

I just laughed. I knew I had the good stuff. I pretty much knew exactly how it was going to go down. I knew going with cards he'd recognize from the show was the way to go, but he wanted the pack too. But dad knows where it's at.

I may try to go back with him one more time and dig for more gems in that box before we get fully moved out and over. Just for fun. At 25 cents a piece that's a very fun, cheap, reasonable way to get him some fun cards he'll recognize and enjoy.

I'll keep working on sharing a love of coins, but I collected pokemon cards some too and I turned out okay, and he enjoys these a lot.