Published March 17, 2026 | By Alyx E, Founder of Collectors MD

Some of my earliest memories are simple, but they’ve stayed with me in ways that are hard to explain. I remember visiting my grandfather as a young boy and sitting on the living room floor with a plate of pineapple pound cake. I can still taste it. That distinct sweetness, moist and dense; something about it has always stuck with me. I’d play with my LEGOs, consumed in my own world, while my grandfather sat in his recliner nearby with a Powerball ticket in hand.

It never felt like something worth questioning. It wasn’t presented as dangerous or risky. It was simply a familiar routine. After Wheel of Fortune ended, the drawing would begin, each number revealed as the ping-pong balls bounced around inside the machine. My grandfather would follow along, calmly checking his ticket as each number was announced.

Nothing about it felt out of place. It felt inconsequentially normal.

There’s something about moments like these. When we look back, they seem harmless. The setting is familiar, we’re surrounded by people we love and trust. There’s no signal that anything beneath the surface is remotely worth questioning. But those are often the moments that shape how we come to understand things like chance, anticipation, and reward long before we have the ability to think critically about them. What once felt like background noise can subtly shape who we become.

That’s the part that stands out to me now. Not because there was anything inherently wrong with it, but because there was no context around it. No conversation about risk. No language to describe what was happening or what it could become. It was just part of what I experienced growing up.

And for many of us, that’s how it inevitably begins. Not through warning signs or clear boundaries, but through familiarity. Through repetition. Through moments that feel safe, routine, even comforting. Over time, those experiences shape how we relate to the idea of “maybe this time”.

As children, we don’t analyze what we’re seeing. We absorb it. Years later, those same patterns can show up in different forms. For me, and for so many others in this community, that shift has played out within the hobby. Opening packs, joining breaks, chasing hits, refreshing apps to see what’s next. On the surface, it can still feel like those early moments. Familiar. Exciting. Full of possibility. But everything around it has changed.

What used to be occasional is now constant. What used to require concerted effort and presence now lives in our pocket. The hobby is no longer something we have to physically step into. It’s something that can quite literally follow us everywhere. And that fundamentally changes our relationship with it. Because now, the same feelings that once came from a single moment can be triggered instantly, over and over again. The anticipation. The checking. The “what if”. It’s no longer contained. It’s always within reach.

That doesn’t take away from those early memories. In many ways, they matter deeply.
They’re tied to family, to comfort, to nostalgia. But it does mean we have to be honest about how those early experiences may have shaped us in ways we didn’t fully understand at the time. We were exposed before we were aware. And now we’re operating in environments that amplify those same patterns at a completely different scale.

This is where awareness matters. Not to assign blame. Not to rewrite the past. But to understand how we got here, and what’s changed along the way. Once we see that clearly, we can start making more intentional decisions about how we engage moving forward.

The hobby can still be meaningful. It can still bring joy, connection, and even those same feelings we remember from childhood, sitting on the floor with a stack of cards or a pile of LEGOs. But it asks something different of us now. It asks for awareness. For boundaries. For the ability to pause and check in with ourselves. To ask whether the way we’re engaging still aligns with who we want to be.

The goal isn’t to lose the magic. It’s to make sure the environment doesn’t take more than the moment was ever meant to give.

#CollectorsMD
What felt familiar shaped us. What we choose now defines us.

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