Hi, this is me.

My name is Kartik Sati, also known as KARdboardTIK.

I’m 31 years old, born and raised in the small country of Luxembourg, right in the heart of Europe. My parents are originally from India, and while I still speak Hindi and have a small part of my family living there, Luxembourg is where I grew up and where I feel at home. I see myself first and foremost as a Luxembourgish citizen.

I’ve been actively collecting trading cards for more than 15 years, but if I’m honest, I’ve been holding cards in my hands for as long as I can remember. Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, whatever I could get. I was probably around eight or nine years old when cards became a constant part of my life.
My parents used to joke that I’d grow up to be a gambler. Every time they saw me, I either had Pokémon or Yu-Gi-Oh! cards in my hands or stuffed into my pockets.

I didn’t always have a collector mindset. In those days, nobody thought trading cards could ever become valuable assets. Still, at some point around the age of 15 or 16, something clicked. I started protecting certain cards, not because I was thinking about money, but because I simply didn’t want to lose or damage the things I loved. That was also the time I started collecting Pokémon cards more seriously. I remember spending an entire summer job’s salary on what were considered “grail cards” back then. When my parents found out, they were furious. They told me I was wasting money.

Looking back now, I can say with absolute certainty that those purchases were some of the best investments I’ve ever made, even if that wasn’t my intention at the time. As the years went on, I diversified. I added some of my favorite Yu-Gi-Oh! cards and slowly built a collection that reflected my taste.

Then came the COVID boom and the wave of attention that followed. Around 2021, I realized that my Pokémon collection had reached the six-figure range. At that point, I decided to sell part of it, mainly cards I no longer felt connected to. Towards the end of 2022 and the beginning of 2023, I started paying closer attention to the One Piece TCG. The game was still early, but I could already see the potential it had compared to other modern TCGs. That was also the period where I made my first purchases, slowly testing the waters before committing more seriously.

A few years later, during the next strong market phase in 2024, I made a bigger decision. I sold another significant part of my Pokémon collection and kept only a smaller portion of what I originally had. With the six figures I received from those sales, I started moving more seriously into One Piece cards. This was a gradual process. I watched the market, learned the structure of the game, and focused on pieces that made sense to me long term. The goal was not to chase every card, but to build a collection I genuinely believed in.

Over the next few years, that decision developed into something much bigger than I expected.
What started as a six-figure reinvestment eventually grew into a seven-figure One Piece collection.
Looking back, this taught me one of the most important lessons in the hobby. Selling well is only one part of the process. Reinvesting correctly is the harder part. It requires patience, discipline, and a clear understanding of what you are trying to build. That is also one of the main reasons why this book exists.

I am not here to tell you what to buy. I want to share how I approach decisions, how I think about long-term collecting, and what I learned from moving through different stages of this hobby.