Wow, your kid just came home from school excited about their friend going to a card tournament and is now asking for you to go to Wal-Mart and purchase some cards.  This may seem familiar, perhaps a few years ago you went through the same thing with Pokemon, but now your kid is older and perhaps wants to take it to the next level?  Does this mean you're going to have to pay a mess load of money or rather tell your kid no and make them feel even worst just for asking something they weren't sure how you'd react in the first place.  If you follow our guide, you won't have to pay out money in a sence that there is no variable return and your kids will actually benefit from your help.

First, ask your kid if you can play with them and see if they are still interested.  If they are, you may have a serious gamer on your hands.  Time spent pursuing this hobby can be well worth any money spent, but keep priorities in check.  You are getting involved to help your child, share a hobby, and promote your child's interests and goals.

Identify three things straight from the get go.

1. The game-Is it Pokemon, Yugioh, Magic, or something else?

2. Their Inspiration-why did your kid decide to play, was it a friend, a commercial, or a TV show?

3. Resources-is there a local gaming shop for your kid to play at?

Once you have these three identified, try and understand each one.  Use Wikipedia and learn about the game or google it-always avoid Christian sites flaming the game, they won't help.  If a friend went to a tournament, ask them or their parents about the costs and what playing at the tournament was like.  If you do have a local gaming shop, this is a good environment for your kid to learn many different games.  From experience, players who frequent gaming shops are always the best at their games because of their experiences dealing with various types of other players.

The Cost-
Card games can be a good investment if done appropriately.  Each pack of cards has on the back, the chances in which you may collect different rarities of cards.  These statistics are based on one unopen box of "booster" packs.  A "box" is the container that holds the packs of cards sitting on the shelf.

As an example, let's say a 24 pack box of Yugioh Pharonic Gaurdian costs $70 online.  Seems like alot for a card game right?  Well, if you were to let your kid play, without proper investing, they would easily spend this amount overtime and not have a decent return.  Each pack costs a little over $4.00 at Wal-Mart.  So, for 24 packs the cost would be $96.00 and your kid wouldn't pull the best cards likely.  Each set has a certain amount of cards for each rarity, when you buy a box, you purchase atleast one card of the top rarities, sometimes equaling more than what you paid for the box.  So, how do we purchase this box of cards without spoiling your child?  One word... Work!

When you purchase the box, give your kid at the most 8 packs, enough to let them build a modified deck.  Then for one week's worth of chores, give them two packs of cards (versus $10.00) or give them one pack and $5.00 to let them spend how they like.  Either way, you will be saving money in this manner if you were to pay them an allowance.  Continue this for 8 weeks, or two months, and purchase a new box as it comes out and repeat the process.  A new set of cards will be released at the earliest, two months.

Here is an outline of Investment methods

A) Invest $70, to save $26.  Give your child an initial 5-8 packs.  Each Pack is worth $4, so provide the child 2 packs each week for 8 weeks.

B) Provide the child with an initial 12-16 packs.  Provide 1 pack per week allowance, keeping the other $6 to pay for the next box your purchase in 8 weeks.

C) Provide your child an initial 24 packs, but they must save $2 a day for the next box in 8 weeks.  This will give them $80 to make their own purchase.

You should understand that card games can be very volatile, even if there are players willing to play a game, companies may not be able to print cards due to license issues, as such happened with the Versus System TCG.  Do not expect to recieve a monetary return during your child's first game.  These cards will be very precious to them because of memories, not because they're worth $40 on ebay.