you reminded me of this story with yours. my teacher had taken my cards and said i could get them back at the end of the year. it was the first week of school and i didnt want to wait until the end of the year to get my cards back. my mom was a teacher at this school btw. i asked my mom if i could go to school early with her that day and she said yes. when we got there i told her i had to go to the bathroom. so i ran off and she thought i was going to the bathroom but i went to my teachers room. obviously my teacher would notice if the cards were missing so i took some crappy ones from home and replaced them in here drawer.
I used to collect them, I just play the TCGO now though, it's convenient to be able to play without the hassle of pulling out a bunch of cards, as fun as that is. It's just to bad I don't have any friends to play with (or at all, really :P).