While there’s no indication that grading will ever cease to be relevant in this hobby, that doesn’t mean that PSA 10s will always carry the premium they currently do. Of course, PSA 10s will always be worth more – but the size of the gap between PSA 10 and PSA 9 prices might not always persist. There are Unlimited cards that are $50 as PSA 9 and $500 as PSA 10 – that sort of gap can only be maintained if PSA remains at least as equally dominant over this hobby in the future as it is currently.
And regardless of the difficulty of finding raw PSA 10-potential Unlimited cards in the wild, the fact remains that there is (for most sets) absolute crap tons of Unlimited sealed product still available. And usually at substantially lower prices than 1st Edition. If collecting PSA 10 Unlimited cards becomes more widespread and the prices concurrently rise, a lot of sealed product is going to be opened. Which would be especially significant for sets like Base, Jungle, and Fossil, less significant for Team Rocket, Gym Heroes, and Gym Challenge, and basically a non-factor for the Neo sets since Unlimited sealed Neo boxes are so much rarer. So if I was going to be ‘investing’ in any PSA 10 Unlimited cards, it would definitely be in cards from the Neo sets (especially the latter 3, since Genesis seems to be a good bit more common). But for Base/Jungle/Fossil, the pops will rise immensely if the interest/prices go up. In pure investment terms, it would be much better to just buy and hold Unlimited sealed booster boxes of Base/Jungle/Fossil than PSA 10 Unlimited holos from those sets. If the prices on the latter increase, the prices of former increase, too. And more significant is the fact that the supply of the sealed product would rapidly decrease – which would drive up the prices of it even further.
While it is certainly true that especially unlimited fossil and to a lesser extent jungle and rocket are still plentiful in terms of sealed boxes, their first ed counterparts are widely available too. I have no proof for it, but I think that the overall left sealed stock for certain sets like the neos is quite similar for unl vs 1st ed. I think it is important to differentiate here which sets we are talking about as zorloth correctly mentioned that you can not compare fossil to neo destiny unlimited.
In general, sealed product will always be the safer “investment”, it´s like a fond compared to single shares. But that´s the strength, if you understand the demand and market, you can do way better with investing in certain cards than a sealed box. It requires a much deeper understanding and knowledge of the set/cards/etc. though.
Even if you do know the demand and the market, it still would be wiser to ‘invest’ in sealed Unlimited product. Or at least it would be wiser if you’re at all risk-averse. Because there probably are some PSA 10 Unlimited holos that could theoretically go up by a factor of 20+, whereas the sealed product is almost certainly not going to increase that much. But the potential for PSA 10 Unlimited holos to go down in price is also much, much greater. But it would basically require a doomsday scenario for the price of Unlimited sealed product to not increase in value, let alone decrease. If someone doesn’t have the capital to ‘invest’ in sealed Unlimited boxes but does have the capital to ‘invest’ in Unlimited PSA 10s, then it’s probably not wise for them to be putting money into as speculative of an asset as Pokemon in the first place.
I just can’t imagine a scenario where I would prefer to buy $50k worth of some PSA 10 Unlimited holo vs. $50k worth of a certain Unlimited sealed booster box. Even if you have the ‘deeper understanding and knowledge’ that you speak of, the future of PSA 10 Unlimited cards is very uncertain. But, assuming the hobby remains remotely active, the future of Unlimited sealed booster boxes is pretty damn certain: they’re going to continue to increase in value. But I do definitely understand the appeal of playing penny stocks with PSA 10s; I just don’t see it as being wiser in any circumstance, regardless of one’s knowledge, than just buying the box.
We can´t talk about every unlimited set/card/box at once, there is major differences between every single one of them. I really disagree that the potential of Unlimited holos going down in value is much much greater. Look at Neo Unl Pops, let´s take Neo Discovery. Most of the cards are sub Pop 20. Imagine everyone of those is worth 500$, that would be a 10k market cap, completely laughable. A single person could wipe out the entire market without betting an eye. And it´s not sub pop 20 because people don´t grade the cards, no they are actually incredibly difficult to grade in 10. Here is a random example: www.pokemonprice.com/CardDetails/7f1583a8-1889-4c00-a11f-2c405c312dc3/houndoom-holo from the set, Houndoom. you can look at the others and they are following similar trends. Comparing them to penny stocks is an absolute joke.
The penny stock comparison was more in reference to Base/Jungle/Fossil Unlimited holos – I should’ve made the distinction. And I was saying those are penny stocks relative to boxes. Because to make any significant impact on the box market you’d need hundreds of thousands of dollars, not just thousands of dollars as you’d need for many of the PSA 10 Unlimited holos. As I’ve made note of a few times, Neo is totally different ball game than all other WotC Unlimited sets. Very small amount of sealed product (relative to other Unlimited WotC sets) and just generally rarer cards (especially Discovery, Revelation, and Destiny). So yeah, I agree that Neo Unlimited holos in PSA 10 work very differently and a distinction should definitely be made.
OP says investment wise which set is better, nothing to do with nostalgia. I can guarantee you over the years in the future more raw unlimited cards will be available over 1st edition cards. Do you think more people have raw 1st edition binders sitting around or more people have raw unlimited cards sitting around yet? Most people were buying pokemon cards from stores like Wal-Mart and only bought unlimited. So most collectors grew up with unlimited and there will be many more unlimited collections slowly surfacing to eBay over the years. Also you can’t compare other sets to base set. So many base unlimited cards were printed compared to 1st edition. I am still finding raw unlimited base cards that have a shot at PSA 10 on eBay today, but it is very rare to find raw 1st edition holos with a shot at a PSA 9 or higher.
I stated „in my opinion“ in the first sentence - that’s what drives me, just to give the op some possibility to understand what different collectors might think. And in that sense, nostalgia plays an immense role for „investments“ such as Pokémon.
Sure everyone had unlimited, that’s exactly the point I made in my post, hence why I think that also other people feel actually nostalgic for the product and may buy it.
A lot of raw unlimited is out there, no doubt. A lot of psa 10/Quad 9.5/CGC 9.5 quality raw ones definitely not. Where are the people that told me last year that 10 pops will massively increase for all of them? Some cards didn’t even get a single 10 graded in the last year.
We are talking about Base set, you are trying to reference other sets and that is not what the OP is asking. Base unlimited holos have increased in pop since last year, and they will continue to increase in PSA 10 pop.
True that, everyone else just brought base into the convo which is a completely different topic compared to all other sets. I see your points clearer now, but at the end of the day 1st edition over unlimited all day.
I’ll take 1st edition/shadowless base over unlimited any day purely based on appearance. The color of shadowless cards is just so much more accurate and vibrant, and I also prefer the more “vintage” look without the shadow.