$250,000 Alpha Black Lotus PSA 10 confirmed sale on eBay

Market
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Sales data vs market price is always a contentious discussion. As many people here have pointed out, when trying to figure out “market” price (the price where one can reasonably expect a deal to occur), the rarer the item, the less sales data matters. On the flip side, rarer items will also have less sales data, so people may (understandably) tend to emphasize the few data points that are available. To me, trying to use this one sale as a barometer or indicator for the larger market feels like a stretch. There are just so many factors that go into a single sale, many of which can be irrelevant to the market as a whole.

If I am actively looking to purchase this card, the price of this sale barely matters to me anymore. The opportunity to purchase is what’s going to be important. If I’m an observer with no vested interest, then the price is interesting and I can attempt to make some conjectures or analyze it, but ultimately it is just a single data point.

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I think the difference here is that a valuation alone is something which is driven by active sale history and in this case we have a very recent price point to go by - the value of this card right now is $250,000. That point is completely irrespective of rarity. If it were worth more than that, somebody else would have bought it for a higher price, although admittedly in this case the item in question was only available for a matter of hours.

A value prediction is something which is given to estimate the value of something at some point in the future. A prediction itself is not a valuation, it’s an educated guess. I’ve not seen Scott’s original comment, but if it were a comment about the item’s current predicted value then $700k has now been shown to be an over-estimation or a sign that the card has lost significant value since the prediction was made; if it were a comment about it’s potential future value then that’s something we have yet to see.

As it stands, this card right now has a $250,000 valuation until somebody comes along and makes an offer higher than that amount - if they are actively willing to put down that higher amount, then that can be used as a basis for a new valuation.

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Seems to me like if it’s a rare card that’s done at a new record, well markets don’t care about your feelings and it’s the new normal. If the same card drops by more than half of its next sale, disregard it, it’s rare and you can’t put a price on it, despite the seller being the number one broker in mtg that probably completely exhausted his potential selling options to get whats at that specific point in time, the best price possible. No more sharing of sales data cause it fell in price…lol? Sales data is the same regardless of a new record high or low, the decision to announce or hide it is strategic. Buy a cards for a high price, tell the whole world and hopefully that price will be anchored as everyone knows and acknowledges it at the new price point. A card was sold at a new low? Please stay silent, so as to limit the impact in value. Sounds like shade city to me.

Reminds me of the days crystal zard was flooding the market and people got angry. Reminds me of the early days of the financial crisis where people were angry at others shorting the market.

I didn’t come in this thread feeling triggered, literally saw it as great data point to show the risks involved in the hobby, and I believe that was the intent of OP. Alas the reaction was a salty one and now I’m dragging myself down to it.

Btw, in the art world, every single piece of art is unique, and yet the auctions houses like sothebys and Christie’s are generally able to approximate the sale price in most instances, not perfectly accurate but typically within range.

This IS a data point that impacts market prices. It impacts the power nines that typically trade below black lotus, it impacts values of other black lotuses. No.1 ssb is super rare but markets have determined it doesn’t cost more than an illustrator, which already helps us put a price range on it given the last few illustrator sales at quarter million usd range, ssb can reasonably be concluded to be worth below that even without knowledge of any recent ssb sales.

The idea that just because your card is rare you can’t put a price on it is a ridiculous concept, because at any point of time whatever the price you want is limited by what the market will pay. the market price is “the market” consensus. If I had one unique piece of art, and the top 10 bidders offer 100k, 98k, 96k…down to 90k. Guess what, my view that it is worth $1mm isn’t market. The general consensus is the item is worth around 100k, and more likely than not my view is the outlier that needs to be recalibrated. Market price could change tmrw, the artist could die and it’d be worth $1m, but at the current point in time, my expectations are off market. Or at least that’s what the sothebys art consultant will tell you.

Peace out

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@pichufan

If I had an Illustrator PSA 9 and sold it on eBay for $20k (what can I say, I undervalued it), would it be considered the new value of the illustrator just because it’s the most recent price point of a card that is rarely sold?

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@sgbased, I can only speak for myself, which I have said numerous times now that I don’t care about the price.

I think what people are trying to highlight is market value requires numerous sales, which high end will never have. Also most sales are naturally private, which is what I was trying to highlight earlier, so its really hard to get a full scope.

For example, I’ll share one that highlights my point. Currently I’ve sold a SSB higher than any public sale. And that was 2 years ago. So the public data people argue about isn’t the full picture.

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@sgbased Some good points. I think I’m trapped in the mindset of someone who keeps wanting to obtain more of these top tier rarity items. I’m not upset that the price is lower than previous sales - I don’t even own a single MTG card. But I’m coming from the perspective of trying to be realistic if I were to ever want to buy a copy myself. Just about every rare item I’ve obtained I did so at new record prices, and this is the mindset I needed to have in order to do it. To me, the opportunity to purchase is the most important. Price is almost as important, but somewhat secondary, since it wouldn’t matter without the opportunity itself.

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@casual, i believe that my wording threw off a couple of people so i will give benefit of the doubt. Soooooo again here we go.

There are 2 of these cards. Smpratte and this new gentlemen. The reason, that this one sold below SMPratte’s sales point was because it was owned by someone who achieved an astronomical return. Now the basis resets. at 250k the return is zero and somewhere in the negatives for the two cards respectively. so, You will not acquire this card anywhere near that. Investors have to reach a threshold to dispose or to run into financial turmoil. Collectors need offers they cant refuse. Which was why i was arguing that there will not be a sale at THE MOST RECENT SALES POINT (250k)

@pichufan,
I consistently see you use analytics as evidence for your disputes of pricing. I also consistently see you disregard any justification of prices as well. Name of the game is acquisitions. No one cares about the “value” of a card sitting in a collection. calculators don’t get acquisitions, the funds do.

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HI :blush:

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If nobody else was offering higher than that amount then yes, $20k would be regarded as the new value. If an item sells for much lower than expected whilst people are actively offering higher amounts then no, $20k would not be regarded as the new value. Right now there are several people on this forum alone with very real $200,000+ offers, so an anomalous sale like this would not have much impact on the value.

Value stems from two factors: what holders are prepared to sell for and what acquirers are prepared to buy for. In this case, being an item sold by a very reputable MTG seller, it would appear that nobody was prepared to buy for higher than $250,000. This means that $250,000 is the new value of the item.

Is this just a long-winded way of agreeing with what I said? I don’t know what I’m supposed to be disagreeing with here, I’m just stating simple fact: if nobody is prepared to buy an item for above a certain amount then it cannot be valued above that amount at this present point in time.

Future value predictions are not valuations, they’re speculation.

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Yeah, I don’t buy that. Purchase price is really not relevant when selling.

250k is the best price the card was able to attain today.

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i don’t think your second paragraph makes as much sense as you think.

I’d say that is the latest sales price. Everyone can interpret however they want about market prices. Yes, the market will be influenced by this one sales data.

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Best part about this whole thing is at timestamp 3:43 when he elaborately says he buys the grade, not the card and that this is what a lot of big buyers and collectors do. Been sayin this all along :blush:

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What a ridiculous claim, the nerve of this guy, unreal :stuck_out_tongue: :slightly_smiling_face:

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I think it would be amazing to get insights into the huge deal that the SSB sale was part of :blush:

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I did not hold onto the card. I sold it as part of my entire alpha set for over $400k. I know who owns it now though, a collector named Adam Cai. I kind of like knowing where it is. If I had held onto my Alpha set, which is mostly still intact but owned by someone else, I think it would be legitimately be worth close to $2m now, and probably peaked somewhere higher last year. There’s a lesson in there for collectors though. $400k was a lot more than I paid acquiring my Alpha set. At that value, I was starting to become nervous holding it. I didn’t time the market well. But as the dollars get very large, it’s harder to keep a clear head and play a perfect poker hand. Last year would have been peak value, at least for a while. But no one could have known that. What if you had bought that set last year for $3m, and now you couldn’t sell it for more than $2m? That’s a lot of zeroes. There’s a lot of beta (risk) in collectibles like these, and every win and loss gets magnified at larger values (obvi).

To those who see this as a harbinger for what could happen to pokemon, my personal prediction is we are looking at the future, but 5-10 years down the road from where magic is now. As the incomes of pokemon collectors, who are on average younger than MtG collectors, rise, they will be willing to spend more for the cards they love. But it certainly won’t be 100% linear.

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Haha Well those big deals have contracts. But maybe when they expire and/or I get out of the hobby. :wink:

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Except that’s not what happened here. 0% chance that Daniel undersold the card. The guy is a hustler. Everyone knows him and he knows everyone. I agree that, in your example of the Pikachu Illustrator PSA 9, that wouldn’t be the new market price just because you undersold it. But if it was aggressively marketed and $20k was the top dollar you could get for it, then it certainly would be the market price. Obviously the Illustrator is worth way more than $20k, but that is only because people are willing to pay more than that for it.

For the Lotus, $250k is a reasonable estimation of the current market price. Because Daniel 100% exhausted his options before ultimately selling it for $250k.

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i watched your collection video recently and read some of your previous posts about big selling points in your hobby collecting career. you moved your collection for really good reasons. i would argue your first sale to go after high-end audio equipment was a necessary step in the growth of a collector. yes, i never want my collection to become a psychological burden in any form.

my prediction is that Pokemon should be bigger than Magic at some point down the road. this is just my feeling with some general knowledge of the two. i have no evidence. i think stuff that sticks with you at a younger age will stick longer ultimately. pokemon is rated for a much younger audience (6+), so that culture/memory is cultivated at a more impressionable age, than say MTG (13+). i think your 5-10 year prediction is about right because mtg was 6 years pokemon’s senior in actual release date, but ALSO 3-7 years ahead in terms of target age group difference. my general impression is that most serious MTG people are in their 40s, and most pokemon people are 25-30s. obviously there are exceptions. :blush:

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I believe he absolutely crushed it on valuation. This was a steal. 7 of these cards at PSA 10. It’s the original TCG. Unreal purchase.

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Two great things from this dude, I wish he did more English videos.

  1. He said he doesn’t give a fuck about anything other than the grade and other big collectors like him feel the same way

  2. He said he got away with robbery on the card and would have definitely paid much more. He kinda trolls the seller within his video about that which is funny.

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