Advice on distinguishing hype from a card’s fair value?

Hey guys! I’m new to the forum.

For some background, I’m relatively “newish” (maybe intermediate) to collecting but not to the franchise. I was (and still am) an avid fan of the core and side games, tv show, and movies since 2000-2001 (age 5); however, I didn’t start collecting the TCG until late 2017 when I was inspired by smpratte, maxmoefoe, and leonhart.

With the current market conditions, I’m having trouble determining whether prices for certain cards (mostly vintage and out of print) are temporarily inflated or not.

Currently, I’ve been looking into expanding my current collection of English gold stars, Masaki promos, Pokemon Center Pikachu promos, Play promos,Battle Road & Battle Festa promos, and other Japanese exclusives (such as Theater VS Alto Mare’s Latios; already have Latias). Unfortunately, many cards in these categories have sharply increased in price.

Is it possible to distinguish between “hype” and “fair value” or is such a distinction impossible to make? For instance, Mario and Luigi Pikachus have increased drastically but are only 5-years-old. I recognize that the collaboration between two iconic franchises, the cards being Japanese exclusives, and the cards being out of print adds value. However, do you think that the current prices are temporarily inflated or permanent.

It’s much easier to make this determination with modern TCG sets. New alt arts/Charizards will be $300+ on release and decline over months (or days) to more reasonable prices. With vintage, I feel it is more challenging to isolate “hype” from smpratte’s “older,rarer, minter, better”.

Maybe my perspective is incorrect and “hype”, in certain cases, is an important component in determining a card’s “fair value”. Thoughts?

Thank you in advance!

1 Like

Decades of experience can only give you a gut feeling of what will happen in the future, wish it was easy to tell temporarily inflated cards with 100% accuracy but we all lose and made dumb decisions from time to time.

6 Likes

Just a few quick points that come to mind:

  • Price history (any sudden spikes? What are the likely catalysts?)
  • How many people are talking about the card/category on social media/flexing it? Popularity.
  • How long is the grading turnaround time → how long after the hype until we see the cards flooding back from grading (for graded prices especially of new stuff)
  • Has enough time passed for an exclusive card to likely stay exclusive? (Yes for Mario & Luigi Pika, maybe for some 2020/21 promos, no for examples like 175/s-p Celebi which did come out in English after a few months, no for all of the newest stuff)

Apart from that it probably comes down to experience, especially regarding out of print WotC era stuff, since with polularity comes potential volatility.

2 Likes

Yeah, I imagine that it’s difficult to tell and that you have to develop a gut feeling. I noticed that unlike modern, vintage spikes are remaining high. I’m beginning to think that prices may stay high fir some time.

Exclusivity is key in distinguishing this.

1 Like

Ive been using the ebay sold listings and expanding the pages to large amounts to cover 6 months or so of prices. If what you want is declining, its safe to assume it will continue to for some time or flatten bringing price back to normalcy.
You mentioned you noticed the trend with modern where after initial first wave is released prices fall, so you’ve got an eye for trend analysis.

I think of it as this, Lots of pokemon sets and vintage cards were hyped and inflated to insane prices the past year/two years. Now with the hype dying down, abundance of modern products and printing, prices falling, more people and eyes on the hobby(more vintage cards coming into the market as people dig up old stashes thought to be once worthless) these are all signs of a downturn and an increase in supply not demand.

So in summary, dont try to time the market, if you have a card list or shopping list, buy what YOU like and want to collect, not what someone else says is good or cool or hyped. We don’t know the true fair value of certain cards besides what market rate is, and since we are in no doubt of a downturn, pick up items that you want along the way when they become available as you mentioned some rarities, you may not see those cards for some time.

1 Like

You can have some peace of mind if the market does go down in that future additions will cost less than you’re currently planning for. Basically just “averaging down”. The only time you can’t average down is if you bought all the cards you planned for right this instant but rarely do we have the funds to do something like this, albeit some collectors are certainly capable of that.

If you buy now and the market goes up then so does your collection.

1 Like

I just think there are very few cases of actual “hype” influencing the price of cards. What I mean by that is that price changes are primarily driven by real demand based on some genuinely interesting characteristic of a card.

For instance, price on the stamp promos are perhaps higher than expected for a 100k print run but it’s hard to argue that most of the demand isn’t driven by people who genuinely want the card for themselves because of how cool they are. In contrast, the PSA 10 metal Charizord is more hype as it was based on a frenzy of speculation that the 10 grade was really hard to get (it’s not) and I imagine few people that were paying the exorbitant peak prices were actually just interested in owning the card and not seeing it as some sort of investment.

The reason I’m saying all this is because it’s not as simple as saying “which cards have real prices and which ones are fake?” because most prices are “real”. Generally speaking, if there’s no way to acquire the card cheaper than what it goes for on ebay (ie. Grading yourself, pulling it yourself, buying from Japan) then the price you see is likely just based on real organic demand for that card.

The problem here is that it becomes a task of predicting whether the organic demand will go up or down for a card - which is really hard if not impossible to predict. A lot of it also depends on the macro trends of the hobby. It’s no surprise that the price of everything went up when a massive influx of new demand came at the start of 2020. If people continue to trickle away from the hobby, prices will continue to erode with the demand. It’s really hard to know what will happen

7 Likes

I want to thank everyone for your responses so far!

Admittedly, I thought I was late in collecting when I started in late 2017. It has been surreal to see vintage cards that I purchased for $30-$400 now priced at $500-$6000. I thought cards were pricey back then.

As stated in this thread, It does seem we are headed into a downturn. Or at least we moving past people listing their old, machine washed, damaged cards for ridiculous prices.

The trend I’m seeing is the earlier the set, the more likely the cards are going to be oversaturated in current market. PSA grading for cards during early sets (at the peak of the initial Pokemon frenzy) have skyrocketed. But PSA submissions for cards from late e-reader era, ex era, etc haven’t increased that much. I reckon that is due to many initial Pokemon fans quitting the franchise after gen 1 (maybe gen 2).

So, I’m not going to see many cards I want at a lower price for quite some time or never. Of course, vintage Japanese exclusive promos are even worse.

Piggybacking off pfm’s point about people leaving, I think its really easy to observe a huge swing in demand, and much more difficult to understand a subtle market. I personally don’t think there is a huge exodus of people at this point. I think the decrease in price for certain cards is more due to increased supply than people leaving. That increased supply partly coming from newer people. I’d go as far as saying most of the 2020 influence has already resolved.

I also never understood the word “hype” in pokemon. Partly because my view is so long term focused that I can’t even see the negligible temporary “hype” affect. Remember the all the outrage and drama from 2020? The Mcdonalds craziness? All of that cooled off in less than a year. People who experienced 2020 should realize how irrelevant the term “hype” is in Pokemon.

6 Likes

Just want to note that for the future, if you have a general question about where the market will go in the future or specific cards, post that in our Giant Market Thread: www.elitefourum.com/t/the-giant-english-market-thread/27424/1

2 Likes

2020 was certainly an interesting year for Pokemon. Increased demand for products came at a time when not sufficient product wasn’t on the shelves due to delays from COVID.

I’ve noticed that it is easier to find modern products at MSRP online (or close to it) and on shelves. Though I wasn’t certain if that was due more to increased printing to meet demand, the attention cooling off, or a combination of both. So, I wondered if prices for vintage could decay slightly as more time passed.

Noted. I will post on there next time.

Welcome to the forum :blush:

2 Likes

Thank you! I’m enjoying the many interesting threads on fourum and the community!:blush:

Yes but not absolutely, not without a long, arduous and continuous self-education and not free of charge.

Out of all the things that can be predicted, “speculation vs end consumer evaluation during hyperinflated pandemic” usually fall on the more predictable end.

But think of this field more in terms of, say, meteorology. Not even the combined brains of all the top meteorologists in the world know with absolute certainty if a 78-dew point, multiple model indicated supercell with extreme potential over Oklahoma City in early May is going to produce a record breaking EF5 tornado or nothing at all.

1 Like

Of course! I imagine that’ll be incredibly difficult but maybe one can make predictions that are slightly above change. It can be difficult to predict human behavior and responses to certain conditions Like smpratte mentioned, the frenzy is cooling down. Despite that, vintage cards are still pricey. So, current prices (or slightly below current prices) may be the new entry point for some time or this is the new “lower limit” and it’ll only increase as these cards age.

Just means I have to really hunt ebay, mercari japan, and yahoo japan for better deals. Or, I can find others to trade with.