It appears history is repeating itself. Assuming these auctions are completed and paid, do these prices make sense relative to the growth seen in the rest of the Pokemon card market during these past 15 months? Some modern chase cards have seen over a 10x growth while older chase cards have seen smaller multiples, but still significant, growth.
Has anyone’s opinions on extra trophies shifted during the past half year since this thread was created? Curious if the growth of the Pokemon franchise and sustained size of the current market has impacted people’s opinions on the significance of extra trophies. It seems the absorption of these extra copies seems to be happening at a faster rate than I originally anticipated - demand for these trophies has currently outpaced the extra supply at the moment.
As you said, many recent sales of older cards have seen a 5-10x jump, while the illustrator’s price has remained flat compared to 2023 sales. So it kind of got absorbed, but it also limited the potential for increases
Imo in a market where every chase card has gone 3x - 10x in price and illustrators (moreso than trophy pikas) have remained largely flat or slightly increased, shows the market is still absorbing them.
In the recent short term they’ve been a bad investment (comparatively to the majority of the pokemon market) and still below all time highs. Though this won’t last forever and will eventually reach new highs - idk when but probably when Akabane runs out of his mint and few years after that.
And yes I can afford an illustrator (pre-emptively stating this as members of the forum like to use this argument to invalidate opinions).
I think it’s also a matter of an extremely limited buyer pool, since only a handful of people can afford to pay a million $ for a single slab.
Some of those deep pockets have been attracted by the new shiny thing instead (Psa10 Gold stars).
So, it’s just a card that has reached a point where even doing a 1.5x/2x is exponentially more difficult.
If someone needs to be able to afford an illustrator before they feel they’re qualified to voice an opinion, it’s a dark day ahead for E4.
This is a segmented market. Bubble mew buyers aren’t these buyers. Also it’s much easier for a $100 card to 10x in a week then a 100k card. While the extra cards being absorbed is a solid market conversation, it doesn’t really address the main point of the thread about their origin. The same supply channels who made and sold the fake prototypes have made sold almost all of these extra trophy cards.
It’s unreasonable to expect a card already worth $100k+ to 5x or 10x like a $1,000 card. The market is currently too shallow due to the average age of collectors. As Pokemon collectors age (and in the context of salary inflation + inheritance), it may not be as unusual in the future.
To get back on topic, this is a very interesting conversation and it seems unique to pokemon. If extra copies emerged for other rare sport cards (Mantle, T206, etc) and it was known amongst serious collectors that they were extra copies, how would that affect a market that is already well established? It would be quite a scandal I imagine..
As a collector, I would love to own any copy, which is why there will always be a demand for illustrators imo. But how will trophies with 8 certs and newer be perceived in the future? Only time will tell.
Old certs back on top!
At this point in time Im surprised there isnt a cutoff on graded copies of trophies with grading companies. Kind of like a clause saying in their review/regrading service that once there is a certain threshold of trophies graded no more would be looked at for amy reason.
People might disagree about that because of others crossgrading, but its my only solution for them to track what theyve slabbed. Its also a big reason why the pop report doesnt matter to me. You would always be able to reholder said trophies, but there needs to be some consistency remaining on tracking high end cards.
All a hypothetical, but I think it would help in the long run. I fear it would 100% create a further monopoly though, so I prefer the chaos I suppose. 
I should clarify - my comparison to growth of value was not intended to discuss investment opportunity but to focus on the significance of the card in the current dynamics of the community and market. From the perspective of investment, high end trophy cards never had the highest annualized return due to many reasons including what people have already mentioned above, but their historic significance of these cards were never discounted in the past before the Akabane scandal. I unfortunately could not think of a better universal parameter to compare between the levels of growth and demand for each Pokemon card category besides their trending values in recent years since the pandemic.
I’ve been trying to learn more about sports cards during the past year, but much of my knowledge is still very limited. Apparently there’s been issues with backdoored copies and forgeries that are almost indifferentiable from the officially distributed copies? I don’t have any examples to reference so if anyone knows any specifics, this would be helpful.
The Mantle is an interesting example - from the high end sports collectors I have spoken to, of the 3 PSA 10 Mantles, supposedly one of them is not considered a legitimate PSA 10 due to either noticeable damage or minor trimming (I can’t remember the exact reasoning), but these collectors made it clear that they have standing offers to purchase a PSA 10 at the same price regardless of the PSA 10 copy. Although Mantles are not known to have backdoored copies, the blanket offer with the “inflated” pop (+1) of PSA 10s speaks to a threshold that the market would absorb the cards regardless of their origins.
Although, as I’m writing all of the above, the original purpose for official distribution should also carry weight - while Mantles were set cards, Pokemon trophy cards were intended as distribution for winning a reward or competition. Extra copies of set cards are different than extra copies of trophy cards - not only with regards to scarcity, but primarily due to the reason for distribution. Backdoored Serialized and/or intentionally limited refractors in sports would probably be a better comparison, but I do not know of any specific examples.
I agree - my post was too premature to have this discussion now. I’ll revisit in a few years unless something substantial happens before then 
#SundayMusings - cpbog1
The Illustrator Pikachu saga reminds me a bit of the legend of St. Apollonia’s teeth. She died in 249 after having her teeth removed and shattered and became the patron saint of dentistry. Her teeth became incredibly valuable as relics during the middle ages, possibly a few had escaped destruction. Yet when they dissolved the monasteries during the Reformation, it’s said they found upwards of 200!