That’s only one single metric you’re referring to… The reason why the PSA 10 1st ed Charizard shot up in price was because availability completely dried up over the span of 2015-2016 (and 2014, well before the release of PoGO).
Only viewing the market from a single card gives a totally false sense of market depth. If you look across more than just a few choice cards you would have noticed that the entire hobby was surging during 2015 Q3-4 and 2016 Q1-2.
I hope not to sound condescending but most people making the PoGO arguement have only developed Pokemon market perception since mid 2016…
I’ll see if I can pull up some sales data for a few cards to compare. Looking at the 10 Zard only gives a fraction of the bigger picture.
I understand what you’re saying Scott. But you also shouldn’t be in denial that Pokémon Go helped the hobby(to this day). The inertia the hobby(Pokémon) was in before the craze, proves it. Sure Pokémon had-and still does have-its audience on its own and before-and after- PoGo. But you cannot forget that before Go basically the main audience was basically people in or familiar with pokegym and upccc. You mean to say that people who got back in the hobby because of PoGo just stopped caring? No, they continued the hobby; making the demand rise and prices to shoot up to what we see today.
Again you’re talking about inevitable decreases in a market that aren’t necessarily true.
I can only assume you’re talking the broad stroke of the entire economy and saying that the economy has its down periods that ARE inevitable (due to our credit system, I don’t want to get into detail here as it’s an incredibly boring topic and would go over a bunch of people’s heads who don’t know what I’m talking about) and applying to all specific sections of the economy, in this case the collecting market, and assuming it’ll be true. The reality is the collecting market has arguably been one of the most stable market… ever? I’m really not sure if there’s too many more stable items.
As far as the down, there has been downs. Jungle and Fossil PSA 10 holo cards have taken a dive, there’s been some decrease in Charizard unlimited 10s prices that was discussed here (that could have been other things?), the newer cards are pretty volatile, have you seen the recent staff charizard discussion? So your argument really only applies to a very small number of cards.
In fact you keep bringing up the $10,000+, which yes, of course there's not much or any negative movement. You shouldn't expect negative movement from those cards, there's a reason they're 10k+, they're extremely desirable with an extremely low number of availability. The most common example has been PSA 10 1st ed Charizard, which honestly like @robbiegrass was saying, the fact that we saw the price stay at $20k with all the auction PWCC has been releasing is amazing. Take nearly anything else and put out 1-3 auctions of it every month and people would get the false impression that it's not something they should jump on, because there'll be another around the corner. The fact is we didn't see a price drop in the worst scenario you can put the card through, that's amazing. If you don't auction off the card every damn month and instead put it through the same situation most cards go through, sellers controlling the price point, you would have seen even bigger growth on the card. (I'm speculation on that last point)
My eBay sales this past year have been about 40,000.00. My collection buys which I will never sell have been over 120,000.00. Had the prices not gone up and I sold 10k on eBay and paid out 30k I’D HAVE 60k MORE IN MY POCKET.
Your quote is,“Everyone that is riding the wave of a market and is prospering from it, yourself included…”
Now explain something to us grasshopper. In which direction has the “bubble” affected me?
It’s probably a case of people feeling that certain cards are undervalued compared to the first cards which are spiking. The “holy grails” went up first and now everything else is naturally rising.
E.g.: We can’t look at PSA 9 1st Zard doubling in the last year and the PSA 10 jumping by 7K and still work under the assumption that it wouldn’t affect the price of Shadowless Zard and even unlimited Zard.
Now Unlimited PSA 9 base Zard has crept up in the last few months and is selling around the $200 price point. I highly doubt it will be under $300 this time next year. 2018 might be the year PSA 9 Unlimited Zard finally goes to the moon.
In a normal market, people produce goods and price is where supply meets demand. Production typically goes up when things go more effecient and demand dies out.
When it comes to collectables it works completely different. There is no production, so thats out of the question. But here comes the crazy part. If something is more expensive, more people want it! a 100 dollar card sounds childish and boring, but a 20k zard gets a lot of people interested. Supply will always be behind demand, and prices can only go up from here.
Just visited and read through this thread for the first time.
It’s seems like it’s always the same folks who seem to play Devil’s advocate almost sub-consciously. What I mean is they are cherry-picking certain points and completely ignoring everything else. One such example is that Scott already expressed that PoGo absolutely had an effect. Then I see someone say, “don’t deny it had an effect”. Like, what are you even reading in this thread?
There are sour feelings from folks that seem to react negatively to others who have more knowledge than they do, as though they are intimidated and threatened instead of being humbled and open-minded.
Just take the time to actually read someone’s argument, acknowledge what they say, then attack their argument if you disagree. But when you completely ignore an entire premise, it gets really old.
I also wanted to share data I feel Pokemon Go & Evolutions (maybe Generations also?) both spiked the Pokemon TCG market with more buyers/sellers and since then Pokemon has done well trying to give people a reason to stick with Pokemon Go & Pokemon TCG.
The spikes start around the release of Pokemon Go, not saying the extra people drove up the prices just saying more people joined the community during that time.
This would be true if in the very beginning of the video Pratte didn’t say “everyone crying that Pokémon Go is the reason” “they’re politically incorrect”. I truly believe that CURRENT prices of cards are due to POKÉMON GO. If there was serious collectors then there are more now, because of PokémonGo; whether Scott likes it or not. Devils advocate…please, I’d stop debating the subject if I was wrong; which I’m not.
You’re convoluting his entire argument though. No one is saying that PoGo didn’t influence current prices. No one is saying that serious collector’s did not come back because of PoGo. It certainly did have those effects…as did the new pokemon movie, Pokemon being on Netflix, the hype around the new Switch title, the Evolutions release, etc. The whole point being, PoGo is a single thread within a string of advertisements that catch people’s attention to pull them back into the hobby.
Your claim that the current prices are due primarily to PoGo is where the disagreement lays. Others in this thread have said and for myself it is also true that I returned to the hobby for reasons other than PoGo. I have never played PoGo. I got back into the hobby because I found my old cards in a moving box, checked their value, and fell down the pokemon rabbit hole. My point being, everyone has a story of how they came back. Many came back through playing PoGo, but PoGo is just one factor among many that bring new collector’s into the hobby thereby driving up demand and prices. I’m just not sure why you are isolating PoGo as the driving factor for the market when there has been plenty of steady growth before and after PoGo that was and is caused by a variety of factors.
What is the book on the right of the video with Charizard on the cover? Another sort of pokemon bible?
)
I feel Pokemon Go & Evolutions (maybe Generations also?) both spiked the Pokemon TCG market with more buyers/sellers and since then Pokemon has done well trying to give people a reason to stick with Pokemon Go & Pokemon TCG.
