Iâm gonna keep quoting myself every time a thread like this is posted. I realize itâs not like a regular set that gets shoved in gift boxes but the point still holds.
I see older sets the boosters (even in blisters) are soo much cheaper than the boxes⊠why is that? I didnt think the blisters can be weighed. Or people just want the boxes for collection purposes?
I think its because boxes are pretty consistant in their pull rates but if you buy the same amount of blisters from somebody you cant be sure they came from the same box so your pull rate might not be as good but at the same time pull rate could be better. I think its just more of a gamble.
Well it turns out Walmart had boxes in late May. And you guessed it Super Target had 12 tins of Hidden Fates. So this makes it 10 months of Hidden Fates.
It is a lot of this. Iâve seen a lot of talk around HF that is very irrational. Statements like âHF is going to skyrocket in value after a few yearsâ âHF is guaranteed to go up in valueâ and so on. There is nothing to stop the pokemon company from printing this set into the ground like they did with evolution and many other XY era sets. So the end result could be that HF just stays cheap for years and years because everyone thought it was a good idea to fill their closets with HF tins.
The rule of thumb with collectibles is that if everyone is doing itâŠyou wonât get the result you expect. The only reason older sealed product is so valuable now is because so few people thought it was a good idea to keep sealed productâŠso it is rare today. The idea that older sealed product is valuable will mean that modern sealed product will be valuable in the future is a fallacy.
The same thing was said about evolutionsâŠthis set is going to skyrocket once it goes out of print. Fast forward 4 years laterâŠfresh product still coming out of pokemon company warehouses with no end in sight.
From what iâve heard from mulitple people is that pokemon has decided to not print as much product any more due to a change in how they distribute product. Though for this up coming set âDarkness Ablazeâ im seeing lots of preorders similiar to XY evolutions. I think pokemon company is thinking vmax charizard will make this a set desirable enough to print mass quanities
How can you foresee the future? Your statement is as irrational as theirs, your reasoning is more data driven but your conclusion is just as if you can predict the future.
Anyone making long-term âinvestmentâ or âpositionâ decisions on a set that is still in print as of one month ago is out of their minds. Iâm sure Hidden Fates will be a very interesting and exciting set long-term, but the exact same can be said for tons of other sets.
I hesitate with the idea that market demand is somehow inorganic due to flippers or investors. Iâve always cautioned against following the instagram hype and I think weâre getting into a bit of it here. The vast, overwhelming majority of Pokemon consumers are casual players/collectors who open packs right away. That being said, over the past few years weâve really reached a turning point in Pokemon as a whole. People look back and see Base Set 1st boxes selling for 50k (90k if you guarantee itâs real and break the packs), Neo boxes for 10-15k, EX boxes for 5-10k, single cards hitting higher prices every year. There is a very real and historically proven feeling that if you buy in to sealed product, graded cards, even Pokemon in general now, that it will be worth a lot more in the future. Nobody was doing that with Base Set except Gary (who didnât even plan on investing, he just loved it), nobody did it with Neo or EX, but I know a lot of people who are doing it now.
The effect that this has on the market remains to be seen, and I donât think anyone can say for sure where weâll be in, say, 20 years after the release of Hidden Fates. But you canât deny the very real shift in attitude towards sealed Pokemon product and graded cards thatâs happened over the last few years. For better or worse, it will affect the market.
Name one person that genuinely doesnât like shiny Umbreon. People LOVE and I mean LOVE shiny Pokemon.
Something else that you need to remember, is even if youâre only able to make a 3x return, say $15 a pack vs buying 4 packs in a tin @ $5 each, it would take you over 8 years to make that kind of return on investment back in the stock market. Hidden Fates is a solid bet.
Name one person that genuinely doesnât like Charizard, Venusaur, and Blastoise. People LOVE and I mean LOVE the original starters. This is why everyone who bought cases of Evolutions has now tripled their investment after four years. Oh waitâŠthatâs not true? Cases are still available at distributor pricing? But the set is so popular! It has Pokemon people like!
So what youâre saying is, in the most extreme outlier example where a set is printed for 6+ years straight and STILL available from distributors today, it hasnât depreciated in value? So weâre talking about items that in the worst case you can get your money back and in the best case youâre beating the stock market and multiplying your investment.
Virtually no risk with the potential for a big reward, where do I sign up?
I think people are misunderstanding my original post. Iâm not saying Hidden Fates will be like Evolutions and Iâm not saying HF sealed product will go up by 150x, Iâm saying that we donât know what it will do and attempting to forecast future growth for a set that has so many variables still in play is risky. Evolutions is the outlier example where it had everything the âinvestorsâ thought would be a ticket to immediate growth but that was quickly put to rest by overprinting.
Things have changed from the WOTC, EX, and even BW/XY eras. People are doing things with sealed product now that they werenât doing back then. The âinvestmentâ side of Pokemon has significantly increased, and while itâs still small, itâs present in ways it wasnât before, even more so with Hidden Fates. We also donât know how this is going to affect the future market.
Sure, I think Hidden Fates is a particularly low-risk âinvestment.â But then so is any sealed Pokemon product by that logic, the only booster box that has actually lost value from original purchase price right now is Crimson Invasion.
All investments carry risks. This is not really a substantial point. You may not want to tolerate the risk but that doesnât make someone, quote âout of their mindsâ for speculating on the future value of one of the most popular sets of all time.
We can agree to disagree, I can think youâre out of your mind for buying in to a still-in-print set given Pokemonâs proven history of printing to and above demand, and you can think itâs a great investment decision.
If I was going to âinvestâ in Pokemon, I can think of way better places to put my money than Hidden Fates packs.
This set is so fun to open, I think with that quality even if they reprint it again they will still sell like hot cakes. I donât think iâve had this much fun opening packs since I was a kid opening WOTC packs. Now saying that, I canât predicit if this set will go up X amount in a given period of time due to the fact of reprints but make no mistake eventually they wonât reprint this set just like all others.
If they were going to reprint it, they would have already done it or are very close to doing it. The reality is that hidden fates demand (for stuff at retail price) is probably 5-10x supply at the moment. Everything is sold out everywhere in Australia and stuff is already at 2-3x retail price here. If someone could arbitrage it, they would be doing it very soon. Either hidden fates gets a reprint within a year or it never will. Evo is not being reprinted⊠it is still cycling thru old inventory from the original prints.