I also wonder about this. In Denmark, MtG was for the older nerdier kids and was definitely niche. As games like diablo 2 and then world of warcraft came out in the early/mid 2000’s and broadband internet became common, I think a lot of those kind of people (teenagers and adults) lost interest in TCG’s. Pokemon was and still is much more mainstream. Everyone had pokemon cards. I know MtG is historically important and was the main inspiration for the pokemon TCG, but I do not understand why many people still regard it as the biggest TCG. I have no doubt that many more people have been collecting pokemon cards. I am aware that MtG is supposed to be a better and more complex and sophisticated card game, but that does not make it the biggest TCG.
This is opposite my experience in college. 10ish years ago, we had big games of MtG - so much so that card shops almost exclusively sold singles of MtG versus Pokemon or Yugioh.
To this day, of all the card games I used to play (Pokemon, Yugioh, and Magic), I still only play MtG.
I think in large part, Standard has overtaken the realm of prices - making current cards the major cash grabs. Granted, with EDH/Commander decks now seeing more play and old vintage/legacy cards seeing replay (we JUST got a reprinting of Sylvan Library after several years), we may see an INCREASE for cards. For example. 10 years back, I had an Oracle of the Mul Daya card - a card I considered selling when it was a $5 buck card. Now it’s close to the $30 range.
The problem with vintage cards (Legends, Homelands, etc), is that most of the cards are trash towards the current meta with some exceptions - requiring either expensive cumulative upkeeps for unique abilities, mechanics that have been retconned and became useless due to current rule sets, or modern cards providing better options.
Unless you have an Alpha/Beta set, a rare promo, or a highly utilized or wanted card (Mox’s, Lotus, Survival of the Fittest, Dual Lands, etc), chances are the other vintage cards aren’t going to be worth all that much.
However, give EDH some time. We might see a rise in older sets gaining price value due to new utility.
Edit: To add to the main discussion, I should say I haven’t really seen prices “drop” at all. They’ll stabilize or grow a few cents or dollars. I think the difference is when you compare the markets to that of Yugioh or Pokemon in comparison to MtG. Yugioh and Pokemon see a lot more upwards growth.
Rudy is pumping out 15 minute discussion videos daily regarding Magic. It can be easy to start exaggerating, overthinking or nitpicking for the sake of content.
Magic also has has a 27 year history. I was going to list the number of sets, but good luck with that. It’s a lot.
Wizards has been dropping new product like crazy too. With the vast amount of product to choose from, not everything can stay popular. There are over 560 cards on the Reserved List.
The old stuff will attract collectors, the new stuff attracts players. The middle parts are more volatile.
I did like the comment @budget made though. While 10-30 years seems a little short, I do agree that on a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everything drops to zero.
In the Netherlands, Magic was big in the 90s (at least in my local game store). At the time Pokémon cards came out, the amount of Magic players who transitioned to Pokémon was minimal. But with the new Pokémon players coming in, the balance became roughly 50/50, which was impressive. Around 2002, most Pokémon players got tired of Pokémon and searched for something else. And so, Magic became more popular again. After that I fell out of the hobby, so I can’t tell what happened during that time.
I’d definitely agree that Pokémon is on a lot of kids’ (and parents’) minds these days. But from what I gather from fellow retailers, (Modern) Magic isn’t doing bad either.
We’ve got Pokemon Cards in McDonald’s at the moment, i see a ton of new kids joining the collecting - gaming pokemon scene. Pokemon is not Magic, Pokemon is on another scale.
I don’t feel bad for magic collectors since they’ve had even more years than pokemon to buy the cards they wanted even though they spiked around the same time. Pokemon is seeing something similar to magic in terms of lots of collections being bought up and prices soaring over a short amount of time.
There is a distinct difference between people that play the game and only buy cards (even several hundred dollar ones) for their playability and not for any nostalgia or collecting nostalgia. I can say as opposed to Pokemon where even in modern there are promos and other cards that people buy for collections whereas for Magic unless you pull a cool card I don’t see people buying a card for display only or very rarely.
This is what I’m looking at as well. I like to look at what the 8-14 year olds are doing. What is popular. What are they collecting and so on. Pokemon has the whole tv show series, the movies, the games, and even a meme culture to it (shocked pikachu). To me, this is all bullish for long-term outlook of pokemon TCG but I see more upside potential to the modern sets (yes, I know, unpopular opinion) when they go out of print and then the kids of today return to the hobby for nostalgia. People distinctly like opening sealed product which is why I have been adding to my sealed booster box collection. Going to hold a min of 10 years. Even though modern sets have overprinting issues, you can still see today that even the most overprinted sets like roaring skies still sells for $90-$100/box which limits the downside potential.
For other hobbies today I don’t really see any long-term potential with stuff like funko pops, LOL toys, amiibos and similar. In 10 years, people won’t care about those hobbies just like people today don’t care about stamp collecting, mechanical banks, and pezz dispensers.
I’ve got some down here in the cellar 
. Nothing suspicious at all
I think the biggest example from his videos was a person who sold an autographed bgs graded black lotus. The guy paid like 25 grand for it months prior and recently sold it for half the price. Ivan watch the other videos but that could be what some people might believe is a smoking gun to this supposed decline
No
Signed cards are super niche in mtg. Therefore the prices are going to naturally fluctuate.
In general I’d love to see data on the apparent decline. I hear the general statement over and over, mostly echoing Rudy’s video, but as someone collecting alpha, I haven’t noticed anything at all. Maybe some mid 90s sets are different, which I’d love to see actual sales data and not buy lists.
You can see decline in buy list, selling, auctions, finalized transaction, forum, instagram, google search,…
And there are many types of decline (decline in price, in interest, in product/development, in new persons,…)
It’s rare that a collector sell at below his purchase price and when he did, it takes time.
Personally I’m much more optimistic in Pokemon.
Let me tell you, Pokemon is in a massive decline. If you look at some random indicators I most definitely haven’t pulled out of my ass it’s clear. If, however, you’d like to cash out before the prices inevitably hit rock bottom, my DMs are open. I have nine million dollars to spend on these declining assets and I’m just taking them out of your hands out of the goodness of my heart.
As someone who has a sunk a lot of time and money in to both MTG and Pokemon, I could rant forever about this topic and the differences between the hobbies.
One major difference between the two stands out to me though. There is a lot more emotion involved with Pokemon. No one really feels super passionate about random ABUR rares like Farmstead. Look at Pokemon on the other hand, you crack a pack of 1st ed Base, nearly everyone has fond memories of even the random common Pokemon. This hobby has people who are fixated with say, Growlithe. You can’t really say the same for a Beta Giant Growth. I think this is highlighted during difficult times like these. People who really enjoy certain things, like Pokemon, are still buying. I know a lot of people who are selling out of paper magic due to the economy, or at the very least halting their buying.
Not to mention the unwavering incompetence of WOTC in regards to managing their game over the last few years, but that’s an essay for another day.
Emotion is such an under-considered factor. It’s one of the reasons why I’m generally much more optimistic about the future of the Pokemon TCG (from an investment perspective). I’m a longtime MTG collector and even cards that I’ve had for well over a decade I feel almost zero sentimental/emotional attachment to. If someone offered to trade me an SP Timetwister for my MP Timetwister, I’d do it without hesitation. The same is absolutely not true for many of my Pokemon cards. I just generally am much more attached to them, and view them much less in terms of their being assets with monetary value. I even often feel this way even for recently acquired cards. Because of this (which I imagine I’m not alone in experiencing), as well as the fact that MTG cards are typically bought to play with rather than collect, I’m fairly confident that the average MTG card changes ownership much more frequently than the average Pokemon card. When a Pokemon card is purchased, it is almost certainly taken out of circulation for a longer time, which I think is why the price trajectory has been steadily positive for several years (whereas MTG has been pretty bumpy, with periods of bull markets with meteoric growth, and periods of bear markets where seemingly everyone is trying to dump their cards).
Additionally, the upward price trend of sealed Pokemon product has been much steeper than with Magic. No one is opening Urza’s Saga booster boxes anymore…the supply is basically stagnant. But people open vintage Pokemon product like candy, especially with the grading craze.
I think another big factor is that MTG players/collectors likely have, on average, more invested in the stock market than Pokemon collectors (just because of the average age of the people involved in each hobby). So I think that makes MTG even less resilient during economic downturns.
I´m a longtime MTG collector myself. A lot of good points have already been made, but from my experience a few main factors are:
-MTG is a play driven game (you can´t really play during these times)
→ people currently downsizing decks
-MTG has in general an older audience compared to Pokémon, which leads to a few different aspects:
-"Investors" have to actually take care of a family
-"Investors" are invested in many other things, like the stocks and bonds market
-often times no real nostalgic connection to a specific card
That being said, prices for the real collectable, high end stuff like alpha 9/9.5 have seen no decline at all, at least I didn´t recognize anything. People holding these cards don´t care about a recession/downterm.
Rudy is complaining since he is heavily invested into modern/newer stuff as well, which obviously will not see huge price jumps when no one can play the game.
I used to have huge positions in magic. $750k-$800k or more at one time. At today’s values it would be millions. I simultaneously had the top Beckett sets for Alpha, Beta, Unlimited, Antiquities, Arabian Nights, Legends and Portal 3 Kingdoms. I also had two alpha starters and whole sealed box of beta starters. I got out of nearly my entire position in 2016 for a variety of reasons. What you have to always keep in mind with magic is that the original A/B product is very, very scarce. 1100 copies ever made of each Alpha rare. I recall something like 6600 of each beta rare. that singular fact was always the north star to me in collecting, particularly those two sets which constituted the vast portion of capital I invested into it. those alpha numbers include the packs that were initially handed out at trade shows and card shops as promos to generate initial interest in the game. I’ve always imagined how much ended up in the garbage. truly gem mint copies of those cards, particularly alpha, are so very rare compared to most things in pokemon. new sealed product that gets opened will just be a trickle from now until the end of time. a drop of water in the ocean. so the supply side of alpha/beta is favorable to a collector/investor. the only way I was able to complete my sets was to get to people who had opened a bunch of sealed product in the early to late 2000s when it was still accessible. I got a ton from a particular collector in Seattle, a ton from my friend who made a ton of money trading one year and put it all into raw alpha and cracked it all. Once that supply is gone, it’s gone.
on the demand side of magic, that’s where I was always worried. the demand IS very game-centric, even for those old cards. I worried about what the future of magic would be in 10, 20 years if the game ever declined. I ended up too heavily invested into something where I felt disconnected from the game which is the core driver of long term demand in magic. I like Adam Cai but I don’t miss him as my full-time card broker. I sure don’t miss Daniel Chang.
the point of that whole soliloquy is that the things that made me not want to have so much money tied up in magic cards are not present in pokemon. There’s a lot more relative supply, but the demand and overall popularity dwarfs magic. pokemon is not a “niche” like magic. It’s mainstream. I don’t do any of this to invest, I do it 99% to collect but I am mindful of value preservation. I sure sleep better at night being invested in pokemon than magic. I welcome more magic collectors over to the dark side. So far I’ve tried with Adam Cai and Brian Nocenti. Adam is a no but Brian has stuck his toe in the water a bit. bring them all over here, the water is much nicer, IMO.
all of that said, I will always love those original magic cards. they came out when I was in high school and I played and collected them at that time. personally, I actually have more emotional ties to magic than pokemon as I was a bit old for pokemon when it came out. If I had kept one major thing from my magic collection, it would have been a raw alpha binder set.
Glad you are here! I did a call with Adam, he was nice and showed a bit of interest in learning more about pokemon. Its funny, every mtg collector can’t stand Dang, but he does well because he has great product.
I agree with your assessment. We were talking about this last night on voice. Pokemon has so much more depth than any modern hobby. I appreciate mtg and collect the original sets, but its the definition of niche, and linear. You don’t have the immersion. Pokemon hits such a broader audience.
thanks! your videos and some of the other content creators videos are certainly part of what drew me in. They are great. Adam is a nice guy and extremely bright. He’s also meticulous with grading and uses precise measurements and notes to get cards “bumped” with beckett. he had a lot of success with that. to his credit he put in the time and effort to do it but it really paid off for him. he was able to get a near-perfect power 9 alpha set that way. probably plays better with beckett and the sub-grades though vs PSA and pokemon is a PSA hobby.
Adam’s p9 set got integrated into my alpha set after I sold it and one collector now owns them both. it’s the set that’s sitting at the top of the beckett registry still. I remember collecting most of those cards one by one. Adam still owns what was my alpha lotus. I thought it had two 9.5 subs and two 10s, but actually now that I checked it is actually 3x9.5, 1x10. I guess history always has rosy colored goggles. i think Adam’s magic position is way down from what it was too.
Daniel is nearly always entertaining and has certainly been successful. but there are stories I won’t tell here.
Anyways, amazing job with your content and this site. Both are A+
I never had quite as much invested in MTG as you, but I did (and still do, to an extent) have a pretty sizeable collection. Similar to you, I’ve sold off most of it over the past few years as vintage prices skyrocketed. The only things I have left are my EDH deck (which is solidly in the low 5 figures; I have pictures of it up on r/foilmtg, same username minus an ‘h’), my mostly power-less NM/M Unlimited set, and a piece of original art (for a decent card from Masques block that has seen fringe competitive play – probably in the low-to-mid 4 figures). More or less everything else I’ve reinvested into Pokemon, and largely for the same reasons as you. As you said, the health of the the Magic market is largely tied into the popularity of the game itself. The advent of 93/94 Magic (aka Old School) has driven much of the growth in ABU cards over the past few years. The value of cards such as fetch and dual lands is largely dependent on a thriving MTG scene. The future of competitive paper MTG is highly uncertain right now (even disregarding the ongoing crisis). WotC has more or less entirely gutted the ‘tournament-grinder’ scene with the removal of pro points, brick-mortar-game stores are facing near-certain doom, and there has been a strong push toward digital MTG since the announcement of Arena. I absolutely love the game, but I just don’t know how it will hold up.
Pokemon, on the other hand, as you outlined, is very nearly MTG without the element of risk (or as much risk, at least). The value of cards is almost fully divorced from gameplay utility and Pokemon is literally the highest-grossing media franchise of all time. I cannot think of a more ubiquitous fixture of ‘nerd culture’ than Pokemon. Interest may wax and wane, but the franchise is much too large to fail within my lifetime – it is just that much of a cultural presence.
It’s very interesting you mention having tried to convince Brian Nocenti to invest in Pokemon. I remember him posting in the MTG sealed collector group on Facebook looking for sealed Pokemon boxes, not too long after I started purchasing sealed Pokemon product. Definitely cemented my confidence in the asset class knowing that one of the most prolific sealed MTG collectors in the world was diversifying into Pokemon. Well before Brian, though, Daniel Chang had been acquiring Pokemon booster boxes. Turned out pretty well for him I suppose, though it certainly wasn’t a result of any prescience on his part…he’s a complete and utter moron.
The scarcity of vintage MTG has made me very curious about the relative print runs of Pokemon. MTG had some pretty monumental print runs, but I have to imagine that the print runs of Pokemon sets dwarf MTG’s. It certainly doesn’t seem that way, though. Many of the Pokemon cards I’m currently acquiring for sets have much less supply on the market than MTG cards from the same time period. There is sometimes almost no supply of certain ungraded, NM/M EX-era cards, and the almost entire absence of sealed booster boxes on the market is even more bewildering to me.
The point of this ramble is basically just to say that my perspective is quite similar to yours, and that I have to imagine there are plenty more MTG collectors who’ve flocked to Pokemon recently for similar reasons. I wonder if part of the boom in Pokemon prices is fueled by the decline of the MTG market.