Once in a while I update my ‘‘best’’ sets to invest in formula. I thought someone might like it here.
I use the prices of the 10 most expensive cards divided by the price of a single pack (there has to be a decent quantity available).
Prices are based on the European market. Evolving Skies @ 10 euro per pack is still #1!
In no way I am claiming to know anything, just sharing it because it takes quite some time and I thought someone else might like it or like to discuss.
Sets that have more expensive cards relative to the boosterpack price will get pulled more, thus the price will go up quicker as the supply dries up.
A huge missing factor of course is the supply, which in my opinion is very hard to get reliable numbers for. If there are 2 sets very close to eachother but 1 has much less supply, you would of course choose that set.
Yes, these are all sets with only 1 or 2 big hits. Very important for my formula is that I chose the top 10 cards to get an average from. IF for example I had used only the top 3 cards, some of these sets would have been much much higher. I think we saw with Burning Shadows that 1 big hitter is not enough to have insane growth like some of the other S&M sets. I think people like pulling sets that have a lot of potential hits, so I chose 10.
I think your metric is overly simplistic, disastrously so. You do not account at all for size of set, pull rates, or supply. There is also no component for age or in/out of print (rotation) status.
I also asked for any historical data related to this metric. Maybe you don’t actually need any of the things I’m complaining are missing, but it would be nice to see what this metric computed over time and how that related to booster box prices.
Thanks there it is! You are right, it is very simple, I wish I could include pull rates and supply but there simply isn’t enough accurate data available to do so.
It is the first time I collected this data, so I do not have any unfortunately. I don’t take it religiously serious either, it’s more like an extra guidance for the sets I want to invest in without it being based on feelings. The next couple of times I do this will be interesting for sure.
I don’t mean to be harsh, but if your investment metric ranks Celebrations as a 4x worse investment than Paldea Evolved, you should probably get a new metric.
You are definitely on to something, the idea that current card prices predict future set desirability is certainly an important aspect to consider. But it’s by far not the only aspect to consider. Even if we assume this is important, just picking the top 10 most expensive and dividing by pack price is very rudimentary. It doesn’t consider how the most expensive cards get their value (e.g. playability vs collectability), doesn’t consider how prices may change over time (Temporal Forces is at #5 but the set includes ZERO classically popular Pokemon, why?), and doesn’t consider availability or past performance (I can get all SV at MSRP, can’t do that with Celebrations, EVS, etc.).
@gildri seems to have done a pretty data science-based analysis and highlights some of the important variables.
I think the ratio in this current thread is a bit simplistic and you’d get a similar order even without dividing by pack price.
For me, I think you could just sort the sets by pack price alone and buy boxes of the ones with the cheapest packs. That way you’re buying as close to the floor as possible. There is virtually no downside risk. Given enough time, every single Pokemon set in history ends up more expensive than it started off.
statistically, wouldn’t you make more money spending 15k on any of these sets and selling them in 5 years than you would buying one base set box (idk how much they cost) and selling it in 5 years?
yes, it would take so much more to move a base set box than it would to move modern. So much so that I cant see it happening at all in the next 5-10 years to any substantial amount (see everyone whos just in it for the money dumping their vintage sealed rn to whatnot scammers, I mean streamers). Part of the reason I have paused vintage sealed buying. Id love to buy some for my collection but the prices make literally no sense atm
I would say modern would have a higher floor and base would have a higher ceiling in this scenario. If you’re putting base at $15k that means my box has gone 4-5x in the last 5 years
