This thread made me take a look at pulls from Burning Shadows, and with the reported PSA 7/8 quality average from the pack, I decided this was not worth it for me.
Hunting under-priced boxes is super fun and funded a lot of my collection. I think your ratios are great but, like others have said, need some additional information to be more useful. Factoring in the pull rates and 9/10 rates of the top cards can be really helpful. However, I found that all that information is indirectly represented in three factors: total pop, total sales #, and total sales $.
Modeling those three factors and their interactions (i.e. total pop/total sales$…), does a good job capturing all the grading nuances like pull rates, number of chase cards, grading rates… If you go a step further by factoring in known inventory and sales velocity, you’ll be able to get a better estimate of under/overpriced boxes.
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I said we have PSA submission data, but even that is skewed. There are cracked regrades, and bias from people inexperienced flippers buying raw copies to grade a flip.
My coin flip analogy still stands as well. Simply because the current boxes that were opened had a theoretical 80% chance of bad quality cards, that doesn’t mean the rest of the unopened boxes have an 80% chance of bad quality. Every box form here on out could be 100% perfect quality cards.
I still don’t follow the logic. There are 816 PSA 10 out of 4904 graded.
That’s a 16.7% PSA 10 rate. Yes there will be some regrades or cards that were graded despite being damaged but this applies to all chase cards. If you compare this rate to any other modern chase card, it’s abysmally low.
You can’t get a true measure of the actual PSA 10 rate but looking at the pop reports is a good estimation and the best we can do.
Your coin flip comparison does not make sense to me. In this case, the odds of getting a PSA 10 are basically comparable to rolling a 1 on a 6-sided die (16.7% chance). This is like rolling a die 4904 times, seeing the 1 show up 16.7% of the time and then expecting from now on you’ll roll a 1 80-100% of the time
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Burning shadows box price seems fine to me, not nearly as egregious as some sets
Your coin flip analogy is fine and is logical. This is why I suggested you go open the 2 cases from eBay to get some updated numbers. That’s 12 boxes, 432 packs is not going to get you 432 rainbow charizards, but maybe you’ll get enough rainbow cards to make some type of determination about whether currently posted PSA 10 rates are accurate. You may be right, populations could be highly skewed by regrades and inexperienced submitters. The only way to tell is to do a mass box opening and record results. 12 boxes isn’t exactly huge, but it’s a good start.
Out of 432 you’d expect 0.5 rainbow Charizords. Sorry guys but this isn’t really a novel topic.
You’d need to open about 20 boxes to see one. The card is notoriously known for being difficult to grade. The pop report supports that.
If we assume a 100% PSA 10 rate the expected cost is $8.4k to pull it. A 1-in-6 PSA 10 chance puts you at roughly $50k.
The question in the OP was why this set was an outlier. That’s why.
If you still think I’m wrong then please by all means demonstrate that by beating these numbers in practice.
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People said the exact same thing about Evolutions when the box was $100 and a PSA 10 Chairzard was $1200.
Only 517 PSA 10 Charizards out of 36243 submissions for a grand total of 1.42% chance at getting that 10.
Guess what? It went from a 12:1 box:chase price ratio to now being al 2:! ratio.
I gave 2 measures you needed to account for. Pop and pull rate. You only accounted for one here.
Off the bat, a complication that should be acknowledged is that there is basically only one desirable card in Burning Shadows whereas in Evolutions there are other cards that can contribute overall to the box price including another charizord and the reverse.
That said, the Charizord in question is pulled in 1:2 boxes. 10x easier than Burning Shadows
A 1.42% chance at PSA 10 means you’d need to open ~140 boxes to pull one. @ $800 per box, that’s $112k expected cost to pull one. That’s 2x the cost of Burning Shadows and accounting for the other worthwhile cards you could get in Evolutions (and all the PSA 9 copies you’d pull) brings that cost down.
In the end, after you sell everything else off, you’re probably looking at a comparable price to pay for attempting to pull/grade the PSA 10 Charizord from either Burning Shadows or Evolutions. In both cases it’s also way more than just buying the single directly.
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Your missing the context here. Burning Shadows Charizard was an expensive chase card from the moment the set released. It’s always had a demand that governs the price of the box. Evolutions Charizard didn’t have that for the first 4 years of its life. It was extremely cheap, and no one (and I mean no one) was ever happy to see Evolutions packs. The set was near impossible to move unless for cheap. It gained value during the 2020 boom due to everyone suddenly putting nostalgia glasses on for Base Set, and once the Charizard increased in price, the box increased as well—because people realized they had been sleeping on the set (and also, the rapid increase in box price drove hype and demand through the roof. $$$ does things to the brain).
Burning Shadows never had that “forgotten about” period. It was always known for the Charizard GX. That card has always been valuable. The amount of conditions and events that had to go right for Evolutions to balloon in price will probably never happen to a set like Burning Shadows. These two sets have had much different trajectories since release and aren’t comparable.
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So you’re saying if a card is worth $1,200 in a PSA 10, but people didn’t know about it, then you see no problem with the box increasing $1,000?
But if a box has a card that is well known to be worth $2,500 (twice as much) then it doesn’t set off alarm bells when the box is $400 (half of Evolutions)?
Perhaps, by your logic, Burning Shadows is currently undervalued in the market because people do not know the Charizard is worth $2,500.
Say it with me: you have to open up $50,000 worth of boxes to pull a $2,500 card
The EV for a Burning Shadows box is abysmally low but it has one card that is very desirable but also extremely hard to pull. That is why your ratio is so unique.
The Rainbow Charizord cannot bring up the box price because it’s impossible to arbitrage in a consistent way.
The box price almost certainly will go up over time but that has more to do with the fact that the box is it’s own item that is separate from the contents and has a supply that can only go down over time.
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I appreciate condescending responses as much as the next, but you’re basing your argument off of cherry picked logic that doesn’t apply to every set.
Positive arbitrage from Evolutions is absolutely not goin to happen, and yet it gets to defy your logic?
To add to that, there is way more Evolutions currently on the market than Burning Shadows
Find me any other modern box out there with the unbalanced numbers as Burning Shadows.
Have you ever considered that the box:card ratio has stayed pretty consistent over the past 7 years of its life? Even the 2020 boom didn’t make a significant impact on the ratio. Barring any future speculation or hype, you aren’t going to make that much on a Burning Shadows investment. Historically, you’re better off buying the card in this instance.
I only gave the response I did because I ran out of patience trying to engage in good faith when clearly you’re just looking for someone to validate your hypothesis instead of trying to critically engage with it.
No. The EV from Evolutions is not positive. That’s why box prices have stabilized. All out of print boxes stabilize at a negative EV. But Evolutions EV is a lot higher than BS and the hit is a lot more common.
I’ve made my case. You can continue to believe whatever you want to.
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Evolutions is such a different set with value spread throughout. Even some of the c/u evolutions cards carry value. It’s more different than it is similar to burning shadows.
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I only bring up Evolutions because I pointed out the same imbalance 4 years ago and half the forum stuck their head in the sand and brought out their pitchforks, while the box went from $80 to $1200 lol
I didn’t expect any different reaction this time around, just throwing out an observation.
You can lead a horse to the water …
Sure, I remember being in that thread explaining how evolutions had great EV, prior to the grading lockdown.
I think in the case of Burning Shadows, considering the value of other boxes, it could feel a bit low for its age. But that really just highlights the driving factor for modern sealed, speculation. Back when Evolutions boxes sat for years, that market was smaller and more rational. Today I see tiktok lives with people revealing mystery slabs like “I hope you get some 10ies bro” for a 10 grade. Basically you didn’t have these circus acts pre 2020 so it was easier to predict a rational trend. I wouldn’t be surprised if evolving skies hits 1k before burning shadows. I also wouldn’t be surprised if 10 years from now the value of evolving skies plateaus because people are speculating on the next chase.
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I’d be interested to hear what you think the primary driver was for the increased box price back then was and how it relates to BS today
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“Burning Shadows is a quality investment for the future” is very different than “Burning Shadows is undervalued in the current market because of the discrepancy between box price and the most valuable chase card in the highest grade.”
It’s clear this thread is just about making an argument and not having a discussion, so decide where you want the goalposts to be, stop moving them, and then we can discuss the merits of your argument.
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