I did. Like I said, not everyone’s a veteran. Why wouldn’t they, being that the differences between a 9 and 10 are often marginal?
@garyis2000, you mean before Pokemon and modern baseball prices between 9s and 10s weren’t so exponential?
Yup, as a person currently buying up PSA 9’s I agree with Cerulean.
I’d love to buy 10’s. I mean I will at some point, but I haven’t come to grips with the prices yet. Not everyone can afford 10’s. I can afford one 10. Maybe two on a good day…or month…ok fine year!
Ok, going to go heat up my ramen noodles now as I search for that Charizard 1st edition base set psa 10 holy grail.
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10s provide a leveraged exposure to the Pokémon collectible market. If you have a recession, 10s and sealed product will likely underperform PSA 8/9s from a percent return/loss basis. Think of PSA 10s as growth stocks. They fall harder in bad times and rise more in good times (generalization). Assuming the long term trend is upwards, PSA10s should outperform 9s. It’s likely the US does go into recession within the next few years IMO but timing these things is hard. Same as the stock market!
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This thread is…wild.
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Although Pokemon and Football are similar in that they both have trading card games based around them that’s about where the similarities end. No one wants to collect every single football card ever, no one. There’s also the artworks you’ve got to take into account. Very few people outside of die hard sports fans would ever look at a football card and consider it art. Sports are fun to watch and play, but its hard to have an emotional attachment to them enough so that you’d want a bunch of cards with your favorite players (characters) on them.
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Huh? I can’t believe this comment was liked by anyone which implies agreement. I could not disagree more, at least with the summation. Or am I missing something?
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I read it as people aren’t collecting it all in sports. In pokemon you have people steady collecting entire eras. I think its more common in sports to chase an athlete(s), or a favorite team. Which that exists in pokemon as well. But I don’t see anyone doing numerous sets, and certainly not entire eras. I would say overall there is a more broad desire in Pokemon to “catch em all”. This is coming from someone who has played sports their entire life and does both hobbies.
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Certainly there are player and team collectors as you say but a large part of the hobby, or at least while I was collecting, is collecting complete sets. Plus, there’s a major mental attachment involved in sports card collecting.
As far as eras are concerned, that blurs my point a bit. I know some collect 1800s like the Allen&Ginter’s, some early 1900s like the Ramly cards, etc. Maybe Pokémon has more “era collectors” then. But it’s not unheard of in sports.
I don’t know many who puts together sets post 1990. I personally have some hockey sets from 70s-80s, but that is more of a nostalgic outlier. I remember stores dumping 70-80’s hockey sets without the rookies for nothing. For modern sports, I don’t even know how someone would do a full set. At least for pre 1990s hockey its just OPC & topps, so chasing a set makes sense. But post 1990 is nauseating trying to figure out which of the 10+ sets/brands to chase.
I don’t know if they still do it, but several makers sold complete box sets. I have several of those of which my favorite was the 1989 UD set with the Griffey, and I think Johnson, rookies.
Wouldn’t that be interesting if Pokemon sold complete box sets.
Do you know of anyone that has every single set complete from a certain sport? (Major Sports, so Disc golf trading cards don’t count haha) I genuinely have never heard of anyone doing it nor anyone expressing interest in doing it. That’s where Pokémon is different. There’s a demand for a higher percentage of all of the cards that exist.
There’s several factors that would help lower graded Pokémon cards retain demand (the card game, artwork, etc), but i think the biggest factor is instilled in Pokémon’s motto. “Gotta catch em all” 
Good argument except your addressing a comment I never made.
You said, “Sports are fun to watch and play, but its hard to have an emotional attachment to them enough so that you’d want a bunch of cards with your favorite players (characters) on them.”
This is the most ridiculous statement I think I’ve ever read on a Pokémon forum and is what I was addressing.
I don’t even know an avid sports fan/collector who isn’t “emotionally attached” and who don’t “want a bunch of cards with your favorite players (characters) on them”.
Scott agreeing with you made me think it over again because normally he’s spot on. This time I’m shocked especially considering his affinity to certain sports Stars.
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Ohhhh I understand now, I wasn’t quite sure what you were the most upset about.
Reading back over it I didn’t convey my thoughts very well. What I was trying to get at is that although someone is a sports fan that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re heavily invested into the trading cards of those sports. Pokémon is quite the opposite, if you’re into the games/cartoon/manga then you’re going to have cards with some of those people interested in only the cards. I’m an avid football and basketball fan and have been my entire life yet I’ve never owned and cards nor had the desire to. Come to think of if I don’t have any close family/friends that collect sports cards. Small sample size? Yes. Is it a generational or regional thing? Possibly. That was just my take on it, no disrespect to the sports cards fanatics of course.
@cross,
Many people’s hero’s were sports stars. As a kid mine were Sandy Koufax and Willie Mays. I do have at least one of all their cards but not as many duplicates as I wished I had;)
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To be honest, I do all the time. I even buy with the intention of holding and selling in the future. I personally find it strange to be in this hobby accumulate all this knowledge about the cards prices and not jump on an underpriced listing with cards you don’t need, purely for the intentions of reselling. I understand some don’t like to go though the hassle, but I also understand that people are illogical creatures of habit.
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I hope I live a bountiful life where I can die with all of my cards. But I am realistic about it all and if selling my cards provides a cozier retirement (or even life before retirement) then I am not going to lower my standard of living just to have cards sitting around in a vault. I get enjoyment out of moving on from things from time to time and seeing the joy it brings to others and I am sure I would appreciate it even more in the later stages of my life after having enjoyed my collection for so long.
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Hmm interesting thoughts my two cents would be take a PSA 10 1st edition shadowless charizard say $40, 000 right now so 6% of that is $2400 i am sure theres more than just me that would buy up as many of these available just because it love the artwork and its the 1st edition charizard from base set iconic all it would take is one other person Scott Gary or just a few people that want the card to bid up the price. So say i bid 2400 for all the ones that are on ebay all it would take is for a couple of people to come along to bid the price up which i can think of 10+ that will be willing to pay more than that for them regards of resale value and i brought some psa 9s a few years ago that are worth 100s and in one case 1000+ more in value. Also your dismissing the most important piece of information humans are not logical they form emotional attachments to things that will taint the results.