Hello! I want to start collecting some of the more expensive ex and gold star cards.(Not quite Rayquaza level but PSA 7-9’s in the $100-300 price range, obviously more for gold stars($500-$1000) )and I just want to make sure I understand the era well. To my understanding these cards were printed less. Looking back at POP reports and sold prices of these cards, they didn’t really take off until 2020. To any experienced collectors in this era, are there any red flags to keep an eye out for? Are these cards truly scarce, or was there not enough demand to make grading worth it until now? Some of the POP reports have even tripled for psa 9’s the past couple years. I love the cards and I grew up with gen 3 so I want to get as much knowledge on the era to remove as much risk. Thanks!
This might be an interesting read if you want a historic perspective.
The one thing I’ll add here is that a 3x in the pop report is not concerning when there’s a 10x increase in demand. The ex cards have flown hard under the radar for a long time
They are scarce and awesome to collect. Just stay away from stonking too hard on unseen forces gold stars. Besides that scarcity generally peaked in 2005 and then became more avalible towards 2007. That being said i cant prove this and even still the most common set (probably power keepers) is still likely more scarce than most of DP sets if i had to bet
I pick up PSA 9s exs as a main part of my collection and $100-$300 is a great price range for picking up many of them today though some can fetch higher for sure. I can attest to @wisewailmer 's point of 2007 sets seemingly having more printed than 2005 counterparts. Power Keepers is one of my favorite sets and growing up I would find it around in products into the DP era. At the end of the day these were still set cards though so there comes a point where being scarce sets in this case means still being printed in mass just less than other eras.
Keep an eye on pop reports and sold prices when looking for cards is what I would say so you can get a feel on the more popular cards and the cards that don’t pop up as much. While I have been collecting Dragon Frontiers 9s doing that has allowed me to understand how popularity, scarcity of cards, and price interact to an extent.
Here is a thread I love discussing print sizes of the era so you can get a feel for that too 
Looking back at POP reports and sold prices of these cards, they didn’t really take off until 2020.
It’s a valid concern, but I think it’s worth noting that WotC has gone up a comparable amount (on a % basis). Although it varies from card to card, of course – some EX has outperformed some WotC and vice versa.
Also, I love that thread PFM linked haha. What a blast from the (relatively recent) past. In that thread (which was nearly 2.5 years ago now), I mentioned how I was selling off my PSA 9 exs and moving onto building binder sets because of how much the PSA 9s went up in value.
For example:
Here, I was referring to a PSA 9 Unseen Forces Steelix ex. I bought it for something like $25 in late 2019 – $60 for the card felt super high at that point because I had been buying PSA 9 exs for $15 to $50 ea, and Steelix isn’t a particularly desirable one.
But now that card is worth >$200. And that price feels perfectly reasonable, IMHO. $60 sounds stupidly cheap to me now, but perspectives shift. For all we know, $200 for the card could sound stupidly cheap to people 5 years from now. Or not. No way of knowing.
My (biased) opinion is that now is a great time to be collecting EX! Then again, any time is a great time to be collecting EX because EX is the best 
.
Those prices were so cheap! I wish I was here three years ago:joy:
. Even now a PSA 9 Dragonite selling for 300$ seems reasonable to me. I feel like right now the value is very fair. At least that is how it feels to me.
Great thread with some amazing info. Thank you for sharing!