Collecting post-2020 is on hard mode (Smpratte video)

General
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41

Massive respect for putting that out there, Coach.

I chose the opposite of you in the case of SD Charizard, BUT partly because I’d already done it with other things in the past.

Some here may know amiibo. I’ve largely shelved that addiction (and it WAS an addiction for me) BUT when some of the early waves came out, I flipped many. I bought multiple copies. I made several hundred dollars, having pre-ordered at multiple stores and holding until later releases like Breath of the Wild came out and Samus Returns and Splatoon. BUT After everything, I looked back and saw that I, like you, felt dishonorable about having done it. Even though, that money helped me get through some tough times the year before covid.

I will say, in every transaction, there is a winner and a loser.
You buy a card and the price goes up, you win, the seller loses.
…The price goes down, you lose.
Just like any investment or transaction.

Now, that brings up a great point, that I’ll make at the very end.

But if we keep perspective, as @stagecoach says, we will avoid taking advantage of anyone.

We’re not monsters. Cogito, ergo Sum. We think, therefore we are THINKING things. As long as we reflect/think on the morality of what we’re doing we are not thoughtless immoral monsters, just accidental humans. The thing about transactions is that they’re a zero sum game: I gain this; You lose that; Vice versa. Now the extra point:

But with a community, we have a Positive sum game. It’s not just you and me, but everything that we share freely with everyone here, for example. Our engagement out of love, even if flipping, creates that community. And THAT makes it all more valuable.
Price is what you pay; Value is what WE ALL get.

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42

I agree with your friend. Personally? My hobby is not more difficult, it is over.

Some of the hobbies I partook in as a teen looked ridiculously out of reach, I held on by the skin of my teeth. Let’s say a particular object from that hobby was $2000. At the same time, a Pokemon item was $150.

Now that object is maybe $2100 if you can find one, the Pokemon item is $25000. It’s not a matter of bigger stakes or difficulty, my branch of the hobby literally jumped from lower/mid middle class to golf resorts and beluga in the span of one measly decade. Even if I earned as much as every family member put together I couldn’t collect a fraction of what I did.

Adapting? Am I supposed to feign excitement at stuff I don’t care about, like some disgraced oil sheik collecting Bugattis and Koenigseggs being told to enjoy his new CIA-provided 03 Corolla?

No, there is no “adapting” to that, except become rich or dial back the passion to avoid leaving it all together, bitterly. Since the first is not an option, I chose the latter. Which is why I consider myself much more of a casual collector now, because I am not really a collector anymore but a man with a collection.

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43

I bought my 1st Edition Jungle set for $120. I didn’t even collect 1st editions at the time, I bought it on a whim just to see them. I just sold that set for $1,400.

Someone I did a lot of business with gave me a sealed red cheeks E3 Pikachu as a freebie one time, because it was only a $40 card. I still have that same card and it’s $1,500 now.

The rarest Black Star Promos were 40 and 41. They were $50 sealed. I bought ten of each on a discount and paid $30 each and would give them away as bonuses with certain sales. These are $600 items now.

The environment I started up in is just gone and will never be replicated. And with all these increased stakes, my curiosity must go unrewarded, generosity from others must decline, and my own generosity is constrained. Everything must be calculated, budgeted, and sometimes sacrifices must be made.

So while I try to keep heart and make sure everything I do is for the love of it and not for the money, I can’t kid myself either. It hasn’t been “just for fun” for many years. Cards cost as much as my entire paycheck now. If I want to stay in it, I have to hustle. And I hate hustling, but not as much as I love Pokémon.

The other side of this obviously is that Pokémon has been good to me. So many things I bought at modest prices have 3x, 5x, 10x, and I’ve benefitted hugely from the climate we are now in. I value that — but that’s also not what I ever came here for. I didn’t want investments, I wanted toys.

I agree with you as well about the difficulty of just adapting to something else. People collect what they collect because it calls to them. It means something to them. They’re collecting something more than the object, there’s a personal association and genuine appreciation that drives interest. You can’t transfer this to something else and feel the same way. You either have to find something else that calls to you or just quit.

I am fortunate that I found another category of the hobby that calls to me, which is allowing me to shift gears. But it took years of patience and research and exposure to develop the necessary attachment and emotion to make collecting these different cards even an option. If I hadn’t connected with them, I’d have just left the hobby.

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44

Engagement with the hobby in 2022 is synonymous with obtaining things (e.g., buying that booster box, finishing that set, grading that next card) rather than experiences.

If we try to reframe how we engage with the hobby or what makes a “successful” member of the community, we may finally be able to quit the rat race.

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45

One of the silver linings with the inflated prices in the past couple of years is that it made me re-evaulate why I became a collector in the first place. It shifted my mindset from “What can I add to my collection?” to “What do I appreciate about my collection?”.

Additionally, I think the greatest joy from the hobby is the way that it can bring so many passionate people together. The current difficulty of collecting motivated me to join this forum. It has been immensely satisfying seeing others complete their collecting goals.

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46

I really think moments like this bring us closer together. It’s kind of amazing to see that some of these feelings and fears ive had, arent just mine. Its nice to talk and understand each other, even if what we are talking about is kinda sad.

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47

This morning in my social feed I came across an account called @thecardconimist. I’ve seen this collector before. They are a wealthy collector with deep pockets. They have an investment bend to their content and usually talk about which cards they are buying and why with the intention of making money.

But today I saw they had drilled a hole through a card. They took a PSA 10, had their followers make donations to cover the value of the card, then punctured through the slab and destroyed the card. They did this to “increase the value of all the other PSA 10s out there.” At the end, they show the next card they will destroy once their followers pay it down. They encourage other people to do similar things. I will link the video.

This kind of thing makes me sick. It is extraordinarily scummy and an indication of severe depravity. Revolting behavior like this is terrible for the hobby and I have left other hobbies because mindsets like this took root. I never thought I’d see it in Pokémon, but that was naive of me, I guess.

I know it’s just one person, but man, for me this is a new low for the the hobby.

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48

This is the guy behind the “Ur mom”-slabs. The first thing I get when I google his company’s name is a pdf on cancer by a bosnian pathology school. :rofl:

49

What are those? I haven’t seen those. More memery?

50

Same energy as those who rip cards on YouTube. Didn’t UnlistedLeaf, one time biggest Pokemon YouTuber, do that as well?

Lots of scum in the hobby now.

51

THECARDCONOMIST GRADING IS OPEN | Pokemon Card Stream - YouTube

I hit a space to spare us all the thumbnail.

53

Wtf am I watching :thinking:

Who is this person dear god

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54

And this clown has followers. The standards get lower every second.

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55

Not just “followers”, nearly 52 THOUSAND subscribers.

The hole drilling thing either ends in a very sad, or very funny way.

The sad ending is if this plan actually starts catching traction and rarer cards start becoming targets. Right now the picks are pretty inconsequential (a Team Rocket Holo and a VS series non-Holo?) - the stakes are low so I assume this is a test run. He’s trying to see if his actions cause market movement on low-end slabs before moving to the high end.

The funny ending is if nothing happens to the prices as a result of these actions. And even then, there’s a bit of sadness mixed in to mourn the forever damaged cards. But I think the pleasure of laughing at people like this outweighs that sadness tenfold.

In order for his followers to actually benefit from this behavior, they themselves would need to amass a decently sized position in whichever “targeted” card is being destroyed. How many of his followers will buy up whatever card he “targets”? They could also have their own undisclosed targets but, seriously, how many people are doing this on actually rare, scarcely-appearing slabs? If this was a gold star or 1st Ed base, I could see these tactics working in large enough a scale. But who is honestly investing in Dark Golbat, with a large enough position where destroying their own copies would result in a net gain? I laugh.

You can manipulate the market without destroying the cards. You’re buying the cards to then destroy them anyway. If you enjoy Pokémon and appreciate what this hobby offers even in the slightest, you can simply buy the cards and never sell. Hold them, respect them, collect them - and do it in private so your position is never known. You will accomplish the same goal, without the unnecessary destruction of something cherished by others. It’s almost like broadcasting this behavior is meant to make people FOMO buy into the latest target and pump it short term during a relatively healthy market. Just like crypto, he says…look at the pumps in that market under the same “transactions destroy a % of the coin” guise.

Investing into this hobby isn’t inherently evil, but people like this are.

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56

This is part of why I have switched to mostly binder collecting, and reserving graded cards for special items in my collection. I’ve realized that for most cards, the increased cost of a graded copy over a binder copy does not give me a proportional amount of joy to justify the cost.

Don’t get me wrong, I love graded cards, but for me they’re going to be reserved for special collection pieces rather than making up the bulk of my collection.

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57

I’ve continued to do the same. The only time I don’t buy a PSA 10 or 9.5+ is because I managed to get the graded card for at or below the price of the raw NM card. At the very least buying a PSA 8 for example gives me something I can be confident in compared to most seller’s definition of “NM”, which varies a lot. I then just smash these out of the slab to be put into a toploader or binder instead.

I much prefer this approach both for my personal enjoyment, as well as mitigating risk for my high value slabs and spreading out my collection more and having more quantity. It gives me the right mix of quality & quantity in my collection this way. In addition, I can build up a much bigger collection much faster within my budget by buying NM copies vs Gems.

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58

This is how I built my whole collection.

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59

Cracking for a binder is a quality veteran move! There is usually a point with every card where cracking already graded gets you a better value. I did that for my wotc binders! :sunglasses:

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