I just got a modern Jumbo PSA 9 for 20$ and it’s about 35$ just to grade them. Most of my recent purchases have been Japanese late 90s Jumbo which can be found for less than 20$ ungraded though they’re not mint and very hard to find in that condition.
As for the topic on hand. People have a lot more free time because of COVID, thus all hobbies are having spikes of interest. On top of this governments around the world are printing trillions of aid dollars which ultimately benefit the rich but still allows the poor to keep a roof over their heads.
Most investments such as stocks, crypto, metals, and collectibles are are increasing. The wealthy aren’t as impacted by corona yet we’re still seeing the positive effects of aid money and can easily drop 50$ on a mint base energy.
Bulk commons should come down as more people grade them but inflation is here to stay as it’s a major factor outside of Pokemon.
Bingo. You hit the nail on the head. I could also name about of cards easily worth grabbing at great deals but I’m not trying to hype any cards or make them harder to get for other collectors. If you search hard enough you can find good deals in plenty of sets.
There has been ongoing card inflation. What’s different now though is that there was a huge spike of injected money in short time period and the market has yet to adapt (ie people submitting, and PSA grading), so even if there’s the potential of 100,000 base charmanders in gem mint condition they aren’t out on the market for people to buy.
After things “go back to normal” I expect low pop items that aren’t low pop due to lack of submission like mint wotc holos to sustain most of their current values as most of the mint supply is either graded or sealed and thus pop count won’t increase much.
I’m actually curious if eBay companies can get the PPP loans.
In-print modern and base set are markets unto themselves and I don’t like to speculate. But for everything in between, I think anyone holding cash on the sidelines expecting prices to come down overall will be disappointed. I dawdle on buying a card, it goes, and I never see it again; or if I do see it again, the price is up significantly. There is so much room for price growth on so many cards still. There are some very limited-release Japanese promos still available at decent prices, and once they disappear into private collections we may look back on current prices with envy. Don’t think about “COVID buyers” exclusively as speculators stretching budgets trying to make a quick return. So many buyers are not releasing these cards back to market any time soon, and certainly not for the prices they paid to acquire the cards. Pokemon “won” the non-sports TCG market and there is still a great deal of growth yet to flourish in vintage sets.
Since your asking for personal opinions here’s mine ultimately from my actual perspective as a lifetime collector off and on. Now I could be blinded by yellow lightning bolt glasses and my reinvigorated love for Pokémon but here we go it’s a doozy strap yourself in lol
Pokemon has been vastly underpriced for far too long for its age, rarity, and overall scarcity in finding mint raw product it was bound to catch up, but I honestly thought it would take much longer because WOTC was niche, I’d go as far as to call it dormant and the market was super slow as a kid who started on WOTC and quit in high school as I became an adult I used to play competitively with my nephew at leagues and I ran a business selling cards from 2005-2014 regularly and let me tell you WOTC moved the slowest of any item I sold period and I never heard anyone in the hobby ever ask if I had any WOTC for sale or to trade, it was usually people trading away WOTC not acquiring it for example I seen someone trade a few shadowless charizards for one Luxray GL lv x and I saw gold stars be traded for deck staples and reverse trainer sets and I even did some trades like that myself so yeah WOTC was yesterday’s news in people’s eyes. You got a lot of people saying man you should of bought more WOTC since you connected with those cards the most while this was true trust me the anxiety of having a product that had little to no interest or movement was super stressful I only felt comfortable holding my binder sets.
Pokemon Go and the Evolutions set in 2016 gave WOTC a little kick in the right direction but I don’t think everyone really caught on nor did it get all the old WOTC collectors back into it I dabbled a bit because of evolutions and I noticed my full complete base set binder went from $80 to $250 but I had just recently quit the tcg so I didn’t pay too much attention, my job was killing my time too. Personally I took the prices for granted pre and post 2016 even though I felt that vintage Pokémon was undervalued I legitimately felt that I had time to slowly accumulate more into my collection as time went by and I imagine there were a lot of others in that same boat and thought yeah it might keep rising a little but nothing dramatic . Oh how I was wrong we weren’t prepared for what was about to happen.
Once the pandemic hit everyone had so much extra time unless you were working an essential job, people got bored, people got out their old cards or taught their kids how to play Pokémon tcg with modern products. This also happened with other collectible markets. Not to mention a lot of people had nothing else to do but watch YouTube and some people stumbled across poketubers like leonhart who was opening WOTC already, there were other channels too, and more followed soon after. I couldn’t really take any of them seriously I felt like I definitely wasn’t the target demographic. Found this smpratte guy on YouTube with a video talking about vending series cards and southern island and I thought it was great that someone was making a video talking about these sets that were extremely niche back in the day, then I kept glued to his channel and learned that people have been grading Pokemon cards like they were sports cards the past few years and I realized I really have been missing a whole new exciting dynamic to this hobby. I 100% didn’t know grading was so valuable like I said I kinda checked out of Pokémon in 2016 grading was super niche in a subset of the hobby that was already niche.
Prices overall is all that plus a good old recipe for growth with old things finally being cool starting in 2016 and slowly working its way up. Couple that in with FOMO and you got the market situation that’s unfolding. I personally think if there’s something you want don’t wait too long you can’t reverse this type of thing, even if there is a retrace I think there’s just too many collectors that would be wishing that would happen so they can just buy everything up. Really because of this I feel we won’t ever go back to last years prices on WOTC era stuff.
TLDR (trust you need it)
I think what we’re witnessing is a market correction that was accelerated by a perfect storm of a mass quarantine period from Covid coupled in with a large influx of hype from people like Poketubers and alternate investment channels sparking interest in both old collectors who started and went hard with WOTC, new collectors who already were into modern, and new people looking to solely make money by investing into cards. I think the latter is actually the lowest amount but also the loudest bunch now. Prices probably shouldn’t have gone up this hard but it did, and I wouldn’t be shocked if it kept rising because the demand could very well outweigh the product that’s actually available.
Yeah I think you are extremely bias in your opinion lol. I dont think your completely wrong but some of the stuff your saying doesnt make any sense.
For starters, logistics is screwing everything up. Stores have shut down, there is a lack of tournaments to circulate cards, vendors are not traveling like they used to etc. There is a big problem getting cards to circulate. Also people dont really want to leave their houses right now or go to shops to buy cards, making internet inventory very low since its mostly where people are buying cards right now.
Second, there is alot of very weird activity going on that just makes zero sense. Shining Legends boxes at walmart have sat on shelves for about 2-3 years now and all of a sudden the cards are going up for no reason and people are buying them. None of that makes any logical sense. Why would a set that has been available forever that nobody cared about all of a sudden sell out? Same with Dragon Majesty selling out online. Nothing about these sets has changed at all and people all of a sudden want it. I do believe that the people from the MTG world are coming to Pokemon and doing buyouts messing with the market. Something sketchy is going on since to me this doesnt seem like very natural behavior.
Finally, you kind of make the assumptions that people will want vintage Pokemon forever and that the demand will never go back to normal. I feel like alot of these people on this site think that Pokemon is going to keep growing but I dont believe that. If there isnt another Pokemon GO like product that causes a big boom for the franchise, then I see demand going down. Just because WoTC cards are rare doesnt mean demand for them will keep going up forever. And when corona does end, alot of cards will tank since people will be able to do other stuff again sides stare at Pokemon cards all day.
Also right now the collector’s cards are more in demand than tournament cards, which is skewing values. Like Crobat V should easily be a 30-40 dollar card but without tournaments its not worth nearly as much. When tournaments come back, I see the EV of newer cards skewing towards tournament cards again, which means that Charizard VMAX would tank while Eternatus VMAX and Crobat will eat up most of the value. This is standard stuff Im obviously talking about but I dont see Hidden Fates for example being worth what it is today and the market will have many more copies for sale once logistics go back to normal.
The charizard market has absolutely no meaningful correlation between competitive viability and price whatsoever IMO. Outside of reshizard, there has never been a competeibely viable Charizard card ever printed. The only thing that will permanently tank the value of the Vmax will be if a Rainbow Rare of the same said card ends ul being released in English. Even then idk.
I do agree with modern meta cards prices’ being depressed due to the absence of organized play. Pokemon has been doing a very good job as of late at keeping meta linchpins cheap. Jirachi TEU, Dedenne UNB, Bosses Orders, and Eternatus Vmax have all been reprinted/re-released in sealed products thus tanking the prices. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the same thing happen to crobat shortly.
What exactly doesn’t make sense from what I said? Remember I said I am taking it from my own personal experience and forming my own opinion on the matter based on years and years of being in the hobby. Im gonna respond to you with my opinions and I did it in numbers so its easier to read.
**((1))**Stores shut down for a little bit, yes true but most are back up and running yet prices are even higher on eBay than when they were during the shutdown. Yes being at home impacted online sales but most of the market activity was happening online anyway. LGS locations have sadly been a dying breed for years now because they can’t compete with online prices we only got a few where I live that are left and they are good stores I like them but they aren’t still around because of their sales on pokemon cards. I would say the majority of people who actually go to local shops and get their cards at an LGS is probably a lot smaller than you think. I think most consumers get their cards from Target, Walmart, or other online shops.
((2)) Cards aren’t “going up for no reason” either there is tons of reasons but at the end of the day they are just everyones opinions on the matter, but one things for sure theres a ton of real excitement in this hobby and I think there are a lot of people who are just falling in love with the hobby again. Shining Legends isn’t sold out everywhere though its actually pretty easy to find at least here in the US every time I go to Target they have a ton still its a set that just keeps getting printed, both Target and Walmart restock their shelves with this product all the time. Are there speculative buys with sealed product of course but I don’t think we are seeing mass buyouts for modern sealed product it would take so much money to buyout a modern product line especially sets that just keep getting reprint.
((3)) Really what is “back to normal” to you? If you think prices on vintage is going to be back to 2019 prices I really find that hard to believe, do you know how many collectors who got in late to this are dying for the market to crash so they can buy the stuff they want? Not to mention the big fish who are waiting to buy up even more if there is a decline? So many people in this hobby want a crash to happen they welcome it with open arms as do I. As far as needing another Pokemon GO scenario to see an increase in demand, they don’t really need that Pokemon is off the charts popular in the world right now, even before the pandemic. I feel like a lot of people underestimate how huge Pokemon actually is.
You have to think the people in this hobby aren’t kids anymore they have real big stacks of money to throw down on Pokemon cards. When you start talking about that kind of money changing hands your definitely going to get some extra attention. Even if theres is a small decline in popularity its Pokemon and theres always something huge happening just around the corner. 2021 is going to be their 25th anniversary that alone is going to be huge and create a lot of buzz, you also potentially have the Olympics in Japan which is going to be insane especially if Pikachu is featured or if Pokemon decides to do some sort of collaboration. Don’t forget Pokemon Snap 2 is coming to the switch as well, this is going to bring a lot of people back since snap is one of the most iconic and asked for games. Pokemon will always have something new for people thats how they got where they are today they are insanely good at building up hype. As far as vintage cards not being popular all the time, when you have any sort of hype or buzz people will always drift towards its origin which is WOTC era stuff especially if Pokemon does a modern set paying homage to the old sets. Thats just how collecting goes the oldest and rarest items will always have insane popularity when a franchise is doing good.
((4)) The collectors market has nothing to do with the competitive market right now its not skewing it in any way I don’t get this theory. Charizard VMax’s value is tied to it being the chase card of the set and its Charizard so everyone wants it, that has nothing absolutely nothing to do with competitive play. Charizard tax is and probably always will be a thing. Look at Burning Shadows, one of the most printed sets in Sun & Moon yet that Charizard is still super expensive. Evolutions by far one of the most printed sets in recent memory has multiple Charizard pulls everyone wants it.
Hopefully my reply doesn’t come across harshly that isn’t my intent I am trying to have a good discussion on the matter and maybe help you understand some points that you may have missed.
Actually base set(1st or unlimited) is the only set that is LESS prone to artificial demand, speculation, etc. It represents so much for the hobby despite the copies available, the most iconic set for Pokemon tcg.
Well that was…something. Just a reminder of the Spirit of E4. We encourage debates, but insults and bullying are not tolerated and will result in permanent bans from the forum. I’ve removed most of the recent discussion so hopefully we can continue in a more civil manner.
This is a great observation on your part. I sold a substantial amount of 1st ed Base over the weekend and it was all to new collectors (people who loved Pokemon as a child but who are otherwise brand new to the hobby). If I were to generalize the “new money” that has entered the hobby lately I would say it’s a lot of people who are in their late 20s / early 30s, have high income jobs, and view Pokemon cards as something to both enjoy and invest in.
People have to remember liking and collecting Pokemon wasn’t anywhere near as socially accepted as it is now. The amount of grown adults talking about Pokémon on YouTube Is encouraging to a lot of old “closet collectors” who used to get criticized for spending their money on a “children’s card game”
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with wanting to get back into collecting like you did as a kid and still have an interest in the financial aspect of this and it definitely shouldn’t be frowned upon to know the worth of your cards. Some people will say oh your not a real collector. Plenty of people collect and run a Pokemon card business I’ve done it off and on my entire life, who doesn’t want to make money while doing something they love honestly .
