Howdy all. I was hoping to get some Insight on opening and grading a Luigi Pikachu Box. I purchased it back at the end of 2016 on a trip to Japan. I told myself I’d sell it once it got to a certain price and that time has come. Unfortunately It’s been a bit of a headache dealing with people locally. Everyone and their mother seems to be a “dealer” now but I won’t get into that…
Anyway, I’m beginning to think the better option is to crack and grade and was hoping for some information from people who have opened them in the past. PSA 10/9 ratio from a fresh box, what to expect from the deck of playing cards, etc etc. Also, I do have a little bit of concern with PSA “paying a little more attention” to higher end cards when it comes to handing out 10s. Thanks in advance and I appreciate the depth of information here!
Ill say from looking at vendor POV’s that some would be interested in buying, but alot of those boxes have been tampered with contents replaced, and Ive been seeing people buy it with the contingency that they can open it to ensure the product is what it is.
Personally I would just open it, and send the cards off for grading through PSA (get insurance at the post office please), and bank on them getting high grades as Im sure they are fine. Id like to see other thoughts too though!
I haven’t physically opened one and submitted its contents, feel free to flag this/disregard/do whatever, but per the PSA population report:
There are 513 PSA 9’s / 2,141 10’s for the regular holofoil (295/XY-P) and 647 PSA 9’s / 2,170 10’s for the full art (296/XY-P), at the time of writing this. The vast majority, AFAIK, are sent as opened from the cellophane wrappers.
The Mario Pikachu full art (294/XY-P) seems to be the hardest to grade, fwiw, there are a clear 400-ish more submissions to PSA of that specific card than the next-most submitted card (full art Luigi). That’s strictly looking at the total sum of each promo card variant on PSA’s scale, respective of each of the 4 cards as well. FA Mario still had a better chance at a full Gem 10 with around 2/3rds of those submissions reaching Gem status for full context.
All to say that asking prices are one thing, I know you likely know this, but if you did open it and grade the cards then you’d have a decent shot at hitting Gem 10 on both the promos based on the publicly available pop reports from PSA. Each physical card should still be treated as an individual case, though, and the biggest risk here (obviously) would be opening it in the first place to find out if the promos are worth submitting. You might have good luck consigning, feel free to also search E4 for options on consigning the slabs (E4 Auctions End Tonight!) (if you go that route) or maybe wait until sealed is good to list via consignment again:
(edit to physically specify that the question being answered in my previous post link was about eventually selling sealed on Fanatics again, the way to go IMHO)
I think it’s your call since you held it sealed this long, if you’re 100% confident that it is authentic and untampered with (not an accusation/speculation) then I’d ultimately say that it will only keep gaining value sealed as the years go by. These boxes are super desirable, it’s not too hard to track down a graded promo card from these boxes but an authentic sealed box is something much more special. My. 02.
Otherwise, the poker deck was a separate release IIRC, are you maybe thinking about the sleeves/deck box? Here’s an opening video if you’re curious, pay great attention to how the promo cards were packaged as well (haha!):
The playing cards vary in terms of desirability but I do know the Joker cards do well in high grades. Hope this helps in some way.
I have no experience cracking and grading so I can’t speak to that. I did want to mention you’d likely have better luck selling these sealed outside of your local community though. At this price point you really need to cast a wide net to get closer to full market value.
Best of luck on the sale! If you do crack it please share your results!
Thanks for the response! For some reason I thought the the playing card deck was in there… but I did get the matching luigi/pika plush from the Pokemon Center. I know of the Pop report suggests the odds are in my favor for 10s but I’m also curious if that had ratio changed a little bit the in past year with the possibility of stricter grading. Also curious if these things ever get pulled with damage or how often that may be.
There is part of me that has always wanted to keep it sealed and continue to do so if I don’t sell it. At the same time, the tide has seemingly changed (understandably so) a little bit on sealed product. Any word on PWCC opening up sealed again? I have been out of the loop with Pokemon market news the past few months
I will definitely share my results If I go ahead with opening it up. I figured It might be easier to sell locally so that people could review and handle the box in person. It seems like everyone is a little comp obsessed (its a hard item to do a direct comp on) and buying it for the purpose of making a quick buck.
No stress! Thank you for posting! I really don’t mean to offer information that you already knew, for the sake of respect and brevity as well. I’m sorry about that, that was not an attempt at “pointing out the obvious” at all.
You might be interested to scroll this thread at the same time:
Basically; PSA will never admit to changing their grading standards. They are “timeless” and meant to be as “objective” as they can possibly be.
If the promos do get pulled with damage, I’d hazard a guess that that damage happened when the promos themselves were lifted from the box as they’re usually sandwiched pretty well in there, IIRC (the video shows it for anyone else who wants to see, pull the deck box out first haha). If they were pulled with a crimp - I would say that could be the ultimate indicator to grade them, but that also doesn’t seem to happen on Japanese product nearly as much as it does with International. Otherwise - Japanese XY promos like these are usually pretty nice out of the box to be as brief as possible (as I am sure you again know for certain).
I have not personally heard, but E4 would likely be one of the - if not the first - places where that news is disseminated should you not be subscribed to their newsletter, etc. There is some additional news coverage on the TCG scene right now but games journalism isn’t always a priority, outside of what normally gets reported and has always been. If that makes sense at all.
This is pretty much what I was driving at. I’m sure you can find plenty interest at a % of market value locally but it’s difficult to find someone who’s actually interested in it for their PC and willing to pay close to market for something like this. The higher you go in value the more difficult it is to sell locally in my experience.
whats do the sealed ones go for nowadays? anyone buying it would likely crack it anyway since the shrinkwrap on these are total crap and prolly very easy to reseal
its prolly way easier to sell graded, i think the full art psa 9s are pushing 10k anyway. you can also try beckett since i think these cards have a number of pristines that exist
Fanatics. Yes.. It’s like when the year changes over and you’re still writing the old date except its been long enough at this point…. I’m in the patreon but have been a few months behind on videos for well over a year.
Not really sure to be honest. They don’t seem to sell publicly super often and even then its hard to tell what is real sale but I would say safely over 10k
Not a problem at all. I didn’t take it as that and I honestly haven’t looked at the pop report on those in a long time. Also, If I pulled them with a crimp I know there is a certain sector of the community that would lose their collective minds over the cards.
if you are selling it sealed you are also way more likely to get scammed (online marketplaces like ebay and such dont have real protection for sealed items since they cant authenticate it)