Where did that sell?
Z&G ebay
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Blasphemy!
If vintage is due for a rise then what is vintage? WOTC, pre BW, pre DP or gen 4 and down?
e-reader is on par with modern excluding modern promos and the pokemon who shall not be named.
Although this is small evidence of a crazy market, I thought I’d share it anyway:
I bought 10 of the lowest rayquaza cards listed on TCGPlayer for $15.72 all being on december 2nd. This same amount of cards currently on March 27th would cost you $44.48. This equates to a 2.8x increase in just 4 months (rounded up.)
6 months ago a Pikachu RC29 was 20 dollars. At the time of this post it is currently $45.26, which is another 2+ times increase than before.
On march 12 you could get a Hoopa #155/XY-P for also $20, it has now increased to 45 dollars in 15 DAYS. Even at this small market, we’re seeing 2x increases in a very short amount of time. Compare this to niche cards like Legend cards. Lugia Legend has only seen a $8 increase in lightly played condition. In 3 months Groundon/Kyogre Legend have seen almost 0% increase.
This isn’t a organic market, and 2x increases over a period of months or even days is definetly showing it. Rayquaza nor hoopa have even been featured in pokemon pocket, so that would definetly not be a option. It’s such a weird and almost mysterious increase that there could even be a debate that this is not buyouts, but pure speculation.
It truly is a crazy market.
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I think we did a poll on this a while ago. Though all eras are not growing equally this time. They didn’t last time either just to be clear.
But ex seems to be going through the most significant growth. And even there it’s just the tip top exs and gold stars.
Then after that it’s specific species getting the pump.
I think e4 agrees that call of legends generally represents the end of vintage. With some arguing that the wotc transition is a more easy benchmark
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Base to call of legends, vintage. Call of legends to evolutions, modern. Everything else, ultra modern.
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This is a large channel that explains memes and the surrounding cultural context which signals to how many eyes are on pokemon right now
I’ve mentioned this previously in this thread, but my experience over multiple Pokemon booms tells me the opposite. Most cards do not steadily go up in value over time like the stock market. Most cards stay relatively flat, perhaps slowly increasing for a long time and then go up very fast.
We can see this clearly with the most iconic card in the hobby, PSA 10 1st Edition Base Set Charizard. In 2014-15, you could buy this card for $5000. The 2016-17 Pokemon boom increased the price by nearly 10x, by the time all was said and done PSA 10 Charizard was a $40k card. I remember people cashing out at $16k because they felt it went up way too fast. Then the card stayed stagnant at $40k and maybe even dropped a bit to $37-38k in 2018-19. Then in 2020-21, it skyrocketed again and we saw sales up to $400k. Now it’s back down to $200k.
Pokemon has a proven history of being a hype-based market. It goes through periods of stagnancy and periods of intense growth. This doesn’t mean that cards can’t go down after the hype, but usually even after periods of intense growth, cards never return to their pre-boom prices.
For all of the cards you mentioned in your post, I can think of logical reasons why they’re going up in value right now. Most of them are XY era cards which are seeing a major resurgence of interest due to the new Legends Z-A game focusing on Kalos, and the reintroduction of Mega Evolutions to the TCG. This is refocusing interest on the older XY era sets. XY also had more unique illustrations which are akin to special art cards today––these cards are also being rediscovered by special art fans which is driving up prices.
Whether people are buying these for “speculation” purposes or “organic” purposes doesn’t really matter, and I would question whether these categories are as mutually exclusive as some people imply. Maybe the prices will go down later on, but I would not write off increases as illusory and temporary just because they happen quickly.
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There are a lot of markers that separate this particular market boom than the previous hype cycles but I suppose we can pretty much define the cycles as:
- 2016 = Pokemon Go
- 2020 = Pandemic
- 2024-2025 = Pocket+Prismatic+POVs
We’re basically at the quadruple or quintuple “P’s” of the Pokemon TCG market. 
Some observations I posted in another forum:
- Your ‘crypto and investor bros’ are much more experienced and less risk averse to pivoting to Pokemon this time around than the pandemic.
- Scalpers are a lot more prevalent now than they were during the pandemic; you have people literally joining in on buying product in stores not knowing what it is they’re buying but doing it because everyone else is in line trying to buy.
- Market manipulation has seemingly reached a level of coordination that wasn’t this obvious in years past. Arguably tied to the first two points but should be scrutinized on its own.
- We’re in a peak of TPCI content release as opposed to a valley; recently released sets are in high demand because of wide appeal (Prismatic/Team Rocket) and then we have a new mainline Legends Z-A game coming before year’s end.
- 30th Anniversary in 2026 needs no explanation.
- The presence of the hobby in the convention/card show space took a huge leap between 2023-2024; there wasn’t nearly as much interest in ‘vendor POV’ YouTube content in the years prior but people seem quite receptive to that type of content now, which a) drives general hype to the hobby and b) exposes a lot more people to slabs/graded cards. There is almost no non-sports-specific card show these days that does not have an overwhelming Pokemon presence and every other table set up with a camera to record. My first time witnessing this at a Collect-A-Con last year was actually insane. I’ve watched a few different ‘vendor POV’ videos and every single video had people going to vendor tables telling them how it was their “first card show” or giving credit to a vendor for “getting me back into collecting.” If mobile games and the physical tcg hype isn’t enough to get some people back to collecting but a POV video is then it’s certainly a phenomena worth examining on its own.
So basically…things are likely ramping up still in 2025 and the market this time around doesn’t really resemble the last two hype cycles, imo. If the market doesn’t dip hard in late-April after the IRS gets their taxes-owed payments for 2024 then i’m not sure that things slow down at all until 2027-2028.
To me, the current market is more likely to be a ‘new norm’ than it is just another ‘blip’ on the radar.
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Love the shiny idea. I’ve always wanted this.
Explanation needed. I don’t fully understand the relevance of round numbers and a special set for an anniversary created some boom or hype unseen before
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So I walk by a GameStop on the way to work almost every day. They said they would have stock today but would be a line. I got there at 8:45 and about 50 people already. They started giving out tickets at 9:00 and by person 25-30 all out.
Called another small local store. They want 17.00 a pack for journey together. 160.00 for ETB.
Nuts.
At this rate no normal person can even open a pack.
Mike
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it is actually pathetic that gamestop is pricing at market value
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No my GameStop was selling for msrp. Hence the line.
The markup store was just some local store.
Mike
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There’s some GameStop’s I’ve been to that have past sets at market while the newer items on release day are MSRP. Which is dumb seeing as they closed a bunch of stores and invested a large amount in Bitcoin. They don’t need to over charge people.
Here’s some good news to report:
I bought a prismatic evolutions binder collection for MSRP months ago at a small online store after searching for one all day (Person honored it and me and my mom had a blast opening it.) And I asked him about journey together. He told us since we were his first (and repeat) customers, he would save some aside for us and sell it to us for MSRP.
Me and my mom being mindful of the current state of pokemon, only bought a few packs for us to open together. Not all people want to buy out the entire store or scalp. Sometimes, we just wanna open a bit of packs and have fun.
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At what net worth are you no longer allowed to “over charge”?
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At what point should you overcharge if your getting your product from distributors selling at normal distributor price?
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At $1 if you are a big box retailer.
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