You can show off much more with your supreme victors bird trio than your Nvidia stocks though
I don’t think we can compare high end graded cards to modern sealed, and I don’t think there’s much overlap in the buyer pool. I agree we can consider both when trying to gauge the general size of demand.
If you were just using it as a comparison, then, in this example, I don’t see where the necessary supply for those cards will come from. If TPCi is building an entirely new facility having already bought a printing company, that should indicate just how short supply modern sealed–the items that are the most abundant–is in.
There’s no printer for PSA 10 Neo holos; while some new 10s may be graded, the pop is not going to increase by 5 or 10x, which is to say the supply cannot meet this new demand.
For the record I do think we’ll see some kind of retrace in a lot of these cards, but I think expecting a huge crash in hard to acquire cards is copium.
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Do you guys think all the poke investor bros at r/pokeinvestor have come to realize they missed all the big gains by following the only buy sealed advice ? I’m laughing hard watching them hoarding prismatic when any psa10 vintage has 10x in the past year
Sometimes I watch YouTube content of these guys, being left out of this cycle, it’s a guilty pleasure 
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Love this, exactly where I think the convo gets really interesting.
Again, fake numbers, but say the collectors in the hobby is the same, but on average 80% of those collectors attention is grabbed by the concept of card collecting, but that focus of attention on average drops to occupying 15% of their attention.
I think in that case a person would still buy standout cards, or cards part of their core collecting goals, but may not have the mental space to explore new territory or expand to new collecting goal as they previously would.
Think that was the case for me, 2017, 2020, and 2024 had that huge interest spike to me with down time in between. The down time I still collected cool stuff that really caught my attention (Munch, Beauty looking back, Felt), but didn’t explore as hard. Finding new interest in exploring the past such as Pokekyun, and HG/SS Legend cards only happened during those spike in PKMN cards becoming as passive → active interest and it for sure affected my purchasing decisions.
I think each interest spike (PKMN GO, COVID, recent boom) exposes more and more niche items as they break out from niche to part of the common collecting knowledge. Like now I’m finding it somewhat common for the average collector to know what JP vending cards are, where before 95% of the time I was faced with “whats that?”.
Its interesting to think through different attributes of human behavior and how that translates to spending patterns. Rarely do I think its solely total checked out in the hobby vs total fomo.
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Didn’t mean to directly correlate modern sealed to vintage graded. More so the concept of once the profit machine runs out, how does it keep going up? Used modern sealed as an example. Completely agree the supply of vintage won’t magically increase, but saying if you suddenly can’t flip a 10k card for 12k the next week, will these people stop buying Pokemon for insane prices?
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Nobody knows. Absolutely no one on this forum or on the internet I’ve read has predicted the shocking amount of growth vintage psa10 has been through. Every rational prediction I’ve seen online since 2024 about fundamentals blablabla has been wrong so far
I picked the Articuno lol, I have an eye for expensive things 
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“I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people” - Isaac Newton (apocryphal)
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Modern sealed can’t leverage the rich,
High graded cards however can.
No amount of money is ever gonna fill the void for those who feel they miss something.
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I think this is the part where I lean towards it being not only flippers and speculators, but I do believe the majority of buyers are ‘tru collectors’ in that they aren’t prioritising financial gain. I agree there are eyebrows to be raised because, well, where were these people before? But my feeling is that the publicised big numbers was the hook* but not the reason for them staying.
I use the example of someone relatively new in discord who is aiming to collect every Blastoise card in PSA 10. Clearly that’s not a financially motivated choice; there are far more optimal ways to invest your money (within pokemon or not).
Of course we can never know the speculator:purist ratio, but this is what my gut is telling me. If it’s relevant it was the opposite in 2020.
Sorry this became quite long.
*Not particularly relevant to current discussion but I wanted to add:
I’ve noticed that the primary trigger for people to come back to pokemon as adults has changed. It was often the case that pokemon was a reminder of a happier/carefree time (childhood), which potentially coincided with someone going through a stressful time in present day.
Now I think that trigger is more that they’re aware of the money and want a piece of the action, but I don’t think that necessarily means they’re less likely to stick around.
You can go further and posit that the money is partly the trigger but also justification for enjoying pokemon as an adult. In the current world, expecting to make money is permission to pursue something. It can be really hard for some to sink serious time and money into a hobby with no expectation of getting anything material back. I could talk a lot about that but this is already an enormous tangent.
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Coming from my side of the age spectrum. most teenagers (at least in my area and the surrounding states) dont even like pokemon as much, and more young adults and adults if anything are the ones in the action right now. Most of them of course say that they’re too old for it or some other reason, but I have seen a few people say that it’s because the hobby is today. With cost of living up and future financial security being at risk, most teens will not take many chances to spend their money on something new, especially when the economy itself is in question.
Not only that, but this crazy market is also driving them away. Why would you spend hundreds of dollars on cards when you can save for a car? Why spend thousands on cards if you’re trying to pay rent? The cost of buying certain pokemon cards are getting to a point where it’s in it’s own money pool. For example:
- My mom collects wigglytuff, jigglypuff, and other cute pokemon. A lot of the pokemon she collects are not popular, and she can get as much as she wants. Her collection is growing bigger and bigger
- I however, love rayquaza, who is a more expensive pokemon. In order for me to get the cards I want, I have to make tradeoffs and save. Most teens now cannot do that.
If this is a trajectory we’re going in, pretty soon pokemon will be a market for the e4 elites and high paying people looking for something to sink their teeth into. I don’t see teens coming to pokemon by themselves anytime soon.
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Oh one last thing I forgot to add (sorry!)
On the possibility of the new richies getting bored and dumping everything. While it was only one person, it has already happened: Xiao bought up a ton of trophies only to sell them all in a short timeframe just a couple of years later. Although that was just one guy, the volume of rare cards hitting the market (coinciding with the Akabane extras) was pretty incredible. However, the broader market was able to absorb them relatively quickly. It was a slow couple of years but now those cards are higher than ever.
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More so the concept of once the profit machine runs out, how does it keep going up?
Vintage cards change hands from flippers until they arrive into either longterm personal collections of collectors with deep pockets or “investors” with a longterm perspective.
I’ll give you an example of a card I personally collect, goldstar mews, the price is about 40-70k$ right now depending on EN/JP, the population for both languages is about 150 for a 10
Yet do you how many of these changed hands this bullmarket? Public auctions about 4, private sales that I am aware of about 5 more and 2 more are listed as BIN at 100-175k$. So 9 times changed hands with a population of 150 during an historic bullrun. Why is that? Because most of these are locked into personal collections for good yet there are so much more Goldstar or mew collectors who wish to own that card. It creates a massive supply crunch and FOMO when one pops up every few months or years even.
The primary motive wasn’t a profit machine for these cards, else alot more would pop up for sale right now.
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Have you people seen the sports card market? Pokemon seems low compared to it.
I am expecting for $1,000 Base set packs and $10k-$20k for sets you can buy cards from now for $50 but can’t find packs.
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History has proved that nothing is locked in collections for good.
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Even Rayquaza Game Show promos aren’t locked into collections for good (although if I got one it would)
Its an expression. When i say locked for good, I don’t mean until the end of times. Law of impermanence. What I mean is locked good enough to create the dynamics we have right now.
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Hmm, I still think nothing is locked into a collection forever. Lets say you bought that dream card for $10 because someone completely misunderstand what it was. Great, you got your card. Now it goes to 500k over the next year for various reasons. Are you really going to hold that card, or are you going to sell it, pay for college completely, and buy most of a house with it?
Life changing money puts things into perspective a little differently.
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I don’t think you’re wrong since obviously no one has a crystal ball.
I also think It would be useful to separate the actual “good stuff” (gold stars, 1st edition, trophies..) from the rest, I know it’s an arbitrary distinction but when it comes to the first category I’m much less sure about their future. I understand where you’re coming from though.
When some believe things will go down, I think it’s mostly because of anecdotal experience, since we’ve seen how cards retraced after COVID (or after the og pokemania, although it’s a completely different world). We also know how things tend to work with speculative assets, where massive swings are the norm, and the enthusiasm plays a big role.
Ngl, gut feeling is also important, as many users have a rough idea of what a card should be worth and how much would they pay for it. That’s why these huge jumps naturally make you ask “Where were these people in 2024?”
I already said it many times, but I suspect that the buyer pool with purchasing power in the high-end range isn’t super deep, especially when at least some can afford those cards only because of recent favorable circumstances that produced new influx of money, for example people coming from Pocket, unprecedented demand for LGS, record breaking sales for re-sellers, consignment services booming and so on.
I don’t think it would be too farfetched saying that the same “niche” PSA10 auctioned in a different context might lead to very different results.
Having said this, pointing out a single factor causing a market correction isn’t easy. Often it’s a mix of factors, probably external to the hahbee: sometimes things just get stale after a while as there are less opportunities and the easy money dries out. It could be a slow decline in popularity, a market shock due to some big names dumping their warehouses as the age. Or maybe things will remain stable for decades, since the recent jump in prices simply has eaten away all their future potential of growth.
For slightly different reasons than eeveeteam I also tend to believe that the amount of modern printed and tucked away could be a ticking bomb for many, I’m just speculating of course.
Who knows.
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I think youre right, and alot of people won’t realize it before its too late, but the actual collectors are what originally gave cards their value. Anyone who isnt a true fan of the hobby will run those who made the hobby fun, out. This is turn will lead to a world where pokemon cards are only traded amongst the ones who care about assets, and money which in turn will leave the entire hobby in shambles once people figure out that someone has to be left holding onto a card that is now worth only $0 + copeInterest.
Everyday there are more people straying away from cards, selling their collection, and wishing for a better tomorrow for the hobby. Some even actively telling kids to stay away from it while others share “investing” advice with them 
. This definetely isnt organic growth, and the community needs to have a petition for printing cards for demand, or a current fix for the TCG side of the hobby in some way. Alot of us yearn for our favorite pieces of cardboard to be readily available to actually collect, and make us happy again versus bending the knee for people with more money, so they can make even more.
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you having to precise that really shows the level of word picking on this forum 
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