I don’t understand what you mean by this. Isn’t this boom characterised by the price of seemingly not-rare cards going crazy?
There have been plenty of rare cards that are experiencing major price hikes as well. Im not sure what you mean. Everything is so expensive. People seem to just be buying cards left and right these days to be a part of the experience aside from collecting well…to collect! Its affected almost all TCG’s currently as well.
I think neither of us understand what the other is saying here 
My point was that although the prices lately of course have been insane, I don’t personally think that it’s 100% down to investors who don’t know anything about Pokemon
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I actually think there is a decent portion of it that is organic buyers, but I think alot of those people are also younger, or arent knowledgeable about what theyre buying, and selling in some cases. There are also people that do have an expensive chase, but alot of that FOMO of “Will it keep going up, or will I never have it” gets induced, and I dont necessarily consider it a organic purchase throughout. There is just too many variables with types of buyers and sellers than there ever was currently. It makes me wonder what the hobby will look like in 5 years when people have had time to understand and research cards even more.
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I think I may not have articulated my response particularly well, because I think we are mostly in agreement here.
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I’d argue that sports cards are still the most famous modern (1900’s and on) collectible, but pokemon is rapidly (if not already) passing them by in terms of cultural and historical significance. And you are right about this being the historical norm of rapid price increases, which I sort of alluded to by saying we have already gone through this a few times in the last decade. This isn’t unprecedented, which is in part why it is so confusing to me, since collectors should be able to look back and see that these quick 10-15x gains are not sustainable in the short to medium term.
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I don’t think experienced collectors are buying them either. I was trying to convey that knowledgeable folks aren’t participating in that part of the market right now, and it seems to be mostly filled with new, dumb, or gullible people trying to either make a quick buck or get social media engagement. I know we talk about the fact that collectors need to start somewhere, so to not rag on new folks, but do you think someone who purchases these cards for financial gain/clout are going to evolve into a long term collector when they see quick negative returns on their purchase? I just don’t see it. I see the same people who bought at the top of the NFT hype, and who now have nothing to do with that sphere.
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I think we here have that experience and knowledge base to have a good idea of what has the most future potential and intentionally look longer term, but I’m not convinced the people buying these somewhat niche vintage cards at these insane prices are of the same mindset, considering the we have the general consensus that these prices are pretty nuts.
I’m not trying to say that all cards should return to 2023-2024 prices, as time goes on, a healthy card market will see steady increasing values. What I was trying to convey that I’m getting deja vu to previous boom periods where everyone discussed how crazy prices were and some folks would claim this is the new normal. We know its most likely to end poorly for a lot of the people buying these cards at these prices, which is why it is frustrating to me when people cheer it on or are happy about it, or think its good for the hobby.
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This may not be true since I’m not a seller like some on here but for all the record sales being posted, how many are just one-offs? One sale shouldn’t establish a new market price. It’s definitely wishcasting for more buyers springing out of the woodwork but most of the time the outliers are outliers and then it’s sellers forcing the ‘new marketprice’ to no demand.
There’s already been discussion on manipulation of raw prices (TCGPlayer is easy to manipulate and that has become standard market price due to its interface) and graded marketplace prices (sales where someone buys their own card so they can then actually sell it to someone else for ‘new market price’) here so it’s not like it’s not known at all.
The space is poorly regulated even though some of these loopholes can be easily fixed with proper coding or processes (TCGPlayer, ebay etc).
At this point, I’m far more interested in seeing the post-hype settling than the continual rise we are in now…
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I have dragged around a CGC 9 Alpha rare to half a dozen card shows. MTG vendors are so interested in being able to play with the cards that they all decline. I remind them the packs are like $30k and they still don’t care, it is fascinating.
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I think I big unconsidered variable here when we look back at previous booms in other collectibles is PKMN exists almost 100% in the era of household internet, and social media which has not been true for previous collectibles.
Information travels fast, so when there cultural excitement around something that spreads really fast in the social media landscape.
It’s possible if the internet + social media existed for other collectibles existence, their booms might have had large multiplier involved. Also good to note the multiplier is probably also exacerbated in the other direction when there is fear and down turn.
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Kim Kardashian was spotted opening packs of Pokémon cards with Steve Aoki.
That is unironically a brutal concerning top signal. Reminds me when Katy perry painted her nails to crypto symbols in 2017 which marked the pico top.
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Or when Justin Bieber paid $1.3m for a bored ape.
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Not surprised, vintage JP was undervalued for a long long time
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The temptation to rip my VHS and Neo intro packs for grading is becoming palpable. Cardstock quality tends to be pretty good too. Argh
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Lmao. We got ourselves another one. Card 100x’s in 3 days and it’s always the not surprised, it’s undervalued. All these cards, the entire market, undervalued. A common card, NM worth $20-50, even mint graded worth a shocking few hundred (which is already absurd) worth 5k?
Undervalued. Sure. Yep, now it is correctly valued. Hi – welcome to the hobby of pokemon cards. Did you know that here on planet earth this was a $1 to $5 card for 25 years? And now it is hundreds to thousands over the span of a year? That’s not normal.
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$2.4K to $11.5K in less than 3 months (AUD). Totally normal? The PSA 10 POP is 545.
Probably selling mine and getting a PSA 9 instead lol. If the 10 holds these values (or keeps climbing) the 9s will be next to rise (you’d think).
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>this is not normal
The market disagrees
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lets see if the market disagrees in a year or twos time 
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My (not-so) hot take is: its a supply issue. A few years back, there was always 2-4 PSA 10 fossil dragonites as BINs at a fair price. So the risk of “not getting it” just wasn’t there. Now… the supply seems very thin. So the price shoots up (even though demand might not have increased all that much). Obviously there’s probably a demand side factor, but I think the lack of supply is what’s doing the driving here.
Remember folks, older-rarer-minter-better.
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Availability*
A lot of the prices changes are happening with kneejerk reactions to online scarcity, because drying up those opportunities is what drives people to think set cards are rare. Otherwise, the overall supply has never really changed much. Tbh I think the distinction will never fully be realised
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Like any other market, Pokémon has experienced cyclical trends. Bull cycles typically culminate in a blow-off top, which is like I said a “normal” market phenomenon.
This recent price surge suggests we may be approaching a peak, though timing the exact top is impossible, we could double again and then again from here. The point is that each cycle establishes a new price floor. Those expecting to acquire Gold Stars at previous cycle prices will likely have a bad time.
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