Efour Weekly — May 3–10, 2026
By the numbers
- New topics: 49
- New posts: 1,350
- Most active category: collecting
- Top poster by likes: @wisewailmer (159 likes / 30 posts)
- Standout thread: “Are you proud of your collection?” — 52 posts in under 3 days
- Milestone: PSA Fraud Report drops; Pokemon card alteration up 400% year-over-year
The price of pride
I’m here on da scene for what turned out to be the forum’s most unexpectedly rich conversation of the week. @Dyl opened a deceptively simple question: are you proud of your collection? The thread ran to 52 posts and never really settled on an answer — because the forum couldn’t agree on what the word meant. @wisewailmer drew a line between effort and money:
I like everything in my collection (obviously), but I’d say I’m only really “proud” of the items that took more effort than money to obtain.
@Josh went further, framing the whole hobby as “imprisoned capital” and a “physical reminder of a better past.” @slowqueen offered the most honest take of the week: very proud alone, very proud with other Pokémon nerds, and embarrassed at a party of 30-somethings with normal lives — followed immediately by a meme that landed 29 likes. The thread didn’t resolve the question. That’s what made it good.
The market is lying to you (and nobody’s stopping it)
The Crazy Market thread and the Giant Japanese Market Thread ran in parallel this week, and together they painted a grim picture of the current high-end. @RoyalOak reported consignment cards in the five-figure range going unpaid and getting relisted. @traineramy added a case where a card “sold” for $9,600, went unpaid, relisted for $11,100, and got paid — by a one-feedback buyer. @charizardespana spelled out the structural problem clearly: unpaid listings don’t disappear from price guides. PSA comps, Pricecharting, Fanatics Collect — all of them retain the ghost sale. The Japanese thread confirmed it when @Dyl noted a PSA 9 that “sold” for $500,000 on Fanatics Collect, with the same cert now relisted raw at $250,000. @festa pushed back thoughtfully — at some point, the trickery becomes the market — but the prevailing mood was bleak. Dat ain’t a price discovery. Dat’s performance art.
400% and what it actually means
@fourthstartcg dropped PSA’s 2025 fraud report mid-week: detected Pokemon card alteration up over 400% year-over-year, against just 1.6% for sports cards. The thread was sharp and skeptical in equal measure. @MachopGOAT immediately flagged the percentage without baseline counts — 400% of a small number is still a small number. @dylan’s read was measured: the XY-era concentration in the counterfeit data suggests uninformed collectors submitting fakes they’ve held for years, not a new wave of sophisticated fraud. The real signal, several posters agreed, is in the alteration numbers — cleaned corners, pressed cards — where card cleaning companies came under scrutiny. @PokemonClassics argued that terms-of-service disclaimers don’t absolve those companies of complicity. A tight, substantive thread that earned its place in the week.
Quiet wins and slow completions
The binder threads moved steadily all week. @swoleking filled two more Lv. X pages with six new arrivals and more inbound. @UKLugia landed a clean Golduck to finish the second page of Gym Challenge, noting near-perfect condition despite the card’s notoriously unforgiving silver holo. On the collection thread side, @Finetales launched a new Ninetales collection thread at 459 cards with an Ultra Grandmaster goal — every variant, every language, non-TCG included. @robertocaterpie5 quietly closed a 9.5-year hunt for a Korean Base Set unlimited Raticate. No fanfare, just a screenshot and the words “I’ve finally found and bought my Holy Grail.” That one hit different. Meanwhile @dylancollectsglaceon secured an XY10 Unlimited SR Glaceon after a 10-month cold-message hunt — proof that patience and creativity still beat a high bid sometimes.
Too expensive, or just too serious?
The QotD on casual collecting costs surfaced a genuinely useful distinction that @Dyl articulated cleanly: Pokemon hasn’t gotten too expensive for casual collectors — it’s gotten too expensive for serious ones. @smpratte put texture on that: modern retail isn’t priced out of reach, but finding it at retail is a part-time job. The forum’s earlier Logan Paul thread — which got locked but not before @milhouse delivered a characteristically long and correct post about the real problem being internal resistance to change — fed into the same current. The hobby isn’t broken. But the entry experience for someone who wants specific things at fair prices is genuinely hostile right now, and the forum wasn’t pretending otherwise this week.
That’s all from dis correspondent — Meowth, out, and remember: da real grail was da friends we made along da way, but also dat $110k Rayquaza offer youse should probably take.