"1. PSA 9 Base Unlimited Charizard was $1500, went to $2000, then $2500, then $3000, then $3500, then $4000, and then retraced back to $1500. There are still plenty of people wanting to sell it post-retrace. Why didn’t they sell when it was originally at $1500 or when it was $2000 or $3000 or $3500 or $4000? I don’t know, ask them. All we know is that there are still plenty of sellers post-retrace."
Yeah, I think this is a situation where the lower one’s cost basis is, the less they actually care about these market swings. Using your example, I have two PSA 9 Unlimited Charizards in my collection. I’ve had them since they were $150. I have absolutely no concern about losing my money on those cards. If the price ever did fall below $150 I’d have much bigger things to worry about regarding the entire hobby.
With a low cost basis I’m able to observe the movements from the sidelines, with no real “skin in the game”. The only reasons to sell would be (1) I really need the money or (2) To fund other goals. Neither of those apply at the present time. So I just watch, and am always willing to sell if I ever need to, whether that be for $500 or for $5000.
Going back to Evolutions, it’s the same situation for someone who paid $85-90/box. The only way these boxes ever go below that price is if the whole hobby collapses. Very unlikely. So owners with that basis don’t have to worry about losses, only missed potential gains. That’s something to be disappointed about, but nothing to lose sleep over. Those owners are willing to sell for $200 if they need to, and will simply think “meh, still doubled my money, would have been nice to get more though”.
The unanswerable question is, how many players in the game have a $100 cost basis? Probably a lot, but it’s impossible to estimate. All we know is the total fraction of those owners will decrease over time. The longer these boxes can stay above a certain threshold, the less likely they ever are to retrace below it.
Absolutely. Which is why I personally wouldn’t touch Evolutions box for $1000 a box right now. But if it’s still worth $1000 two years, or even one year, from now? At that point I think it would be totally reasonable to buy it at $1000. The risk would be significantly lower for the reason you stated: the average cost-basis of owners will be higher.
It appears your experience is much closer to what everyone else’s was… regardless of their business size. Rudy mentioned that he couldn’t find a retailer in the SE that didn’t break down every collection box they had to sell 36pack lots the second it hit $200-$500. Begging the question what happened to all their boxes?
It’s quite possible people are over estimating how much is out there at a low cost basis.
DA had no Evolutions boxes in stock about a week ago and was buying them up for a decent chunk of change… Yesterday they had 7 available to add to the cart, and now there’s only 4 in stock (all while priced at $1,150).
If they have even 10 cases around that they bought at wholesale, i’d be interested to know why they are offering to purchase more for 10x+ that right now.
Do you think there is any possibility evolutions booster box can retrace back down to 500 USD? Or do you think that is impossible and it can only go up from here?
@pokenoob I havent been tracking what’s been going on but when I was sat on 25 cases I only had two or three available at a time at most. I went “out of stock” for up to a week or two at a time several times. Then I would slowly add more in after upping to the market price. What is listed on someone’s site and what they have are very rarely the exact same.
I haven’t tracked what is going on with their buylist if they have one though. The only thought I’d have is how deep is it? Itd be easy to throw up a buy offer on boxes at $700 or $800 with no specified quantity when you are selling them at $1,000-$1,200.
In any case anyone sat on large amounts of them isnt going to show or talk about just how many they have so it is an exercise in futility trying to estimate how many it is. I know from talking to distributors and buying many cases throughout the summer and fall that they had hundreds to thousands of cases available right until the end. I quoted buying a pallet and sadly didnt follow through but the quantity wasnt remotely questioned or stated to not be available. One distributor has still been selling them on at ebay pricing lol. I was quoted a price from my distributor of $1,025 per box earlier this week.
Evo catches all the headlines being $1k per box but honestly what is scarier to me is selling vivid voltage boxes for $250-$300
I’m not a buyer on either but if I had to spend $1k I’d much rather have 1 evo box today than 4 vivid voltage boxes.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but DACW appears to have removed Evolutions from their buylist? Troll & Toad is buying for $600, but is only buying 1 box. This is pretty astonishing when you consider that they’re offering to purchase anywhere from 5-30+ boxes each of most other modern sets.
Those are the two main buylists that I’m aware of. And between them, you can only buylist a single Evolutions box. Kind of crazy when you realize that DACW is buying 3 of each WotC/EX box and is offering up to 90% of current FMV in cash.
The data from Oct 2019 to Oct 2020 shows the population of Evolutions increased by 25%. Since then the following 3 months 14 days has yielded an additional 35% population increase.
Keeping in mind that PSA is having throughput issues and these bottle necks are affecting the volume of cards they are able to process which is small compared to what they have been receiving. This leads to supply being relatively staggered for a lot of submissions.
I have heard that most people with extremely large Evolutions positions have stored them since they were <$100. These were the big players that have the capacity to hold huge quantities for an extended period of time. Then as the boxes went up they were getting rid of them for $3-400/box, taking their profit on a product that was otherwise worthless for 3+ years. Now most “large positions” have a cost basis of around that. I mean the buy lists (I haven’t checked) surely are $500+. So when people go to sell, the floor is surely around there. Now, I read in this thread about a comparison to the PSA 9 Base Set Zards selling for $5k, but that price was only accessible to a few sales. I am sure people would have sold at that price but there were TONS of people willing to sell for 1/5th of that. Now I don’t think the big players with most of the supply of Evo boxes would be willing to dump for under purchase price. I very much believe that most of the Evo product is still heavily concentrated, I do not think it is spread out among collectors.
I see zero evidence for your claim that “most large positions have a cost basis of around” $3-400/box. In fact, basic common sense would strongly suggest otherwise. Evolutions was $100 a box for 4 years. Evolutions has been $300+ a box for less than 6 months. If you think that the majority of Evolutions boxes have been transacted in the past few months, then I would strongly doubt that. Items simply don’t transact that often. There are 5251 PSA 9 Base Unlimited Charizards in the pop report, but <5% of those have been transacted over the past 6 months. I would bet that the vast majority of Evolutions boxes in existence haven’t been sold over the past few months.
The only truth is that no one knows who has what at what cost basis. It’s all speculation.
What I can’t quite put my finger on is why you’re so set on bashing Evolutions? You clearly don’t like the current valuation of the set… but why do you keep coming in this thread and belaboring the point?
It’s like someone that doesn’t even like football going to forums trying to convince everyone “the Super Bowl is going to have the lowest ratings this year!”
The reasons why I’m engaging in this thread are, first, because I enjoy discussing the Pokemon market. And second, because I don’t like seeing people fall prey to hyper-speculative, high risk investments. You and several others on this thread have been promoting Evolutions boxes as a no or low-risk investment opportunity. And I could easily see people without experience in collectibles markets buying into it and investing a lot of money into Evolutions boxes with the expectation that the boxes will continue to appreciate. I think it’s important that someone provide the opposing perspective: that it’s incredibly risky to invest in Evolutions boxes at the current price point. When I see misinformation, I like to correct it.
Just feels like, most people with pallets of this stuff would have sold during the initial spike to ~$300-500/box. For a party to have pallets of something that was otherwise impossible to sell, selling at 3-4x seems like they would have dumped their position when they had the chance. So then I am reasoning that with large parties(people with pallets not 1-2 cases) no longer having a cost basis of wave 1 pricing, the floor price would be raised. Obv. no one besides the huge parties has direct sales information about this, but its just a hunch.
I agree that it would’ve been rational for people with tons of Evolutions boxes to dump it during the initial spike. But in reality, that’s not how it works. There was a roughly 2-week window that people had to sell PSA 9 Base Unlimited Charizards for $3.5k+. But of 4600 in the pop report at that point, how many of those were actually sold during that 2-week window? Less than 100. That means that less than 3% of the total supply was transacted during that window.
I would argue that similar is likely for Evolutions boxes when they were $300-$500 per box. Yes, it was a longer than 2-week window. But it would surprise me if more than 10% or 15% of Evolutions boxes in existence were transacted during that time period. Either way, certainly fewer than half of Evolutions boxes were transacted at that price point. There weren’t tens of thousands of boxes sold at that price, yet there certainly are many, many tens of thousands of boxes in existence.
Would never advise someone to buy right now. But I do think it is crazy to suggest that the booster box prices will go back to being flat at <$100 now.
