Agreed, a rising tide lifts all boats. I suspect that we will see the same with the recent Japanese modern promo/Waifu craze. There were some major tumbles back down to reality, but many are hovering at or above the initial spike.
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I’m with you! I’m not a Waifu collector, but I do think the Japanese Waifu cards will pull the english ones up with them.
Wow. There are way more replies to this thread than I thought it’d get! For what it’s worth, this is my take:
Most modern TG cards, especially the ones worth a couple bucks, don’t seem like they have much room to drop. If you want to collect them and are worried about them suddenly going to zero, you probably don’t have too much to worry about because so many of them are near there anyway lol. As for them going up, I actually do believe there’s some room for these to rise, but doubt it’s going to be super significant.
At the end of the day, it’s anybody’s guess though.
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To be fair, Eddie and I aren’t exactly DP/BW era kids. When I was originally into Pokemon as a kid, it was during the EX era and just the beginning of DP.
When I got back into Pokemon as a 16-17 year old, XY had just released and BW products were still on the shelves of most retailers. So my connection to it is more based on nostalgia and appreciation for the cards there during my reentry to the hobby than when I was a young child.
The 2020-21 boom and subsequent massive increase in interest for modern cards have really jumbled the conventional wisdom, but it used to be that cards would go up in value approximately 20 years after their original release. Kids who were 8-10 at the time of release would be hitting their late 20s-early 30s, and would now have stable jobs and disposable income to spend on cards. We saw this in 2016 with base set, then in 2019 with rises in Neo era cards.
If we were expecting that demographic rise to happen for DP and BW, I’d conservatively put it at 2027-8 for DP and not until 2031 for BW. However, the big question right now is whether we will see that given that the 2020-21 boom was so across the board for most vintage cards. Obviously we can’t know for sure.
One of the big questions I have about future modern card prices: where is the room to increase? When Moonbreon is already one of the most expensive Umbreon set cards, especially in Japanese, is it going to go up even further or just maintain its price? Are people already “pricing in” supposed future value increase?
Stupid modern and covid stealing the spotlight from Ruby & Sapphire!
No no this is a good thing, I still have cards I need to buy from this set
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dpp kids rise up
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Yep, I didn’t mean to suggest that you were children when they were released. But that you two are some of the bigger collectors from that era on e4, and that few people seem to have interest in those sets. 
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I feel like the pop report arguement is over blown or used. Literally we have so many cards graded now cause the tcg is at its one of peaks and a lot of influencers pushing grading. if they didn’t push grading so hard and Modern held strong what else is there to hold against modern chases then?
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Just ask a 100 12 years olds what their favourite card is and you get a 100 different answers, because there are too many amazing / special cards right now. When you asked the same question in 1999 there was only 1 answer. Combine that with the fact that pokemon in 99 was even more popular and the 10 year olds from that time have money now and you should be able to answer if your modern chase card that is already the same price will appreciate over the next 20 years.
Nonetheless, i still like all these special arts a lot but i still need to find a solid reason to why they would go up in value when the younger generation has more money.
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if anything everyone having different answers just shows Pokémon has grown so much more and has a card for everyone. i mean ofc when base set dropped there was not much more Holos of course its easier to pick what is the “best” card and generally agree with it since there is not much more to choose from.
i mean every era has winner and losers for cards how is that any different for vintage cards aswell. why do you think on YT barely anybody cares about stuff outside of the Big 3 unless they were a dedicated collector of said unpopular species.
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True all these different amazing cards are a true gift for collectors!
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Just to clarify, there are 3 pull rates within the TG itself. The non-textured CHR, the textured CSR and the textured black and gold cards. Assuming a 1.5b print run per set, the first has a close to 1m copies, the second around 200k and the last around 500k.
With that context, I can’t see the first or third appreciating anything noteworthy but the second has possibilities - not in the near future of course.
This is a really interesting point. The price could be lower, but then no one would be bothered to dig it out to sell, so then it ends up in that comfortable range.
Personally, once there is more maturity in the market, I don’t see those populations mattering much for SWSH cards onwards. The raw and PSA 10 gap will close but I don’t think people are thinking, they won’t buy certain cards because PSA pops are huge - like who cares about that really? Are you collecting cards or are you trying to invest?
Modern chase card pops are around 80-200k so if there are only 5k collectors, that’d be massive oversupply.
As I’ve said, rather than hypotheticals, ask yourself whether 80-200k for chase cards is a lot. Then again, that same comparison can be made now or even in the past. What is the price differential on different chase cards from WOTC? Charizard vs Magneton? Shining Charizard vs Shining Noctowl? And so on, so forth.
For someone who seems defiantly against the current culture, you certainly invoke PSA and non-collector related arguments often. Objectively, DPP and BW chase cards pale in comparison to today’s art. Most/all of BW is CGI “art”. Good art will stand the test of the time because people want it because it looks nice not because it was rare at one point.
I don’t think rainbow Pikachu or Gold Mew are very good comparisons because there is zero artistry there. Fair point about Cosmic Eclipse’s “TG” cards, most of those aren’t worth much now but then it comes down to Pokemon/trainer popularity - Pikachu, Piplup and Mimikyu I think have definitely increased. I don’t think anyone is expecting every card to become Base Charizard.
I don’t think Mason can be attributed to the tag team prices rising. If people were actually paying attention, they were getting hard to come by on eBay months before that. The underlying numbers actually matter. And this flood of cards hasn’t materialized to respond to the high prices. I don’t open packs, but at least I’ve seen videos. It seems there are people on here who don’t and then declare how easy it is to pull modern cards.
They already have. If Miriam wasn’t so expensive out of Japan, it would never have had the same reception here. But of course it’s not the first, Serena before her and all the SM waifu cards have already skyrocketed.
The boring answer probably is that it will find a pricing band and oscillate between it until other factors change the market. It will not crash like some want it to, neither will it moon. One side underestimates the # printed and affordability, the other underestimates demand and art.
Unpopular opinion but a lot on here have quite a lot in common with the modern flipper stonkers they supposedly hate. Grading is a scam for collectors, end of. A collector will always grade harder than a grading company. A flipper on the other hand, doesn’t care. If you’re not going to flip it, then explain why PSA should upcharge you. You want to pay an arbitrary market price % more so that someone with worse standards than you has officially agreed with you, and now you feel good about keeping it in your collection? Don’t think so.
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Very wel written post. I think we can conclude that modern cards value is completely based on popularity instead of other fundamentals. Only problem is we all dont know what will be popular in 20 years.
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Isn’t the value of all collectables based on popularity? There are a lot of vintage promos with low pops that are truly rare that haven’t done as well as other vintage cards with higher pops. Take Natta Wake Pikachu. For how row that card is, if you just go by “fundamentals” its a beautiful card, limited release, hard to grade, popular pokemon. It checks all the boxes of older, rarer, minter, better. BUT its taken 22 years to get a PSA 10 up to $5k.
1st Edition Base Set Blastoise has the same PSA 10 pop and its selling for around $23k.
The Natta Wake actually has exclusive release going for it, less overall cards, lower pop of lower grades, etc. but the Blastoise obviously dominates due to popularity.
So I think all collectables are simple supply and demand and demand is tied to popularity.
You made a good point but popularity can only take a specific card so far.
I think people a really underestimating the print run of modern.
Natta wake is also incredibly niche and alot of collectors may not even know about it.
I think this is too simplistic of thinking:
A) Most copies of a given card are not for sale at any given time. Most are in collections. The price of a card is at the margin.
B) Most cards are not graded and history tells us the pop increase slows down in the future because cards are damaged, lost, played with. So if there are only 10k graded copies of Giratina V in 10 years and most of them are already in collections, 5000 collectors jumping into the hobby and going after their old chases could actually raise the value a lot.
C) A lot of these modern cards while they grade much strong than vintage, most of the print runs are NOT PSA 10 condition out of the pack. Centering is a huge problem for a lot of them. White edges from the pack, scratches and lines. I’ve experiences a lot of these from pack fresh cards. Notice there are almost as many PSA 9’s for Giratina V as 10’s. There are a decent number of 8’s and I would guess most of the raw copies floating out there as NM are in the PSA 8 or below range.
Most of these cards right now in graded condition are probably bought by adults. With the price tags they carry I would guess 90% or more of them are for adult collections. One day the kids will want to get their copy. I really believe it.
I think people underestimate how big the market is.
Oh I totally agree Natta Wake is niche but that’s kind of the point. Fundamentals sound good on paper for it but it still comes down to popularity to some extent.
Popularity is really difficult to predict. From 1500 to 1900 nobody cared about the Mona lisa . It became popular after it was stolen. Almost every time it is the ‘story’ what makes collectables desirable not the ‘art’. TG cards look awesome but they lack the story, whereas some vintage cards lack the art but have the story. When we look at other collectables like vintage cars, paintings or stamps the ‘story’ is what counts. Although currently it is the opposite in Pokemon, i think older rarer minter will come back in a few years.
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Also for more obscure cards it takes more research for an average collector to find out they exist compared to what is popular. Like your comparison that Pikachu vs Base Set first ed blasty. Its much more effort for a normal collector to figure out it exists outside of a hype bubble unless they do the research themselves.
Where as base set since the boom has been plastered everywhere on social media and you basically cant avoid not one person talking about it essientially. Thus being more popular overall.
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