The issue is when the “User 01s” (that’s you) say that every single item is overpriced and they’ve been saying it for months as they’ve been proven wrong again and again. These people look for literally any crumb that they can latch onto to continue proving to themselves that they haven’t been wrong about the market and it’s all a huge charade that is inevitably going to fall apart. So you ignore absolutely massive sales like the $66k Unikarp and $100k No. 2 Trainer in order to focus on this to support your delusions.
There aren’t even any “User 02s” out there, literally everyone in this thread has provided key factors that could have resulted in the sale. Useful information like the high-end market being driven by a very small number of individuals, grade mattering more than we thought it would, and more momentum for set cards like Charizard right now. This sale is a big learning opportunity for a lot of people, mainly because it defies the trends we’ve been seeing.
The absurdity of post-sale discussion, the asinine justification as too how a community of collectors could be so far off the mark, and most important, the lack of reflection on why that happened. The whole scenario is playing out like a bad movie, ya know, the one where you know the punchlines and plot twists before it happens. That kind of movie.
When have I claimed every item to be overpriced? 'Cause I am pretty sure I learned early in my tenure as an e4 member that if you have a contrarian opinion the community will dog pile. Again, there’s a lot we can learn from this sale, and most of it has nothing to do with numbers.
It´s very easy to be far off when you don´t have anything to do with the topic in question. I would guess that 99% of people throwing around arbitrary numbers (including me) are not in the market for this card, therefore these guesses (which were out of pure fun, nothing else) have little value. It was the same with Protostoise or whatever super high end card that is discussed next.
If this had been some $1m+ sale, like the upper 20% of people who predicted this believed, this thread would have been full of people patting themselves on the back and discussing how amazed they are anyone would ever have believed it’d sell for less. Instead the lower 5% of people who guessed under 400k are discussing how amazed they are at how people ever thought it would go that high and instead of reflecting on that and having thoughtful discussion about the hobby it’s just turned into a game of who can antagonize the loudest.
I think either this thread should be locked or the direction should be turned away from some bizarre witch hunt and instead toward something people can look back and reminisce on.
Is $375k a fantastic price for a PSA 7 Pokémon card? Yes it is.
Is this high or low? That’s up to you to decide.
Is this sale game changing? Probably not?
Yeah I feel like this underwhelming hammer price is noteworthy in it’s underwhelming-ness since we are coming off a run of record prices being achieved weekly.
That being said, a deflated sale on a single card shouldn’t act as your only indicator for market trajectory. And even if you did want to rely on this sale, its not like the next step is for every auction to be underwhelming from here on out.
I was surprised at the low price, but it’s a $370,000 card and this will have no impact on my spending “record” prices for the low and mid-tier slabs I love to collect
You’re right, but that’s too convenient an excuse to pull out anytime. It took me all of 5 minutes to look up the last sale of PSA 1st Edition Charizard, and Protostoise to make a guess. And all I know about Illustrator cards is they were given out in Japan, they’re supposedly peak Pokemon collecting, and some guy named Ponyo is churning them out in his basement.
I’m not saying it’s always easy to make a valuation, but come on, an average guess of over double what the card actually sold for? Market’s gonna market…
I remember when I sold a PSA 9 illustrator for 55k during the 20th anniversary. That was the highest publicly sold card at the time, and so many people would not accept the price. I had hate mail, threats, libelous claims; it was disgusting.
Fast forward to today, a PSA 7 sold for 7 times that price. And now you have the same contrarians on the other end. Desperately trying to be relevant through negativity and criticism.
No matter what the card earns, this same pathetic conversation happens every single time.
I think there’s an interesting phenomenon here as well, where by choosing an ending price for an auction, we’re essentially saying what it is WE personally would be happy to sell our PSA 7 copy of the Pikachu Illustrator for.
That said, it’s clear that several people don’t value the card, which is fine. Those people will never own one, or be in the position to sell one. And they don’t care. That’s their prerogative. $300,000 can be a life changing amount of money.
That said, there is absolutely a valuable data point here in perceived value. The reason I said the auction would end at $1.3 million is that if I were ever to obtain a copy of the Illustrator, it’s clear the market would have to move a tremendous amount before I felt satisfied selling my copy. I tried to put myself into the shoes of the seller, creating an “or best offer” listing on eBay. And we know that auctions often go far under OBO listings. My estimation is that many of the people towards the top of the list will be those who are slower to sell rarer cards once they double or triple, and those towards the bottom may be more inclined to.
Is this a scientific analysis? No, not at all. At the end of the day, this is just completely arbitrary pricing because these are luxury goods.
I’d rather question the core premise that has been repeated over the last few pages: That the Illustrator underperformed. But did it? It’s “only” a PSA7, yet it sold for $375k. That’s a huuuge amount of money. Like, why is this somehow seen as some weak auction? Can you name any other PSA 7 card that can compete with this? If you told me only one year ago that this auction would happen the way it did only one year in the future, I’d have laughed at you. Like, when I made my guess, I didn’t think “uhh this card sucks I bet it will sell for little money”. I thought of 375k as serious cash and all around a very good offer.
I can easily see PSA 7 Illustrator Pikachu reaching $1 million+ in the (near?) future, but for me in today’s market all the data pointed to it selling for around the same as Aoke’s $420k mint raw Illustrator (which graded a 9), or slightly more than the 10 Charizard and 8.5 Protostoise.
My guess of $415k was $65k more than a PSA 10 Charizard so I wouldn’t say it was offensively undervaluing
I class the Illustrator as the holy grail but when you have PSA 10 zard vs PSA 7 Illustrator I put the price closer to the zard rather than a wild guess of 2x or 3x the 10 zard and I’m surprised so many people thought that
I think the ending price is very good, there are not many people around that can spend 6 figures on a card and the people who can might want to walk that extra mile for a better grade. There is also that uncertainty on how many more illustrators pkonno can pull out of his magic hat.
Anyone who is translating this sale into a market crash is an idiot and to be honest I don’t like throwing that word around lightly. Learn the history of the card before you make silly assumptions.
Bottom line 375k for a PSA 7 copy is a huge sale. Congratulations to the owner for the sale this is life changing money for most people and also congratulations to the buyer this the holy grail for a lot of collectors.
We don’t know exactly how many import fees and additional expenses the buyer of the raw card had, but it must have accounted for quite a bit. However, even if the buyer lost money in the end, that doesn’t mean that the 375k sale on PWCC was bad. It means that buying a raw Illustrator for 330k in the hopes of getting a good grade and flipping it immediately is incredibly reckless. I can’t think of any seasoned collector who would recommend a strategy like this. Even waiting one more year could have made a difference of several 100k since trophy cards usually only rise in value.
The format didn’t help, everything considered it had to be entirely cash, all of it and all at once. It’s a huge amount of money to have just sitting and ready to be splashed around on a thing like that. I would argue that for 99.999% of people it would be plain terrible not to have it locked in investments of some sort.
As an example, for me (and many others I bet) it would be unrealistic to put that amount of money together in such a short time, then move it across the world.
Entirely different story if there was room to negotiate, a partial trade or just more time to gather the funds. I could honestly see myself beating that 375k bid in that scenario. The mere idea that I could put myself in the position to have a shot at obtaining the Illustrator is giving me chills because I never expected it to be possible when I started collecting.
I do hope more patient sellers show up in the future, I would love to see that 7 relisted tomorrow for 750k or best offer on eBay.