I agree with this completely. From what I know, PSA 10s are not evenly distributed at all; some boxes may have none at all while others may have significantly more than the expected average of 3 PSA 10 holos. Among other factors, the holos of a given box may have very good centering on average or very poor centering on average.
So yeah, unless you’re opening an authentic sealed box that’s in great condition, the reality of your value proposition in reality is going to be a bit worse than theoretical “average.”
For that reason, even my $2,000 figure may be slightly on the generous side when it comes to expected value.
At the end of the day, it’s clear that opening packs is a losing bet.
The math is irrelevant. This is 1st Edition Base. Finding a heavy pack from this set is near impossible. It purely boils down to what an individual is willing to pay.
I remember someone talking to me at 5k for some unweighed mint 1st Ed packs. Even at that price I wasn’t interested. The gambling or “what if” element is a major factor.
I originally had 15 1st ed base set packs that I bought from the seller a year and a half ago. I weighed them and 6 came back heavy. Opened 5/6 and pulled 2 zapdos, 2 mewtwo, and a chansey. One mewtwo and one zapdos graded a 10, rest 9’s. I have saved this last heavy pack as well as the light packs as I wanted to hold onto atleast one heavy. But who knows I may sell it one day. The guy who sold them to me did not know much about Pokémon and said he has no idea where his dad got them from( I’m guessing his dad past away). That’s the story of this pack so I don’t know if this helps or hurts the odds of pulling a Charizard. Thanks for the help guys!
Using the above mathematics, how would you all figure the value of a weighed light pack considering the high value of rares like Lass, Beedrill, Dev Spray, Dragonaire and com/uncom like Ivysaur, Prof Oak, Wartortle et all.
Where would you put that value at lol.
I wouldn’t go so far as to call the math “irrelevant.” I’m pretty sure it’s something that any potential buyer or seller of a pack would be very interested in knowing.
But I absolutely agree that you can’t simply value an unopened pack as the sum of its parts. Many cards have been opened and only a precious few remain sealed. Sealed packs and graded cards are simply different products with different supply and demand curves.
I have to agree with this. Just like there’s some relevant value in nostalgia, emotions, risk taking etc, the actual value (past performance/math) holds some relevancy.
@hyruleguardian, Yeah I didn’t mean to be harsh, but there is someone in the thread offering almost twice the “mathematical average”. There is always a blend of logic/math and aesthetics/emotional value in collectibles. Its really hard to quantify, “what if”.
In the interest of saving time, I’m mainly going to be using data from the most recent sale prices according to pokemonprice.com. Quibble with those prices all you want.
Based on these numbers (and yes these are literally individual sales, so take it with a grain of salt, but it should provide a rough estimate) and assuming that 25% of cards will be graded PSA 10 and 75% of cards will be graded PSA 9, the average expected value of the rare card in a “light pack” is $117 after grading.
Of course, then you still have 3 Uncommon cards, 5 Commons cards, and 2 Energy cards.
Before I randomly estimated that the 10 remaining cards may have a value of $300, but throw that mark away now. It would take a while to calculate this more precisely, so I’m just glancing at recent sales data to get rough estimates. A lot of the Uncommon cards go for high prices (especially Wartortle) and then you have some Common cards (Red Cheeks Pikachu, Yellow Cheeks Pikachu, Bulbasaur, Charmander, Squirtle) going for high prices as well. But other commons won’t fetch over $50 even as PSA 10s. And as PSA 9s, very few non-rares sell for much at all.
So, here are some EXTREMELY rough estimates.
Average value of an Uncommon PSA 10 card: $150
Average value of an Uncommon PSA 9 card: $25
Weighted average (25% PSA 10, 75% PSA 9): $56
Average value of a Common PSA 10 card: $65
Average value of a Common PSA 9 card: $20
Weighted average (25% PSA 10, 75% PSA 9): $31
Average value of a PSA 10 Energy card: $20
Average value of a PSA 9 Energy card: $10
Weighted average (25% PSA 10, 75% PSA 9): $12.50
So in each pack you’d be expected to get…
($56 * 3) + ($31 * 5) + ($12.50 * 2) = $348
So my complete guess of $300 originally may not have been too far off.
Anyway, adding in the expected value of $117 for the rare, and the grand total for the expected value of the cards in an unopened “light pack” after grading is…
$465
Tada!
To say the way I went about this math was an inexact science would be extremely generous, but I feel comfortable with saying that figure is at least somewhere in the ballpark.
Of course, the same rules apply. That is to say, an unopened pack is worth much more than the sum of its parts.
This leads me to another (extremely flawed and imprecise) “calculation.”
So if the “expected value” of the cards is a little over $2000 in a heavy pack and a little under $500 in a light pack, and 2 out of 3 packs are light, then the average expected value of the cards in an unweighed pack after grading is roughly $1000.
So in theory, the expected value of all the cards in a booster box is something like $36,000. Obviously this is an extremely rough and likely flawed estimate. But… it’s my estimate.
And yet, we all know that the value of a sealed 1st edition base set booster box is worth far more than that. Because while there are millions of cards that have been taken out of these boxes, only a few remain in the boxes and it’s incredibly difficult to acquire one.
In all seriousness though, if you could provide a better estimate of what percentage of pack fresh non-holos are PSA 10 & PSA 9, it would be easy to adjust my overall value estimate.
Under the assumption that half of non-holos from a freshly opened pack will be PSA 10s and half will be PSA 9s, my previous (extremely rough) estimates can be adjusted as follows:
(All numbers were rounded after all my calculations were done)
Average value of a holo card after grading: $2,000
Average value of a non-holo Rare card after grading: $180
Average combined value of the other 10 cards in the pack (3 Uncommon, 5 Common, 2 Energy) after grading: $500
Average combined value of the cards in a “heavy” pack after grading: $2,500
Average combined value of the cards in a “light” pack after grading: $700
Average combined value of the cards in an “unweighed” pack after grading: $1,300
Average combined value of the cards in a booster box after grading: $47,000
All the caveats about taking these estimates with massive grains of salt apply. Among other flaws with the above estimates include: my estimated current market prices could be a bit off, my numbers don’t take into account that some of the more valuable cards are harder to get graded in a 10, and one could make the argument that a booster pack floating around in the wild could potentially be from a “bad” booster box that is less likely to produce PSA 10s than average. So overall, these estimates probably skew slightly high.
But yeah, if you want ballpark estimates, there you go.
I think all this math is awesome. However, I think it just comes down to what someone is willing to pay. If this listed for 3000, I would have to buy it. Then you have another buyer at 3500.
I love reading the mathematic interpretation and reasoning.