This brings up an interesting topic: rarity vs. scarcity (market availability) vs. demand. Let’s start by comparing vending with other japanese exclusive artwork cards. One of the most popular (demand) Japanese promos is corocoro shining mew. There were at least a million copies printed (based on how many corocoro magazines were distributed). In PSA 10, expect to pay $2000 at today’s prices for one. Now vending series, which has around a million or very high six figures copies printed per card (based on masaki promo data we have (there are five figures of individual masaki cards out there)) has a lot less demand than shining mew. The most popular card in vending is Ooyama’s Pikachu, which can be purchased for $600 at today’s prices assuming one goes up for auction or something. So vending has millions and corocoro shining mew has millions, but there is low demand for vending. Another thing to note is that shining mew is the same difficulty to grade as some vending cards. Some vending cards have 25% PSA 10 to PSA 9 ratio just like shining mew.
Now let’s look at scarcity. On eBay, there are a LOT more corocoro shining mew available than ooyama’s pikachu. On yahoo Japan, there are a LOT more corocoro shining mew available and only 3 search results for ooyama’s pikachu. Vending series, as it stands right now, is very scarce considering the number of copies out there. It becomes even more scarce if we are looking at only the PSA 10 or PSA 9 cards available. Vending is VERY scarce compared with shining mew and they have similar print runs. However, the price is still low for vending cards in PSA 10 compared to the much more available shining mew PSA 10. Someone could easily buy out a large chunk of the market if these PSA 10 vending cards become available due to their low pop and PSA being backlogged which means no more vending card PSA 10’s for a while. They will just drip into the pop over years which will not really affect price.
Now let’s look at rarity. Look, if you want rarity you need to go for trophy cards. If all anyone wanted was rarity, no one would buy 1st edition base charizard or any other 1st edition WOTC holo. There are pokemon cards out there with only hundreds of copies, trophy cards with less than 100 copies, and some trophies with less than 10 copies each. Even 1st edition WOTC holos are not rare at all. They have print runs that range from five to six figures. Add that in with scarcity and it does not matter how many are out there, because only a small fraction of that will ever be available to buy. The same goes with vending. It does not matter if there are a million of each card out there, if people start to value unique Japanese art and these cards have increased demand and more scarcity, they could rival some 1st edition WOTC holos, both being in PSA 10.