I’ve been in Pokemon ~6 months and decided on putting together a “Kanto” set of PSA 10 JP Base, Fossil, and Jungle. Base and Fossil are easy enough, but Jungle non-holos seem strangely obscure with some 10s having populations of 2 or 3.
I’d like your thoughts on a strategy to obtain these cards. Mind you, I have not graded with PSA personally as of yet, but I can only imagine that JP Jungle is difficult to grade for one reason or another. (One theory of mine is that a lot of boosters are simply rough after 25+ years)
Some potential options I have thought of are trying to buy light packs from box breaks, or perhaps trying to cross-grade decent CGC or BGS copies.
How can I do this as cost efficiently as possible? I have not ruled out extreme patience and ebay as an option either
I have literally bought every reasonably priced Jungle card on ebay. I am willing to be patient, but there are probably 2 decently priced Jungle cards per month, usually popular cards like Pikachu, Meowth, or Persian.
I was able to find some pop 2 and 3 PSA 10s last month, which was nice
Regarding the first point: graded non-holos are only “rare” because they hardly had any value one year ago. Nobody bothered to get them graded. It might take another few months for some to flush out of the backlog.
Regarding the second point, there are no light packs for Japanese Jungle - Neo 4. All packs contain a holo.
Now to your actual question. If you have lots of patience, you could start a WTB thread on e4 for mint raw copies and grade them yourself later. I imagine that there are a some members who sit on piles of mint JPN Jungle bulk. Then again, it’s a bit of a gamble on when and at what price PSA will reopen their bulk tier.
If you don’t want to pay unreasonable premiums, patience is key for your endeavour. They are not rare and will come up for sale eventually.
Did not know that! I forgot about the backlog, maybe I will give it another 6 months before getting involved with the grading side and just kinda see what happens. Thank you
I don’t know a lot about the Japanese side of things, but if you’re only after unlimited- I would look on ebay for opened theme decks where the cards themselves are still in the wrapping.
So the fact that the box itself has been cracked means it loses a lot of the premium for being sealed, but you still get the cards in pack fresh condition.
This is a good idea, I hadnt thought of that because I sort of imagine people gorilla-handing their cards, but Im sure people actually handle them quite well
