Hypothesis: The pop report is becoming irrelevant

I agree with your first and last statement. The fake rarity that sports cards creates through the parallels and colored versions of the cards saturate the market (of course based on demand) but Pokemon’s lack of that builds a stronger case for its rarity as a whole.

the second statement kind of falls under the “the market is this big, if we only have a small part we can make millions”. While I agree the popularity in the world of Pokemon is present through this statement, not all of those people are active buyers or have the capital to collect these cards too as people are beginning to be priced out unless they make some strong plays for their collection goals.

Coming from the sports card side of thing where pop report is everything and regrading is a thing but not as much as I would imagine it would be in pokemon, I do see that the irrelevance for lower grades in the pop report occurring but like others have pointed out, that 10 pop however % inaccurate it is, still holds validity and therefore an established scarcity and rarity element that the 9’s and 8’s must follow.

I think popularity will definitely be a large contender for where these cards go in the next year, but it would be silly to not acknowledge that the public information of the pop report helps in making these decisions to purchase and therefore have demand for these cards. :blush:

There is a river blocked off by many large rocks all the way across except for one opening in the middle. The flow of water turns to violent rapids in this one area. But when the right season comes the vast amounts of water from the melted snow will no longer fit through the small opening, and the water will flow over the top of all of the rocks across the river.

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Popularity has always been in the driving seat.

An example I’ve used before which is great for this situation is the CoroCoro Shining Mew. It’s a beautiful card and a PSA 10 copy recently sold on eBay for $3,000. However it was distributed as an insert in a magazine which had 1,260,000 copies distributed to shops; that is to say this card has 1,260,000 copies in existence - if all of those were PSA 10 it’d have a market value of almost $3.8 billion. Nobody cares that it’s one of the most widely distributed holofoil cards in existence.

As another example: there are at least 100 Pokémon cards with a distribution lower than the Illustrator card, yet the vast majority of those are available for a small fraction of the value. They simply don’t command the same premium because they’re not anywhere near as popular.

A card’s graded population only adds value if there are a significant number of copies with lower grades (i.e. Typhlosion 17 from Neo Genesis with 9 PSA 10s of over 500 graded for 1st Edition and 4 PSA 10s of over 200 graded for unlimited). Otherwise people simply don’t care.

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@pizzachu, *snaps ring throughout the coffeeshop*

I mean pop report drives availability of a card. If there are 500 of something and price goes from $1k → $2k more sellers are able (and likely to step in). If it’s pop 7 additional people may not step in until it goes from $1k → $20k meaning price discovery is led by the single seller or the small subset of sellers, very easy to stretch price much further in those situations

Correct me if i’m wrong, but Chinese base set unlimited boosters are rarer than 1st edition, correct? Yet 1st edition is selling at a higher price.

I bought the unlimited version as it’s rarer, yet 1st edition is more popular/expensive… in part I assume because the unlimited packs are sold more often on Ebay… maybe collecters are holding onto their 1st edition packs?

I’ve been starting to think about how many, if any, of the 1st ed starter packs have been cracked out since there’s only 300 in the PSA reg. Were any of them unweighed when submitted or are they all light? I don’t know how many have been graded through the other grading companies. I’d assume the % of non-graded packs to graded is much higher than the % of individal mint holos that are currently non graded. But what are those total numbers likely to be? I’d also conjecture that there will be more points in time in which it may be worth the risk (price wise only) of opening a heavy vs. holding–similar to boxes. If one has the balls to risk not only the odds, but the value of a mint 9/10 holo versus a heavy pack.

And of those fortunate enough to own all 3 of the starter packs, would literally any of them ever break those up? I’d be interested to know if 3 starter packs were sold together, what they would go/went for, and will subbing packs ever become more of a thing if the aesthetics of the casing improves? I have researched none of what is knowable, but that’s where my intrigue is right now given all the rapid changes in the card and lower supply box prices.