Been a lurker on this site for a while now, but I’ve officially made an account and I’m excited to join the community! I’ve been collecting (solely, not investing or flipping or reselling, etc.) for a number of years now, but looking through this forum I’ve seen some real wisdom in collecting, which has been a great comfort. Here’s my question:
For all the people out there “investing” in Pokemon cards, who do they expect to buy them down the road?
I’m not sure of any collector who’s going to pay $2k on a Destined Rivals BB years down the road when they have no memory of opening it when it came out because there was no product on the shelves to draw them to it? Even still, let’s say that you split a BB with 4 friends to open at $2k, that’s $500 for 9 packs of Destined Rivals. I can’t imagine a situation where husbands can convince their wives of spending that much on opening up only 9 packs. And the pull rates are even worse for Prismatic Evolutions and the price would be more, so I just can’t imagine a situation where regular collectors are spending that much.
Compare it to Team Up BBs in 2022. $600. Split between 4 people, that’s $150 for 9 packs. That seems way more reasonable to me because people have spent that much going out for a nice dinner with the family or maybe even another Pokemon card. Now, that same BB is $7,500. Who’s spending that much to maybe get a card worth a tenth of that as a PSA 10? And even if it’s split between 4 people it’s $1,875 EACH for 9 packs. That literally sounds insane to me.
Then with kids, let’s say you wait 20 years. You think a 30yo is going to pay $1,200 on a prismatic ETB when they literally never opened it as a kid because it was never on the shelves? They have no connection to it.
All this to ask, who do investors think are going to buy their products? I’ve yet to find the answer to this
people who bought modern at MSRP and sold for double having money to burn, so paying overinflated prices on cards they actually want is justified.
Now to your question - there is no value to these cards unless an actual collector wants them. Down the road, if a card keeps switching hands between investors, it’s a game of hot potato. No collector is going to get the card for their forever collection at the high price.
Most of the time it’s always streamers or people who are nostalgic to open them. No casual collector would seemingly open one unless:
A. They’re well off and they decide to buy something off the Internet that’s expensive simply because they want to
B. They see a streamer doing a case opening and decide that they want to join in
C. They feel Nostalgic and they decide to buy it.
People also buy stuff because they want to and or it’s been hyped up to oblivion so they decide to buy it. With more obscure sets like skyridge and aquapolis it goes to the more seasoned collectors simply because of nostalgia and possibly how much it costs.
Pokemon pack opening isn’t to make money off of it (not usually), it’s more for the experience (like gambling at a casino for example) I could buy a pack of EX D****ys off a rip n shipper iand try to PULL the Rayquaza Gold Star simply because of the CHANCE, not the garaunteed outcome. The CHANCE of pulling something is what excites you, and when you PULL SOMETHING it only validates the excitement of the CHANCE of pulling something.
This paragraph also answers this:
Most of the time a regular collector would never buy sealed product from so long ago, rather just the cards from that long ago. Singles are much easier to obtain than the packs (sometimes…)
Trying to dissect demand is like trying to catch a gastly bare handed. This same conversation has happened for years. What’s changed since then: more countries participating today, both in buying, selling and cards printed, more exposure, higher discretionary income, more cards graded, more sell channels like streaming and conventions, which didn’t exist or were in their infancy, more perspectives on trading cards, oh and more money in the market.
No doubt speculators/investors are a part of the pie, but even that one term is multi faceted. I spend more today because I make more than I did 10 years ago. I don’t think that is unique to me. A good example, I just bought a Chinese card this morning for $100. I’m sure it would have been $10 a decade ago, actually it wouldn’t exist, which is more to the point of growth. Regardless I don’t care, and treat it the same as the $10 purchase in 2015. I also just bought a couple cases of English boxes for $200ish each, the same I would when they were $90.
All this to say, I’m one individual. There are millions of people buying for varied reasons. While this will be a solid discussion topic, the same conversation has already happened, and the market will continue to outlive every theory.
If you don’t have any issues with this, you must acknowledge that this behavior is, at least, part of the problem, creating an unbalanced demand for sealed products.
Not blaming you of course, but since you’re not the only one trying/willing to try the trick, it’s only natural for Pokemon to be a fertile ground for investors under these conditions.
No yeah I know what you mean. I guess I think about intention with this specifically. I imagine it’s similar to trading a card that went up in value for a card that you may be more interested in at the time. For example, I bought the grey felt hat for $200 as a PSA 10. To get it I traded my celebrations collection and a jungle starter deck. Those things had no value at the time, but the Pikachu has value now. I could trade the Pikachu for a PSA 9 base set 2 Charizard if I wanted (because it’s one of my favorite cards) and I think that would be perfectly acceptable. Also if I wanted to trade it for a raw Moonbreon that would be acceptable too, although I’m not sure I would do that even though it is a chase card of mine.
So I guess I’m wondering what the difference would be if someone did that with their sealed collection? Trading it for a card they want because of what the market happens to be at the time. I think that’s different than buying to flip or “invest” or whatever. But if it happens it happens, so then why not take advantage of something that is largely out of your control?
What are your thoughts on that? Does what I’m saying make sense?
I think you already highlighted the differences here! Key elements imho are two: was it a collection or an inventory already from the start? Can you truly say that the gains randomly “happened” when your were sitting on 50-100x sealed promos or a basement full of boxes?
It’s clear to me that there’s a willingness to exploit the inefficiencies in distribution to make a profit.
Obviously nobody hates on a dude with 2 etb and 1 box bought for display, that abruptly doubled in price.
But how do kiddos fit into this equation? I would be in disbelief is kids were exposed to enough pokemon currently to get into it. Also kids aren’t able to pay $200 for a BB to be fair
People who have nostalgia from opening the packs and want to do it again idk why they would spend so much on it but I try not to worry about others, for now I’ll collect what I like and ignore everything else
There is no difference. Sealed makes people butthurt for some reason. Maybe it’s the feeling of ill-gotten gains, maybe it’s the feeling you’re not supposed to invest in sealed, maybe it’s people who project their feelings onto what other people do with their money.
Likeability (do people on efour like you) and blatancy in action (are you intentionally flipping/reselling) are big factors here
