I went to EU in 2009 and couldnt believe they still had 2003 Ex boosters on the stores and even earlier sets, well… i guess Pokemon TCG was really ‘‘plain dead’’ in 2009 and i was one of the only kids actually buying that stuff… kids, meh, i was 17 xD!
Yeah pretty crazy. Only sets I remember that were hard to find were early e-series sets; which lines up with what people say about the smaller print runs and so on. I remember just trying to find the packs was a hunt in itself, very few stores stocked them where I lived. I think I remember getting a couple of expedition boosters one christmas, and finding a handful of Aquapolis boosters over time through random stores. Don’t think I ever found a Skyridge booster!
A rocket’s 1st edition dark charizard holo PSA 8 just sold for $255
a few months ago I bought a PSA 9 for like $100 something lol, and I also used like $60 worth of ebay bucks too. Fastest payoff I’ve ever had with an investment haha
This is also assuming that the rate at which cards/boxes are sold will stay the same. There are plenty of people out there who will buy and NOT sell. So if there’s 100 of an item out there and someone who just came into some money buys 1 of that item, now there are only 99 of them. And that will continue to happen as time goes on. Pokemon is such a young hobby. If you’re under the age of 30, you will most likely live another 50-60 years. Do you know how much wealth people can build up over half a century?
Spikes happen alot in card collecting hobbies. This is mainly due to ‘new’ collectors bringing in new money into the hobby and wanting to spend that eBay price to get that certain card he/she likes.
Take YGO for example, I am new to the market and am willing to spend that lowest eBay price for certain cards I want to add to my collection. However, over time, I am more cautious with my money and now think 5 times when I am about to make a BIN on a certain YGO card.
If the lowest price for a PSA 10 Fossil Dragonite is $1500 and that one new collector enters the market with $5k in savings and wishes to buy it for his/her collection, he/she will just do it. Then all of a sudden, everyone will list their dragonites for >$1500.
There is no ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ in collectibles, everything is perfectly priced.
Considering how popular Sword/Shield are and how many people are willing to buy DLC(despite the game being mediocre as far as content goes, yeah I know it’s still fun but it’s almost impossible to make a pokemon game not fun lol) I really don’t see Pokemon declining for awhile. I see a lot of people coming back/joining the hobby for the first time and I only expect the numbers to increase. Like you said, these new collectors will bring new money to the hobby so I expect some huge price increases within the next few years barring some catastrophic world event
Also pokemon cards are so organized with all their sets and such and with great pricing websites, it’s really a breath of fresh air as far as card collecting goes. I mean just look at sports cards. There’s a billion of them with too many variants. Went through my old collection that I spent a lot on as a kid with a bunch of cards like chromes and rainbows(refractors?) etc. and like none of them are worth money and are hard to even find online. That just isn’t appealing to many people
As someone said above, I think the majority of newer collectors see the prices of certain cards and products and get discouraged if it’s out of their price range. Once they become more developed we see them focus on a certain area of the market. When you can’t afford a 1st Ed. Booster Box you start to think they are inflated because at one point you could. It is becoming an area of the market that is out of reach for many people. As much as I cringe at people opening them/selling out the packs, this behavior is only creating more interest while simultaneously dwindling the supply which drives up the price. We’re never going to see this reversed… ever! Cracking a 1st ed booster box will be a thing of the past at some point.
Not far into the video he expresses his concern that the market around sealed product is possibly manipulated and inflated. Correct in the sense that it manipulated. Manipulated by thousands of individuals growing their collections of sealed product lol. But in this is genuine interest and demand, therefore not inflating the market… but growing it!
I agree with your statement about getting discouraged and I’d like to add some some context. When most people start collecting seriously, I don’t think they expect to pay several times the original cost of what they might have paid when they were younger. But as your perspective grows (and your income along with it) you start to understand why things command the price they do. In my case, I slowly got more comfortable paying more and more for cards I wanted as I realized the demand and quantity available.
I’m excited and apprehensive to see which cards and products slowly gain that status of “I’ll financially never be able to afford this”.
A lot of adults don’t get this funny enough which is why there are tons of people on ebay/reddit that will message saying “but but the card sold for $300 less in October!! Why would I pay your price!”
Alright then, go on and get it for $300 less if you’re so adamant that my price(which is the cheapest on the market) is too steep
