I put disagree.
There has been an increase in demand for Japanese cards. More collectors are open to collecting them, there are definitely a lot more people buying up sealed products as well. I don’t think it’s a bubble because the demand seems natural (at least to me). It’s not only about hoarding sealed boxes, but it really seems like a lot of collectors like the Japanese cards and want to collect them and trade for them
I put agree, but more so with the price of waifus in mind and not modern japanese product as a whole. I’m don’t know much about modern japanese as I don’t collect it, so take my opinion with a grain of salt.
The waifu prices are so astronomically high right now that I think the prices will eventually come down. It reminds me of Champions Path from a couple years ago and the pursuit of both of the Charizards in those sets. People speculating and taking advantage of supply issues. I think this gambling nature is what is fueling the rise in japanese booster box prices and I don’t think we’ll see the price go down to what it was any time soon. I do think we’ll see a change eventually when flipping japanese boxes isn’t “easy money” anymore.
I do think more people turned to japanese product when English had supply issues and many people started priortizing those sets. I think the demand for japanese product will level off after a while, once the speculators move on to their next shiny object after the waifus become less profitable.
I voted strongly agree because try telling me that SAR/SR cards of literal nobodies like Miriam and Dendra are justified in being worth more than many vintage set card grails or JP promos with decades of history, shorter print runs and gorgeous artwork.
Tell me with a straight face something like this isn’t the direct result of a speculative bubble and/or market manipulation at work. Triple Beat just released and you’ve already got individuals hoarding product en masse and creating a whole myth around a waifu card (seriously, who even likes Dendra?) that is apparently worth $1k.
I will agree with those that there is a lot of organic demand for modern JP and 95% of cards feel fairly priced. However, that 5% being pumped to create a sense of FOMO or artificial scarcity/value is enough to make me vote for a bubble.
Everyone loves to laugh at EN Moonbreon as the poster child of charizordballer42069 stonkers but we’re seeing a similar pattern with modern JP set chase cards. If you wanna call out EN modern for being in a speculative bubble or being driven by hype over fundamentals, you gotta be fair and call out JP modern too.
For a certain “modern” “singles” I’m gonna strongly agree on this one as there are two systems in Japan that can be gamed easily to create speculative bubbles.
The first system is the combination of buyback lists and mystery packs, which are both common practices in Japanese card shops. In Japan, shops often post their buyback lists specifying key cards and their offers on Twitter like this post:
https://twitter.com/magi_Akiba/status/1637660031809372160
Most shops also sells custom mystery packs which ranges from a few bucks to hundreds or even thousands:
The problem with these is that shops can adjust the buyback prices to make the top prizes of their mystery packs seemed more attracting. Customers might see their buyback list and think “hey, if I won this card from a mystery pack, I can immediately sell the card off at this decent price!”, while in reality this is not going to be the case as the cards pulled will most likely be damaged and not worthy of the full buyback price. However, such buyback lists were often retweeted as “proof” of the card’s market value, creating speculations.
The second system is Mercari. Mercari has a very loose policy of cancelling transactions - either the seller or buyer can initiate a cancellation, and once done neither side can leave feedback to the other (note that you can’t leave feedback in advance either - feedbacks are done in the transaction completing stage), and penalties are seldom given and not revealed. This creates a chance for speculation groups to do their work, as they just have to create listings of their target card with speculated prices, buy each other out and then cancel the transactions. Most people wouldn’t notice that it’s all the same group of people as Mercari doesn’t display buyers on listings, nor do they have filters to filter out incompleted listings. Listings will just sit in search results with the sold tag and their listed price, tricking people into thinking that the card is going up. What’s worse is that listings can be deleted by sellers at any time after transaction, so speculators can also clean up their traces once they’re done with their business.
For the Mercari case, we have already seen several singles getting speculated because there were a wave of listings sold at very high prices over a few hours:
Also, I don’t agree that printing more would resolve the situation we’re in. Consider the following scenario:
Therefore, I would consider misleading information and system loopholes to be more of an issue than supplies in the current situation.
Disagree.
In my limited modern experience, I bought Vstar Universe at a reasonable price and got beautiful, high quality cards. The prices for some of the singles seem objectively high when compared to vintage, however some of the most beautiful AR cards like Lapras go for a few dollars now. All the attention JP is getting is organic and warranted IMO.
Voted yes, but agree with most people here that it is not the entire modern market.
I’m just bummed that my safe haven of affordable Japanese boxes is drying up. That this is probably mainly a supply issue it true. But I also have the feeling that the heavy investor mindset is partly to blame.
That mindset in combination with some modern graded card prices (who cares for Japanese modern graded with that print quality?) does feel bubbly to me.
Maybe I’m just to old, for these rediculous prices I’m going straight back to vintage English for now.
Agree. But specifically for Waifus, specific Japanese-exclusive promos, and certain alt arts.
Also there exists some confusion here… collectors can operate within a speculative bubble. These aren’t mutually exclusively categories.
You can have a speculative bubble and incredible organic demand. Both speculators and collectors operate in the same space at all times. The proportions (e.g., 90% speculators 10% collectors; 50% speculators 50% collectors, etc.) may vary depending on the timeframe, card, set, and so on.
I think this too quite a lot of the time. Maybe that’s because for the longest time older generally meant more expensive. But if someone is completely new to Pokemon, it makes sense that they’d be more interested in modern than vintage.
Ok, with a straight face, I’ve seen that same photo numerous times and it’s more noise than merit.
There is a false correlation happening from flex posts like this being the sole reason for prices. People have been “hoarding” product for ages. I remember a thread 6-7 years ago where someone wanted 20 cases of evolutions; comparable quantity as that photo above. Yet the prices of evolutions didn’t move for years. Why? Because this only works when there is a supply issue.
As stated multiple times, vstar universe is now cheaper than launch. It’s not because of hoarders, it’s because it received multiple waves. Triple beat and any other new set is still wave 1. If it gets the same print as vstar it will drop.
The photo of the Triple Beat boxes wasn’t a comment on supply and prices. Rather, it was meant to show the cause and effect of pumping up a single card within the set (Dendra SAR) and then stockpiling product en masse and selling for the new inflated price (because of said single chase card) to reap the benefits of this artificial bubble.
Sure, Im just responding to the broader topic. I personally wouldn’t feel confident calling all of modern a bubble. I agree waifus feel more bubbly, similar to black labels. Waifu’s creep me out! 
I always view bubbles as something that lacks a discernible reason. Where this topic has a proven answer, supply. It’s the same as 2020 English shining fates. Ton of outrage, yet today, prices are half due to supply.
No clue. I’m worried it’s more of a sign of the “new normal” that Japanese product will be impossible to buy at/close to MSRP. I have no idea what the print run sizes in Japan are compared to English, but would hate to see a compromise in quality in order to accommodate this insane spike in demand tbh.
Yeah. I’m selling any of these cards I get due to the crazy high prices. I would be happy to keep them in my collection if they were the same price as the male counterparts because the artwork on the fa supporters really is incredible. But the prices make them feel a bit weird sadly. So strange.
Modern JP has transitioned from being the value option to the premium option.
I just want supply but I think at Pokémon Company are probably at heart a stubborn as f and cautious Japanese company and are too scared of ruining the good run they’re on. I think the Pokémon Trading Card Classic game is a good example of that. 6 months+ out, one of their flagship products but lottery release only. I feel like there is fear of failure perhaps which runs at the heart of nearly every Japanese company.
Now, IF they have already massively increased supply then the system by which sealed product get the hands into regular consumers in Japan is completely broken. It doesn’t make sense to me that someone in the US could buy a whole case of Eevee Heroes to hoard but out here on Japan I was only ever able one single pack at a convenience store. I don’t really care as FOMO has left me a long time ago but it seems odd to me that is happening and has been happening for nearly two years now.
On the other hand, I think they have attempted to counterbalance the sealed issue with cheap Art Rare cards to allow people to get a a taste of full art cards. But we can see even these get pumped and taken away from the hands of regular consumers and kids. People outside Japan have to realise that people’s wallets aren’t overflowing. Especially kids where a 1000 yen will be a lot of money to them. Luckily they can get the regular version of the card at fairly reasonable prices, but I’m sure they want that bling too lol.
Anyway, I don’t think it is a speculation bubble in the typical definition of the word. It does feel a bit faddy or ブーム as they might say in Japanese though. Like if you go to a card shop now there are always people milling around looking at the showcase often commenting in amazement at the “high” price like it’s the first time they have seen a 5,000 yen card or something lol.
I voted disagree. The question is intentionally universal so my overall answer is not as nuanced as my actual opinion. First I think it is helpful to define what a bubble is. For something to be a bubble, there needs to be a large increase in prices which diverge significantly from the intrinsic values of the items. Actual economics tells us that it’s impossible to identify a bubble until after it has “popped” which is important to keep in mind.
For the people arguing in favor of a speculative bubble, I see three major reasons why. First, the comparatively high prices for modern cards (especially waifus). Second, hoarding of sealed product with the intention of future growth. Third, the nature of Japanese marketplaces and the card market that make it easier to artificially inflate prices.
I see this sentiment a lot when it comes to waifu cards. I am not super familiar with the market, but in my understanding it is not so much a Pokemon market as a wider waifu market in Japan. Put differently, the people buying these cards are not just Pokemon collectors, they’re waifu collectors. You can see similar insane prices in things like Weiss cards, hololive cards, anything with anime women. Pokemon’s massive popularity makes their waifu cards huge chases for waifu collectors. Because these people are paying high prices because the cards feature allegedly attractive anime women (literally an intrinsic property), I don’t think that can be classified as speculation, or at least the role of this part of the market decreases the role of speculation in the price. This also explains why the prices are so significant when compared to other old Pokemon cards. People buying these cards simply aren’t making those comparisons.
There’s really a tale of two sets here. You’ve got things like VSTAR Universe and VMAX Climax, which are absolutely incredible S-tier sets (VSTAR Universe is arguably the greatest set ever produced) but were printed to a degree that prices are relatively affordable. But then some main-series sets like Violet ex are triple MSRP a month after release. Pokemon Japan seems to prioritize printing certain sets over others, so I see both sides here. “People are hoarding” is an abstract point that is hard to quantify but this is where I can possibly agree with the bubble argument, we just don’t know how much is being hoarded. However, with the barrier to entry for Japanese modern being MUCH higher than English, I would have a hard time saying hoarding is anywhere near the level of English.
The idea that systems can be gamed doesn’t necessarily mean that they will be/are being gamed. This is another point that is very hard to argue because you can’t know the definitive cause of prices and if/how much any manipulation may influence them. Scott already hit the point that the ssize of the market makes it much harder to actually manipulate. But there’s another problem however, the idea that all “manipulated” or artificial demand is bound to eventually be corrected isn’t necessarily the case. Some of the OGs may remember back when UnlistedLeaf hyped up some Pikachu card (I think it was one of the Battle Festa full arts) as being the rarest card in the world. The price shot up immediately and everyone said it was just hype from the video. But then…the price never went down and in fact went up from there.
Overall, we can’t be sure whether we’re in a bubble unless it pops. Right now, I agree more with the idea that there are clear, underlying, justifiable reasons other than pure speculation and euphoria that lead to the prices being what they are. Nobody can deny the element of speculation present in paying thousands of dollars in childrens anime trading cards though.
I voted agree but I don’t like the term bubble either, since that would mean demand would plummet right? IMO right now it’s similar to english in 2020. We’re even waiting on the same panacea to all the shortages/outrage/noise: pokemon just printing more, except unlike with covid lockdowns we also couldn’t rely on demand lowering from people starting to go outside again , psa opening etc. It’s just supply, and I only see demand for Japanese cards increasing in the future.
The barriers of entry to Japanese are higher (they really are not that much higher anymore) but there’s also more countries (including china) that will want the original cards in the future, and that’s Japanese not english or whatever other language.
Eh, I don’t even think it’s close to English in 2020. Literally everything in English went to the moon in late 2020. For Japanese, it’s just the boxes and certain chase cards. Most Japanese cards have been slow and steady.
Oh yeah for sure, I was mostly talking about modern though, as wasn’t that also the case for english modern back then? What card in vivid voltage was worth more than 20 bucks besides rainbow pika? Or champions path and the shiny zard?
