2 mins 39 if you wanna skip
There are some newer grading companies where 8s are pretty strong condition cards. I have bought these several times and cracked them for my NM binder sets the bizarre thing is that they have often been cheaper than buying RAW NM copies which makes no sense to me. It’s as if the unknown quantity of a less reputable grader puts people off to the point that they are paying more for a raw card that is subject to whatever the seller decides is “NM” and all the potential pitfalls of poor pictures at the wrong angles etc.
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There’s also probably a sizeable group that uses the funds from selling lower end stuff for the rare stuff. Which is much harder to do now. I’m not selling much at all right now but my buying has slowed down a lot as a result.
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The double edge sword of a bear/buyers market. Great deals, low/bad liquidity
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another neat video illustrating how large this hobby is
Some cool data points
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My daily sale streak since this thread went live is still happening. Just dropped 4 packages today. 
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Even in a “bear” market, there are still tides rising. Just have to go to the right beach.
I can only speak on experience and that is the month of December was strong. Averaged 3 graded card orders per day. This time of year is usually a bit slower and shouldn’t be used as an indicator of the overall market.
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The market is too big to be just one thing. That’s why some people have stagnating sales and others have daily sales streaks
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In Covid times people were looking for a hobby due to the vast amount of free time they had, now that everyone’s back to work or saw the market went crazy high they said screw it and moved on while a smaller portion remained just collecting newer stuff… at least that’s my theory.
I feel like the graded japanese ultra modern set market is becoming more and more not worth it. Even before 2020, I’ve always been able to cheese some extra money out of grading japanese secrets/full arts and character rares. It’s been some tough sledding lately. Japan becoming more aware of grading, coupled with the immense downward price pressure brought on by the glut of US Sellers has made it not worth doing anymore.
Unless you like trying to catch falling daggers lol.
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j/w if you vault any of your high priced slabs?
if you dont, would you mind sharing why not?
I listed a handful of PSA 9 english gold stars and they were gone within 2 days. Maybe that doesn’t speak for the market as a whole, but at least shows something about the liquidity of gold stars
the market has been steady the past 6 months. The Asian countries are really buying up and controlling the direction at the current moment
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Ive just done a quick review of a few prices and sealed exclusive Japanese modern is absolutely still on the rise.
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rolling 3 months. Pretty steady. same type of pokemon cards, ultra modern raw and small percentage of slabs, nothing changed.
approx 11,000 orders.
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Bit of an interesting article
It’s stupid to compare these. There is a lot of extra work, fees, and risks that come with selling collectables. A 12% average increase per year in a stock portfolio would be quite good.
Also 12% a month is not small at all even for the best of cards. That’d be around a 290% increase in a year. There is no card that can average that for any extended period of time. Imagine you buy a 1st Ed. Base Set booster pack at Walmart for $2.50 in Jan. of 2000. If it increased by 12% per month since then it’d be worth over 373 trillion dollars today.
If a Base Set 1st Ed. booster pack is worth $4,000 today and was bought for $2.50 24 years (288 months) ago then it averaged 2.59% increase per month or around a 36% increase per year. It’s incredible, but there are fees and work when selling and storing and way more risk.
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People are selling less wotc raws than they have been that’s a for sure. In the UK I’ve noticed a massive drop off of wotc raws being listed. How’s the US raw market and other countries markets?
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I can’t speak to raw, but I noticed an uptick in my graded 1st Ed base sales.
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