Here’s how I see this cycle playing out (just my speculations):
Phase 1: Increased Competition and Supply Creates Downward Pressure on Prices
Many desirable items with strong fundamentals will also be effected by the overall market momentum. Smart collectors and experienced businesses will discern which cards have over-corrected and consolidate these cards during this liquidation phase. They’ll also choose not to sell into these lower prices, but wait. For many, including collectors in this thread, this is unfolding now.
Phase 2: Downward Pressure on Prices Forces Sellers Out of the Market
Many sellers will realize that profit margins aren’t large enough to justify the time and investment necessary to stay competitive. As these easy profits dry-up, sellers, businesses, and start-up companies will leave the Pokemon space. This will initially put further downward pressure on prices via mass liquidations, but then transition into price stability and growth by culling competition.
Phase 3: The Market Will Begin to Stabilize and Fundamentals Re-emerge
Without the current saturation of sellers/business, competition on sales platforms will decrease (profit margins will still be low). However, the savvy collectors and businesses who consolidated “the good stuff” during the previous phases, will begin to control the market on those items, not needing/willing to sell at low prices. I suspect prices will begin a slow and steady assent at this point, at least for cards with strong fundamentals.
Phase 4: Eventually, People Realize Pokemon is Profitable Again
Unless there is some significant catalyst for global attention again, the market will grow more organically this time. More sellers and businesses gradually return to flip cards. People will be more cautious not wanting to be burned, seeing what happened in 2020-2021. Fundamentals will become more important than ever, as will market and sales data.
Phase 5: Growth and Momentum Lead to Mass Speculation and Leveraging
The larger financial and collectibles sphere notices the growth in Pokemon and piles-in without any discretion for fundamentals. People who have left the market for years assume it’s “pumping again” and buy whatever they can, hoping to get in on it. Once again, mass produced items become temporarily profitable . . . perhaps even scarce if buyouts and scalping outpace production, which is entirely possible if Pokemon reduces production with the lower demand. If and when this “boom” happens it’s likely to be much smaller in comparison to 2020-2021, but exhibit the same psychology.
A lot has been said on this topic and I agree with the overall sentiment of stagnation/downward trend.
Something that I haven’t seen a lot of on this thread or on e4 is the “collector cycle.” Most people enter a hobby for - on average - 12-24 months. Very few people leave a hobby the same year that they pick it up and most do not stay longer than two years. This is especially true in the TCG/CCG world.
Every boom and bust cycle is accompanied by an inflation in the collector base and a shedding of the excess when prices go back down. I believe that we are entering the “shedding” period where the prices will soften, the number of serious collectors will shrink, the amount of money spent on a given month/year will lessen, and some sellers - maybe even most - will begin to feel financial stress from their once-healthy hobby income.
1-2 years is a long time. Children grow up, teens graduate high school, college students change majors and eventually leave for the workforce, and adults change jobs, have families, and move around the country/world. Sticking with a hobby through major life events - including financially demanding life events (e.g., paying for college, a new baby, a home, etc.) - is extremely difficult. We may not feel this way because e4 is comprised of very serious collectors who would rather die than to leave their hobby, but this isn’t really the case among most people who enjoy shiny cardboard.
Not sure how many of you are into the graded/vintage video game market, but i believe some parallels currently exist to what @pfm 's initial post explained in great detail.
Vintage graded games have cratered in value and alot of people/vendors are stuck holding bags full of WATA 9.2 Sealed Brilliant Diamond and CGC 9.4 Sealed Grand Theft Auto V esque inventory that either won’t sell or isn’t priced to sell. The same thing for sealed or complete in box vintage games or sytems.
I’m not sure if this is a symptom caused by the majority of vendors/individuals inventories being purchased during the 2020 collectibles boom.
These are all things I’m noticing in Pokemon as well.
I don’t really follow but I have been watching Wata and CGCs TATs to gauge demand. Just based on that I assume the market is dead cause wow tats have come down lol
“When it comes to markets, history rarely repeats itself, but it can rhyme.”
Hype Phase/Black Swan Events
Rapidly Increasing Speculation and Demand
Media and Pop Culture Influence
(Pandemic checks + Logan Paul = Whatnot)
Rising Prices:
Increased Valuation
“Investor” Participation
Peak Hype:
FOMO
(Your Mom, coworker or even Grandma have possibly heard about how much your PSA 4 Chorizo is worth)
Deflation Phase:
Market Saturation Eventually, the market becomes saturated as more product (graded cards) enter circulation. Too many cooks are in the kitchen. This can lead to a surplus, diminishing the scarcity that initially drove high prices. Supply is beginning to outweigh demand.
Seller Overwhelm and Panic Selling:YOU ARE HERE (imo)
Increased Supply: Scholars call this the @PFM Inflection Point. As collectors and investors sense a decline in value, many will sell their cards and flood the supply.
Panic Selling: If the decline is sudden or severe, panic selling can exacerbate the drop in prices as sellers try to offload their cards before values decline further.
(I don’t think true panic has hit yet)
Stabilization and Reevaluation:
Market Correction: If you look at your collection with floating price tags above everything, it’s going to sting for a while.
Reevaluation of Value: Older, Rarer, Minter, Better cards will come down, but not nearly as much as modern set cards or anything else with a PSA population over a few thousand.
(if you’re still here: Congrats! Pick up some cards at relatively affordable prices before this all happens again in 2026)
If we just focus on the price, I agree the price is relatively stable and slightly downwards.
But the sales volume has increased dramatically over the last year, imagine a scenario where the supply doubled, but the overall market is still stable,
I would say its on a good trend, it’s preparing for something larger.
Entirely possible and if anyone has good insights into the numbers, it’s you Fishy! The hype may still be too fresh in people’s minds for a complete panic. Like mentioned elsewhere in this thread, we would need to see an observable pattern of a true lack of confidence across auction platforms.
Zoom out in a few months and you’ll see that this is probably influenced by the holiday + tax season. People want to sell their cards during the holidays and they want to get their sales in before the new fiscal year.
Yea, that chart is literally just the last 3 months and we’re talking about a trend over 3 or so years so it doesn’t really provide any useful information compared to previous years other than yearly trends like you said.
So an increase in number of auctions and a general decrease in price and this somehow disagrees with my original point?
If anything, I’d be interested in seeing the auction:bin listing ratio across time and also the difference in auction price to bin price across time. That could be a really good indicator of general liquidity and how eager people are to sell.
I will personally add that after mid 2021 I continued to pay attention to the Pokémon market here and there but drastically changed my buying habits to very selective purchases. Usually items that come up on auction that I feel I could get cheaper.
Don’t know if this directly relates, but the meme about people becoming interested in species collecting (myself included) could be a sign of people finding stable budget friendly options rather than dictating their expenses on the price timeline set by the market.
As I head into a job market myself as a recent college grad, I also don’t foresee myself dropping big money on Pokémon unless I see an immediate liquid opportunity (ie, trophy for 10 grand priced at 3 grand that I could hold and flip quickly).
I’ve definitely taken large losses on the cards I picked up since I joined back in 2020 but I also have picked up cards that I would have never gotten otherwise before due to the major boom and sales I did.
I agree that businesses will shut down, and junk slabs will grow in volume and decrease even more in price.
Reminds me of when everyone stopped selling prizm sports cards in 2021 because they realized there was way too much supply unless they were numbered and everyone raced to the bottom.
First of all: fantastic thread and I agree with most of your opinions.
What I always found interesting is seeing people sending in thousands of modern regular holos/Vs (or even commons/uncommons/rares) and trying to flip them. To me it was clear that this is not organic demand and this will eventually die down.
As some of you already mentioned in one way or another, I think the biggest problem will face the people that blindly followed some YouTubers/other influencers and bought shitloads of modern cards, just with the intention to flip them and get rich, will really struggle. Furthermore, a lot of these people did not realize that their actions my not have been really sustainable. When I am bored I sometimes browse through r/PokeInvesting and I am fascinated how delusional people are.
But I think this does not only apply to Pokemon. My wife is interested in some other areas of collectibles and she regularly tells me that there are many people that buy stuff, just because an influencer told them they can sell it for profit later on. But in reality, a few months later the prices of those goods have crumbled.
However, I still think that there is a really huge (organic) demand in Pokemon as well, also in other parts of the franchise. For example, I am currently also collecting the main line video games from Gens I to IV and whenever I see a good deal popping up (like 15-20% under market price) they are immediately sold. For example, I recently bought Pokemon FireRed cartridge which was listed for 50€ (current going rate in my area is 70-80€) and when I picked it up locally (which was about one hour after the listing was put online), the lady told me she got dozens of messages of people interested in the game. But I still see in that field of the hobby that prices are also going down a little bit as well.
In the end, I think the slogan “collect what you really like” is now truer then ever. This will not only help you make reasonable and well-thought purchases but even when prices are falling it does not impact you that much because you never bought it with the intention to flip it for a quick buck.
A glass half full thought is that collection goals become more obtainable.
My collection may halve in value but so will the cards I want. Or in the case of stagnation income will continue to rise while prices don’t move.
I’m in the market for housing and navigating the current interest rates. I was unable to buy a home the last two years (well chose to not buy) but I continued to save the different between rent and mortgage at 7-8% and now have quite a nest egg. In five years time if prices stay stagnant I won’t even need a down payment.
A bit tangential but I feel Pokemon cards are similar right now.
I don’t think any YouTuber will be so open to any public (or even private) forum, but you would think that a leading indicator would have to be known by them as their views start to taper off or maybe even crater. I guess this should actually be public knowledge since views are there, but obviously it’s easier to check on an individual’s dashboard.
There’s also the private view through rates of their videos, though I am not sure whether that is relevant for broad interest as opposed to the quality of their individual content.
edit: and obviously the more casual/entertainment YTers are probably the most aligned for this thread (like PokeRev and Leonhart)
I don’t know how many views per video he got in the last 2-3 years, but apparently he still averages out at at least around 100k views by churning out a video almost daily. Pretty impressive tbh and I’m sure he’s making a good living off it.
What’s even more impressive is the sheer repulsiveness that his thumbnails still have after all these years. If anything, they became even flashier and more agonizing. When will he finally snap his jaw?
Some of these look the same, are we sure youtubers dont just do a yearly photoshoot where all of the thumbnails from that year are based on? Glad I am not on the open mouth thumbnail side of youtube😅
To add to @zork’s point. Pokemon has spent the last several years going through a very typical bubble cycle. Look at any relatively liquid card and you’ll see what I’m talking about.
It’s a textbook example of a bubble, but we can see that it’s already returned to the average. I’m not sure if there’s more pain to come or not (humanity generally is pretty piss poor at predicting future prices), but it probably varies by card tbh.
Does this mean pokemon’s dying? Of course not, but it does mean that the pokemon market is returning to normal / the average in terms of demand/pricing.
Easy money days are gone and folks who chased the hype have likely been in pain for a while now. There’s plenty of opportunity and demand still in Pokemon but not if you’re “dumb money”.
