I went to a local card show today in the Northeast US. I don’t get to go to shows too often as I have a couple of toddlers that typically occupy my weekends.
I also have taken a pause from hardcore collecting over the past 6 months.
Anyway, the show was smaller in size (~100 vendors) but about 95% of the product was modern cards. There was actually more One Piece than there was vintage pokemon. By vintage I typically mean WOTC cards.
Am I just an old fart now? Has the market changed that much?
Wondering what others have seen at their local shows
There is just no supply of vintage, it’s drying out. The more people enter the hobby, the more these cards with 200 or 500 pop enter permanent collections and never enter the market again (or after a very long time)
Vendors are kind of forced to only deal with modern
I suppose thats a possibility but in certain cases some vendors weren’t even aware of stuff like Trainer Deck cards, or in some extreme scenarios shadowless vs unlimited
I suppose scarcity is the most likely reason though
Vintage scarcity is not the reason. Modern is the easiest to sell. Everyone is looking for modern, so sellers stock up on it. Vintage is less liquid in today’s in-person market.
For these specifically, they’re niche enough that it’s just not something that has enough liquidity to be worth most vendors’ time, as most of their value is tied up in history/rarity/scarcity/unique attributes. Plus, there is a level of education needed to explain and understand what they are, and to tell the whole story you need to see the back of the card.
In contrast, there is zero explanation needed when someone walks up to a booth and sees a PSA 10 Moonbreon (for example); all of the story you need to understand as a buyer is the beauty of the card right in front of you (all of this coming from someone who loves and owns the Trainer Deck A and B decks/cards and does not own or intend to buy a Moonbreon).
Card shows don’t paint the full picture of Pokemon collecting, they generally just give a snapshot of what is selling frequently. I’d keep picking up Trainer Deck A and B cards if I were you
Modern print runs are huge compared to vintage, so there are just way more modern cards out there
As others have mentioned, liquidity in modern is super high due to the level of interest
Most Pokemon sellers have a buy at 80% sell at 100% market value business model, which means you need to churn inventory to turn a reasonable profit. Tying up significant amounts of capital in vintage cards that may not move quickly is not the best business play
Most card show Pokemon vendors are new hobbyists (e.g. joined in the last 5 years), so they likely don’t have experience/knowledge of the vintage market
Show I was at last weekend was interestingly probably around 60-70% modern.
There was a lot of SwSh/SV stuff around, but also a huge amount of raw WoTC from multiple vendors, which surprised me. A couple of the larger stalls were especially heavy-hitters, with plenty of graded high calibre vintage….which was exciting to see, until you looked at the price tags!
Ex Era was dotted around, with a decent sprinkling of Gold Stars about, but DP/BW cards were practically nonexistent.
The market just seems to be chaotic at the moment; different from one week to the next.
I agree with the sentiments here. ex era you’ll see floating around, mainly gold stars, but BW and especially DP is never present. Which is a shame as I’d love to find some PSA 9 LV.X around
I don’t think the market has changed as in people care less about vintage than they did before, more like it’s grown a lot more, and the newcomers naturally are into modern more than vintage.
Here in the UK before the recent boom, even during the Pokemon go boom in 2016, we didn’t have many card shows or stores in comparison to today. But since then, they’ve definitely popped up a lot (like five/ten times more)
I feel a lot of the attention on Pokemon is fuled by profitability and investment these days, so it makes sense that modern cards dominate these spaces, since that’s where the most hype and profit is around social media and paid advertisements.
For me, at card shows in the UK modern still takes up most of the space, but you can still find some nice vintage cards. It’s usually just a couple tables though. But it’s still very refreshing to see. I’ve even found some great cards hidden in the middle of modern PSA slab boxes for good prices.
Vintage isn’t going anywhere that’s for sure. If it did, I’d stop going to shows and stores
