I’m seeing a lot of movement with Japanese base this past month. What do you all think of it? It’s the original printing of these cards that we all come to know and love.
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Was only a matter of time. Japanese base set is pretty cheap considering it’s the first print of the most iconic set in Pokemon.
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English gets too expensive for the average buyer so they go to Japanese, was bound to happen.
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There’s a big push from Jeremy and guys like him as well. My biggest % gain on a Pokemon card was from japanese base
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Definitely an uptick in prices of Jpn, noticed it across the board through ex series stuff as well. I think there’s definitely an element of people getting priced out of English high grades and opting to switch languages to get the 10s/9s. Nothing wrong with that for sure but I dunno. Curious how much is genuine interest in the card versus settling for a cheaper version of it.
Personally, I think if you don’t have a particularly strong nostalgic attachment to English wotc then Japanese makes a perfectly fine alternative. The arts the same and you used to pay less than English (not sure if you’re paying that much less now between a JPN 9/10 and an English ~8). However, pretty amazed at the growth as I didn’t buy my 9 zard that long ago (maybe 4-5 months?) and the price more than doubled. Guess that’s the new norm in this market.
As someone who came into the hobby without a childhood nostalgic connection to English Pokemon, I find Japanese cards quite attractive - regardless of price ratio. I already was a big fan of Japanese art in general, so it’s no big stretch. I still think English is great too, especially first edition WOTC - but I can see Japanese becoming more desirable as more people come into the hobby who don’t have that childhood connection to English. Can’t speak for anyone else, but it makes sense to me.
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I like english because it’s a chase to find actual mint cards. I like Japanese because it’s a way more relaxing task to find mint raw cards and it’s also cheaper. Eventually the mint raw population of english was gonna dry up though, leading to upticks in the graded english prices, leading to this rise that we’re seeing from Japanese cards. The good thing is that it’s still definitely possible to find mint ungraded Japanese cards lying around
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