I’m happy for you too @Slade. I love this set, but have to love them from afar and settle for the s Chinese set for now
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Ya I actually collected the Chinese set first and graded myself at a PSA 10 sequential.
Now I got the Japanese :]
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I’d never spend this kind of money, but I really think people need to update what low/high pop is.
Of course these cards have a slight difference that they are accessible in all other languages, but in the end there is a cap of 3,000 for Japanese. How on earth is that considered high?
3,000 copies is really high if it’s put into the same category as trophy or high end. We are used to seeing copies like 6 or 12 for actual trophies, and 100 for Art winners.
These lottery cards are put on a pedestal similar to trophies. 3,000 >>>> 100
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Yes, but people act as if the consumer base is the same as 2010 when it has grown multiple times since. Will it be as big as it currently is? Probably not, but I even thought that in 2021 and I’m sure people re-entering the hobby from 2016 onwards thought the same at their point of entry.
The second point is…I’m not sure what to term it, but the idea that somehow trophies and kindergarten art is more worthy of their prices than other more accessible cards. Sure, there are much fewer copies, but is everyone entering the hobby eventually going to end up with those as their goals?
This bit should go in the unpopular opinion thread but people pretending that the art on those is comparable to or better than actual artists is ridiculous. They have some historical note, though not really interesting or notable in the grand scheme of things to really justify the price IMO. The extreme scarcity is doing all the lifting and it just seems wrong for certain people to expect everyone else to want those cards. It’s like people forget that most people collect because they like the Pokemon or they like the art.
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Lots of room to grow in the PSA pop report as well, with extremely high PSA 10 rates.
I mentioned that the PSA 10 rate is extremely high: 91%, 93%, and 94%. This means that when these cards are submitted for grading, they are overwhelming appraised as a PSA 10.
This rate is why the cards aggressively dipped in value over 2024. Supply quickly met demand. The $5,000+ sales were when the pops were only at a few dozen in PSA 10.
Strictly speaking about promo releases, I would say 3000 copies is considered limited due to the absolute rarity but not rare enough to wait for months or years on end for a copy to pop up. Given the popularity and pricing, a copy, usually graded is always available for purchase. Being in budget is a different thing. In modern context ofcourse it is not really high pop, but it is also not rare. Just limited.
I also think for art academy cards (and also trophy cards), there is also a matter of prestige that is attached to its release. A competetion where you win among the thousands of entrants, is very admirable and art is obviously subject to taste. In my personal observation, what scarcity does is that it exposes the cards to a limited number of people. I am sure a lot of collectors are not really aware of the art academy cards due to them just not readily available for sale. However, it does indeed the heavy lifting for the price, becuse out of the 100 or so which are released, the onus is on the winner to be able to sell them. So all of the 100 available copies might never be available for sale.
Cheers!
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Yes, but the cap is still 3,000 no matter what. And even if 3,000 got PSA 10, starting from such a low amount, over time cards will get lost and damaged. My point is that 3,000 is low and it is the widespread accessibility through other languages that keeps the price down vs trophy and illustration promos.
I was referring more to the Pichu/Arceus/Zorua promos which have a template and also literal children colouring in that fetch high prices. I’m not sure how limited they were but I think pretty limited as well. I’m not sure the age of all the AA card artists, but I know at least some of them were done by artists.
But even so, would not the prestige be tied to the person winning it and not the person buying it after? In Pokemon the playing and collecting worlds are so different that to me, it’s almost mutually exclusive. The buyers have no idea how the game works, why a player or a deck won and the card itself is a generic CGI Pikachu or CGI item unrelated to the winner or deck.
It’s different to me than say sports memorabilia (not sports cards) where tens-hundreds of thousands of fans cheer the team/player and whatever they wore etc has historical significance. Pokemon may have millions of collectors but 99% of them have no idea who wins any tournament, what deck they won it with, what strategy was used etc.
edit: Which is why I’ve also said that something like the PLA/SV promos distributed with the games is more historically significant and means more than all the tournament promos. One is tied to an event that most fans would have experienced and the other is not. One features Pokemon and locations in the game that most would have played and the other is a CGI trophy or random item that is tied to nothing.
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This Flareon is why I don’t collect all-language Slowpoke cameos
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Where did this sell? And when?
That is a steal lol
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Yesterday on Heritage
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Good on the buyer! Looks like it was the same buyer on all 3 cards. I know someone actively looking for all 3 for a buy price of 13K. That is a great 3K flip!
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How can you tell it’s the same buyer on all 3
Actually you’re right, I don’t know. Due to the same price ended on all 3 indicates the second highest bidder did the same highest bid on all 3. But I wouldn’t be surprised if one person bought all three due to it being a complete set.