Thoughts on why these cards aren’t more popular ? they are extremely cheap to find but most PSA 10’s are in the single digits population wise perhaps due to the nature the cards were obtained and how hard they are to grade.
fantastic artworks , despite the lack of holos , even the unpopular unevolved species get their unique place in the set, every time I see another vending promo I marvel the art because I probably have never seen it before
very cheap for binder sets , a definite chase for a psa graded set
just want to know thoughts and opinions on this , maybe because the set is a bit niche ? or too big? is the set underrated / undervalued
Supply and demand. These cards came from vending machines, making them very accessible at the time of purchase, inexpensive and as Japanese only cards this reduces the demand for the cards.
PSA 10’s population is in the single digits because not a lot of people choose to grade them, not because they are hard to grade. A good example is ooyama’s pikachu population report; 63% of the entire population of ooyama’s pikachu sits in PSA 10. With the majority of the cards fetching low value, it becomes increasingly less beneficial to grade the cards since the bulk of the cost will come from the card’s grade.
I completely agree it has really nice artwork, but like you said, the lack of holos and the use of a lot of unpopular pokemon makes them directly less wanted since it’s unpopular.
Ooyama’s pikachu is still really memorable and pretty popular in the vending series. There are definitely some chase cards in the set that are worth quite a bit PSA 10, in the 80-100$~ range. That’s quite a bit! Like all pokemon sets, there will be less popular cards in the sets fetching lower values than popular cards. That is just the reality.
I’m not sure about my input in regards to it being underrated or undervalued without putting personal bias due to my lack of experience with the set, but I think the set is just right. It’s not worthless as a set and collecting an entire PSA 10 collection will cost you quite a bit but at the same time, the cards in raw are much more affordable making it an affordable collector’s piece.
You can still pick up the entire vending lot for a cheap price too I think. I bought all 3 sets for under 300 sealed about a year or two ago. Not sure if the price has changed much, but definitely glad I grabbed it.
