Will Japanese set cards ever see a spike in price? And will they ever be comparable with English sets?
They could see an increase in price but they will never be comparable to English for various reasons: easy to grade, no 1st Edition stamp (assuming youâre talking about the early WOTC era) and more abundant. Remember that in some of the Japanese sets, every pack contained a holo.
English is the way to go as far as set cards are concerned.
As mentioned above I doubt Japanese set cards will ever over take English ones from the WOTC era. The demand of English is way larger than it is for Japanese. However this doesnât mean that Japanese set cards donât have room to grow. The original Japanese sets were the true first PokĂ©mon cards and you canât take that fact away, which is why Japanese set cards have reached the point the have today.
In Japan the Japanese cards are more desirable. Native language has a lot of influence on desireability.
Money-wise, that question would have to be answered for every era/set at a time imo, but since the title is more vague than the question:
To me, Japanese sometimes just adds to the overall appeal of a card. Full art cards have the most prominent artwork and when there are letters in the way of that art, the best way to get rid of them is buying a language you canât read. The most beautiful language I donât speak happens to be Japanese Sooo if everyone thought that way, Iâd expect modern Japanese full-arts to take off!
For new regular set cards, I prefer German or English. Same for worlds promos or most promos that are released worldwide.
Western Pokemon boxes on the other hand are the most boring out of all TCGs I know tbh. Theyâre called âdisplaysâ and not boxes for a reason here, because the only way they look nice is when theyâre opened in a store and all the plain white packaging is gone. If all people discovered sealed collecting right now, the Japanese boxes would 98,0% quadruple in price in three years
I donât think Japanese will overtake value of English but the gap between the two has certainly got slimmer. Rightfully so, since Pokemon is Japanese and everything else is technically foreign.
Japanese Set Cards will always be a step down compared to English set cards because thatâs not the wheelhouse of Japanese cards.
If you want to complete a PSA 10 âWOTCâ set in Japanese, that will save you tens of thousands, maybe close to 6-figures but the desirability isnât there to complete those sets in Japanese.
However, for what Japanese set cards lack, they make up via rare and promotional cards. If you are looking strictly for value, buy English set cards 99% of the time and Japanese exclusive promos 99% of the time. You can never go wrong that way.
Personally, I have a âWOTCâ binder of Japanese holos because I donât want to spend an extra $10k+ on ungraded cards as they share the same artwork and thatâs what Iâm going for and Iâd rather use that money for Japanese trophies/prizes. It all comes down to preference at the end of the day and the majority of English-speaking set collectors prefer English cards.