Nice bait bro
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Yes, keep the hype eyes towards modern. I still have old cards I want to buy.
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Does it really matter if this or that card outprices an older card? Like, it’s interesting to see the price development, but as someone collecting mostly vintage cards, I don’t care that much if this Lillie outprices my favorite cards. I just collect what I like anyway. The only way this price would bother me is if I was going for the Lillie and was outpriced.
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Not sure if you are serious or not, getting some major @dblast vibes here 
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I do agree that we here on e4 are in a vintage and trophy bubble, but I find that quite calming.
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“Honus Wagner is boring and fugly compared to my 1/1 mega prism patch refractorino it’s clear which one will hold interest over time”
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To be fair, I was exaggerating when I said record amounts. I don’t think they will actually dethrone cards with even fewer copies available, but I do see the price increasing significantly and people repeating the oft repeated “I’d rather get insert older card here than this”.
And the main reason for that is that I believe there are enough people that collect for the art. I haven’t seen the 3 Eeveelutions in person, but after seeing the others from Eevee Heroes and comparing them to English - it’s like 2 different cards, so those that do have the money either now or in the future, and it seems like there are many these days, would eventually want to get them.
Perhaps I am mistaken since I don’t and can’t play in that end of the pool, but cards this expensive would or should be displayed and Snap cards really do look terrible. This also goes for the illustration contests’ cards for kids - not all, but many of them. Just because it’s limited in quantity doesn’t make them good art.
The trophy cards I’ve seen are just bad CG art, though at least there’s more justification for historical significance than Snap cards or kid-illustrated cards.
Don’t collect and don’t know much about sports cards so can’t appreciate the sarcasm and comparison.
If anything, hand drawn old cards make sense to be worth more because of their place in time. I really don’t understand why anyone collects modern sports cards though which is just Photoshop and fancy patterns.
But then again, I collect for art so that’s probably why. And second, since I mainly only follow football (soccer for Americans) I have no idea why anyone would ever want cards of players not from your team. Seems counterintuitive.
T206 Honus Wagner has sold repeatedly for millions of dollars. It’s the most valuable baseball card because Wagner had his card pulled because of NIL (Name, Image, Likeness). It’s a tobacco advertisement era card that isn’t flashy, but yet stupid expensive. Now enter a modern 1 of 1 shiny Topps Chrome refractor thingy magiggy. People go nuts over that, but isn’t worth 1% of the T206.
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Thanks for the explanation. It doesn’t seem like a fair comparison to me because if we’re talking about art, modern art, and especially modern ‘full arts’ (alt whatever) that are illustrated look like art whereas the trophies I’ve seen and Snap cards are dated CGI.
I’m assuming no modern sports cards are illustrated and the refractor etc are all just different shapes, holo patterns or graphic design which is why I don’t understand its collectability but again, I’m not in the US nor do I follow US sports.
Not to get too philosophical here, but at the end of the day, the demand for cards is based on a combination of personal preference and perceived value through a weird self-causing feedback loop that is the market. It’s all made up at some level. So in a way, what we’re really at odds about here in terms of modern vs vintage promos is to what degree the demand is stable.
Modern has seen insane gains in a short amount of time, but there’s no evidence that it isn’t ephemeral and the buyers won’t simply move onto the next thing in a few months. With older promos, the history gives a bit more confidence to how these will perform in the future.
Part of me hates reducing cards to investments, but it look at it from that perspective, that’s another way to illustrate the difference between the two. So in terms of downside risk, which is usually a smarter way to approach seeing gains long term, there’s far less of a chance of the old trophies going significantly down in value compared to these new cards that have only been around for a couple years.
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It’s obvious people are attracted to flashy cards, big vibrant colors, manufactured rarity. I always think back to one of Rudy’s (Alpha Investments) Rudy-isms, “when everything is special, nothing is special.” Many modern cards give off that vibe to me. There are going to be exceptions but just look at all the rainbow rare cards from Sun and Moon era, they are that quote in card form. I’m not speaking from a paper value standpoint, even though that’s how we measure a lot of these cards, just more of a perspective from where I’m sitting in terms of what I’d like to add to my collection or not.
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I sold a BGS 9.5 at the end of last year for 20k. Looks like I should’ve held a few more months. It is what it is I guess.
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Can’t time the top or bottom 
…don’t feel bad most here have similar experiences with other cards I’m sure
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You lost me when you said:
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I spend lot of money on vintage cards for the story, historical significance and scarcity, I’d much rather own an “ugly” snap card than 100 “beautiful” vmax alt arts.
You can always create a new beautiful alt art card. You can never create a new snap card or championship arena or 1st edition charizard, etc
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What end of the pool do you mean?
The beauty of seeing these price ranges indicates how vast and healthy the Pokemon card market has grown. We have always seen examples of demand that uprooted the “traditional” parameters for valuing collectibles, but to see such growth across so many “genres” within Pokemon TCG alone is quite exciting to bear witness.
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I suppose it’s more of a controversial opinion here than elsewhere. To me it’s the same as autographed cards that you weren’t there for or who are addressed to someone else. You didn’t win that trophy, so it’s meaningless. Same goes for medals or awards won by someone else.
I’d rather not spend money on cards I find ugly when I collect for the art. Everyone collects differently. I’m just here pointing out why some of these ‘modern’ cards can challenge prices that the niche on here love. It’s kind of like that waifu thread earlier or another thread where someone mentioned that not until recently did the Japanese view Pokemon cards as collectible as opposed to utilitarian.
And that along with the Chinese debut suddenly means there is ‘new’ money in the space chasing cards that others don’t see the appeal of. Those groups have huge pockets though, so your traditional scarce cards are also or presumably will rise.
Eventually I will tire of being a dissenting opinion on here, but whilst I haven’t, I’m just adding some perspective. People call those modern stonkers a hype echo chamber, it’s not so different than here.
The rich pool. I am assuming that if you’re spending that much on collectibles, then you would also display them, but it is an assumption since I’m not part of the pool. I do know that many seem to just store their cards off-site in a vault or a climate controlled safe or whatever but at that point it’s more of an investment than anything else.
I recently said on Discord, if every Pokemon got an AR, I might just sell every other card I have. I don’t particularly care that they are cheap. The end goal for me was always “catching them all” in the most aesthetic way possible and it’s much easier to do when the cards are cheap and not have to worry about the price fluctuations, storage, opportunity cost etc of rarer cards.
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All good points and always interested to learn what interests other people in Pokémon. E4 is simply an exceptionally knowledgeable collection of people where a lot of serious collectors have been coming for over a decade and certainly many are into vintage.
But these people are just one community of a lot that are into vintage. Some may be in the end of the pool (to which you call “rich people”), most are not rich at all. I certainly am not rich haha I barely make it. I have some expensive product and I don’t display it. It just sits in my room in boxes haha. I also don’t show it off on social media either. Only here once in a while and at conventions. For a lot of people, it’s just owning it that matters.
The group interested in the OG is large and sure there are more quantity of modern collectors overall but I just wouldn’t lose sight of the reach of vintage as well.
The whole resurgence of pokemon - the way I see it - was because 90’s babies like Logan Paul thrust the roots of the hobby back into the spotlight in 2020. It wasn’t modern product that did that.
“Hype since Golden Week (first week of May) for Dummies.” Random Twitter post so take with a grain of salt.
https://twitter.com/tohokuringo/status/1665614131033145347
- Clove worked with Hikaru (famous YouTuber in Japan, just think of him as Logan Paul but only interested in opening mystery packs and pull Waifus) and released online mystery pack called Hikaru Collaborations. Customers would go to their site, pay 1000 JPY to make a lottery draw, and Clove prepared 50,000 draws which include top prizes like PSA 10 Waifus. The first 2 waves sold out within hours, allowing Clove to rake in over 100 million JPY. Clove scooped a huge amount of PSA 10 Waifus from the market in order to prepare for the lottery.
https://twitter.com/CloveOripa/status/1663124909671997440
- The drastic decrease of PSA 10s from market caused the prices to hype.
- Raw cards also went up as people were looking for cards to submit.
- People late into the party starting to look the next chase card, spreading the hype across the entire market.
- Clove starting to look for top prizes for building wave 3 and raised their buyback prices even further (the Tweet below is a comparison of their prices between May 4 and June 4). They basically don’t have to worry about the cost since a wave will bring them tens of millions in return.
https://twitter.com/insurancegori/status/1665231296740638720
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