Long-term Price Increase for Raw Cards

Hey there everyone!

This is my first post here, however I have been reading other threads, watching smpratte’s videos, and have been doing my own research as well. I am a college student with a part-time income, so it isn’t a surprise that I only started going heavy into the hobby recently, pre-quarantine.

My collection goal is to complete every English set, raw, in binders. To help fund this, I’ve recently started selling any cards I find for cheap or don’t need/aren’t in condition to my liking on eBay, and have been making good money so far! I recently came across a lot which advertised some nice older cards, so I bought it in a heartbeat for what I believed was a steal price - and oh boy was it, because one of the cards NOT shown in the pictures was a Gold Star Flareon!

A quick look at the selling history for the past few months has shown this card has almost doubled in price, raw. I know Gold Stars have exploded in demand and have spiked in price, but I just don’t have enough experience or data to answer some of the questions I have, and I was hoping to get the community’s opinions on them:

Does a demand/price increase for a graded card increase demand/price for the raw version of that card in any condition?

The more sealed product is opened, the more single cards exist. Does this have any large impact on the prices of raw vintage holos and higher-end cards such as Flareon?

For those with the knowledge/experience, has the trend for raw vintage card prices historically been increasing, or do you believe it to have flatlined? Or is it set-specific? Is it expected for raw Gold Stars to continue to increase, or have they flatlined as well?

Finally, this is simply an opinionated question: If you had the Gold Star Flareon (it is in around MP condition), would you sell it now or hold it to sell in the future?

I know this is a large post, but if you made it this far, thank you! I’d appreciate any and all feedback I could get. I’m trying to learn a lot more about this hobby and go all-in to reach my goal, so any information or opinions would be extremely helpful!

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Short answer yes raw card prices increase just as PSA prices increase. Though unlikely you will experience high margin with majorly played cards that are not top tier. Graded cards are just raw cards that are now in a plastic case but most people do not bother to grade majorly played cards that would sell for the same ungraded vs PSA 3.

It’s harder to track non-graded card prices because there’s no database like pokemonprice.com

For the ex series sets with gold stars one would hope 99.5% of sealed product incl. blisters has been opened by this point so I do not expect a flood of Flareon gold stars that will decrease your card’s value.

I have a Flareon I am keeping for now.

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