It is funny that so many social media influencers (they think they are influencers) are totally flipping and now pumping rips (off) and breaks on various platform.
They were “collectors” and hated investments. Now they are worse than pokemon investors, they on various platforms doing breaks. .lol. That is your friends you roll with. So idiotic . You have to laugh at the big collectors.
Happy holidays.
PS: i roll alone and stay away from big collectors, big influencers, they are the most double talking , hating people that deny everything and select context minded idiots. Watch who YOU ROLL with.
There is nothing wrong with breaks. It’s a gamble, just like opening packs. Most larger/more popular breakers are up front with their pricing and do less to “screw people over”
While I would agree that for Pokemon, breaking hasn’t had a major effect (resellers/“investors” are the biggest drag on availability of retail), I believe that breaking has played a major role in the disfunction of the sports card market. Breakers hoard product, rip-off buyers, and directly lead to major price increases. Now they aren’t the only culprit, but without breaking, there would be no way that panini and topps could justify hiking the cost of their products to such a high level.
Unless you’re Beyonce, [successful diva/divo] you’ve got no business giving unsolicited advice to people. And no advice worth listening to is given for free.
Now, those are generalizations, and I’ve received great free advice from people, they weren’t out there peddling it. If you look at Pratte, for example, or Rusty, they literally have people paying them first. They’re not a youtube channel to drive clicks and “influence”. It’s a sad state we’re in, where some of the “top investment podcasts” don’t even know how fundamentals like options and ForEx, or economic practices like tariffs [hot topic] and subsidies work. CrAZy! I gotta stop before this become “unsolicited advice”… or has it already?
Just curious if there’s any evidence to support that or if it’s just something you feel is true? I think there’s a good argument that the millions of casual fans and kids that just want to open product are the biggest drag on supply. For example, in beanie babies there is probably a higher ratio of resellers active in the market but the supply is never-ending. Similarly it’s like blaming resellers for the lack of Taylor Swift tickets and not the millions of fans that would buy a ticket if given the opportunity.
However I think its important to note that the impacts I’m describing on Pokemon vs Sports Cards really aren’t in the same tier. Sports cards are skyrocketing in price straight from the manufacture, purely so that they can make more money, and in turn, the cost on the everyday collector is being increased as more and more the chain of purchase is manufacturer → breaker → consumer. Boxes (containing 12 packs) that would historically cost $200-$300 straight from panini are now being sold for $900, and the packs from those boxes are being sold by breakers for $100-$150 to hobbyist. For retail sports cards, prices have increased a bit ($20 boxes are now $40), but because hobby boxes have skyrocketed in value, there is more demand for the cheaper boxes, and scalping runs rampant for most sets, so that the chain of purchase is manufacturer → retailer → reseller → consumer. The end result is a secondary market with jacked up prices both for hobby and retail boxes.
For Pokemon, the impact is currently significantly smaller and limited to reducing availability of in demand sets for MSRP. I do truly believe the difference between availability of a set like temporal forces vs surging sparks is the increased amount of scalping/“investing” that occurs. This is because I believe that Pokemon is actually pretty good about printing enough product to meet collector demands. Subreddits like r/PKMNTCGDEALS and r/pokeinvesting are filled with posts of “deals” of MSRP SS packs that sell out within a few minutes of being posted and there are many twitter bots that post when certain sets come back into stock at retailers. The demographics for these subreddits and twitter bots is your typical retail investor who think hoarding sleeved blisters and collection boxes is going to make them a ton of money.
As I mentioned before though, the scale at which sports cards is being affected vs pokemon cards is not even close to the same level. You can still readily buy SS packs for $6 online, vs individual sports card packs being upwards of 4-6x more expensive than MSRP right at release.
