I know exactly what he is saying. And you can absolutely make “real money” in this hobby if you know what you are doing.
Lol so just because YOUR collection is only worth 25-35K means no one in the hobby can make real money. Got it.
Look, there are no guarantees and you need to have business sense to do it, but there is a reason why a decent number of people on this forum make a living off of selling Pokemon cards.
Definitely.
Again, there are no guarantees. No one can definitively say, “You are GUARANTEED to make money if you do this. No question.” But the potential is there if you are dedicated, engaged and understand the market.
Patience is also key. You are not going to do very well if you flip everything you own immediately after purchasing it.
Guys like Scott, Rusty, Gary and numerous others on this forum make some serious change selling Pokemon cards because they had a good business model from the start.
They are definitive proof that you can absolutely make money in this hobby. The key, once again, is knowing damn well what you’re doing. Can the average Joe just come in and do it? No. You have to be knowledgeable.
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Why do you sound so triggered? What’s wrong babe?
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What’s this ? Never heard of it. Where do I sign up !!? Sounds like a place I can start some live Rampage
I believe “box breaks” on social media will still be as heartbreakingly cringe in 2020 like they are now.
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man lives under a rock
Of course there’ll be fluctuations but as long as pokemon is being produced and promoted (have you seen the Disney Channel lately…plus the movie?) the hobby will be safe at least for 10-15 years after the last pack leaves the assembly line.
In 2025 when your looking back you’ll discover your best investment was…Base Set. Especially unlimited.
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They’ll killl the TCG before that.
The TCG is so stuck into meta-decking in both Standard as Expanded that unless they totally gonna flip game mechanics upside down and introduce a lot more different deck ideas with Pokemon Sword/Shield the TCG won’t last till 2025. I said this today on Instagram; The ‘Lost March’ mechanic brought back in Lost Thunder was super neat, but what did they do? They printed 8 cards with the mechanic, a couple of trainers to make it work and a 2-3 other cards that are in sync with it. In Team-Up there is not a single sign of the mechanic any more and all is focused on the Tag-Team.
The Pokemon TCG suffers from having no flavour, thus bulk became worth less then the paper it’s printed on and everybody chasing those 10-12 cards per set that are playable to just build the pre-thought/pre-designed deck concepts from TCPi. It’s rare and only in Expanded where a player finds a new trick to play certain cards, which is then instantly meta-decked. Pokemon needs some flavour back, true TCG mechanics like milling, card destruction, effect locks. If that doesn’t happen in Shield/Sword, then we going back into the DPPt-era very fast.
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If I can ask…why do you say “especially unlimited”?Because now it’s cheaper than 1st/shadowless?
As things get harder and harder to accumulate collectors tend to go for the next best thing, especially if it’s something they have more of a personal connection with. Remember, we’re talking 2025. Base Unl fits this tendency with 1st Jungle close behind,
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Thank you so much for explaining 
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e4 discord
I’ve played TCGs competitively since I was 11 years old and what you’re describing can be applied to any of the Big Three at many points in their past. Magic went through multiple periods of stagnation and decline, with massive frustrations in the player base. Yugioh (my first game) is somehow still alive and producing 1k + player tournaments, despite me thinking for YEARS that the game was going to die at any second.
Pokémon is something I’ve collected much more than played competitively, but I can recall the formats of N, Vileplume, and Garbodor and, while I do think they’re “better” than the current format, we can’t sit here and argue when numbers don’t lie. It seems like every other regional is “breaking records” with attendance, there’s a movie coming out with promo cards, video games are still churning out every few years, etc. However, I think the most important thing to note is that Pokémon makes A LOT of money from the market that cares the least about metagame problems - kids and casuals.
The TCG won’t kill itself. If you and I can acknowledge its flaws, you know someone higher up is capable of seeing or listening to it too. Is it perfect? Hell no. Could it be better? Yeah, probably. Is it making a ton of money still? Yeah, and most pack-buyers don’t care about our concerns. The metagame gets figured out quickly just like it does with Magic and Yugioh. That’s just a trait of TCGs nowadays and we aren’t 2003 on Pojo forums with shitty internet connections. Info is instantly available now and we know exactly where to find it.
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Well put Kamon.
I’d only add, I collected all of them, and 100+ others, from the very beginning of each and there has NEVER been anything as huge as English Pokemon. The fact that now 20 years later it’s bigger than ever gives you some idea of the uniqueness of it.
So many think I was so smart back then to hoard Pokémon. Well honestly, it didn’t take a genius to see what was going on and what it’s affect on the future would be.
Like Scott has said many times too…downturns in markets like these are an opportunity to jump in further.
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Yeah, the player base is growing. I see that at my LGS. Their pre-releases uses to be 10-12 people. Last pre-release they had 32 and upcoming pre-release they had to do two days otherwise they just didn't had enough spots. But isn't the player base growing due to meta-decks can be build for under 40$? I remember playing in DPPt-era and you had to rely on the EX cards that were just expensive as hell, compared to the GX cards we have now in the TCG.
Magic had this flavourless era when they cut down the blocks and core sets. The blocks brought a specific game idea with it that players could build upon, but with plenty of variation to not end up having identical mirror matches every 3rd game you play. Pokemon lacks this! The Ultra-SM has the same flavour as SM. And the Tag-Team has the same flavour as Ultra-SM. It's all one big blur of sets with 10-15 playable cards, and rest bulk. There are no hidden gems, no extra mechanics to explore and most of all no streamlined idea per set/block.
When I played the DBZ CCG, meta-decking was a thing (also due Pojo ). Especially in Black and Saiyan decks. But the DBZ CCG had no restrictions; all cards were legal. Which in the later sets caused a lot of early cards to become hidden games, heavy hitting cards. I understand, having a Standard format in Pokemon with N and Vileplume still legal would totally break the game.
Oh this is for sure a thing. Pokemon has it’s majority of income from selling toys, plushes, games and all other merchandising that comes with it. The TCG is just a small part of it. But it’s all connected to each other. How many of us started buying Pokemon cards because we played Pokemon Red/Blue on Gameboy? I think it was the gateway for many. I know a lot of guys that play the TCG mainly because they a) like card games, b) want to have something else besides the cards to express their fandom. And face it; neither Magic nor YGO pumps out t-shirts, shoes, hats, backpacks, school supplies, hair/clothing/fashion accessories, toys, plushes etc. like Pokemon does. Pokemon won’t die, but the TCG for sure is going into a dip at some point.
My personal guess is will be a bear market for a few more years, then start to fluctuate, and then once a greater % of cards have been graded/opened/landed in a permanent collections and not flippers, we’ll start to see a pretty consistent rise especially for older cards. Maybe 6 years till this.
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I keep a pretty close eye on all of 1st edition base, and I actually feel pretty positive about it going forward. The vast majority of listings right now are for new certifications, which indicates to me that cards are ultimately ending up in the hands of long-term collectors and being essentially removed from the market. There’s naturally been a high level of grading in the past couple of years since the boom in prices would incentivize a lot of people to dig up their old cards to sell. But of course that supply is finite, and we know that 1st edition base had a very low print run.
I have a lot of confidence in Pokemon overall, since unlike Magic or Yu-Gi-Oh, the TCG isn’t the foundation–the games came first, and the games continue to drive the franchise (not to mention that the manga and anime also remain very popular). Nintendo for all of its faults has a consistent track record of delivering quality product for its top first-party IP, and I have as much confidence in the long-term continued success of Pokemon as I do in Mario and Zelda.
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Not that your logic here is wrong, but keep in mind that cards being cracked and regraded also have new cert numbers. Unless you’re talking about 10s, in which case there’s probably not a lot of cracking going on…
I thought they kept old cert #?