Buy the new CD promos
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Itâs because your questions are predicated on a perspective that many in this community donât hold.
Your question:
âwhat do I, for all intents and purposes a new collector, need to be aware of in properly judging the value and rarity of my cards?â
The short answer: Research. Look up ebay sold listingsThe long answer: You frame this question from the perspective of a collector but evidently youâre coming off mostly as interested in profit. These are contradictory positions. What how a collector judges âvalue and rarityâ is not the same as how a seller would. The answer is a lot more personal for a collector and the seller is purely interested in what the greater market cares. The conflation between collector/investor/gambler here makes the question impossible to answer outside of the unhelpful short answer I provided.
Your question:âAlso I am interested in buying booster boxes once or twice a month and I am interested in solid reputable places where I can purchase from. I especially want to get authentic Japanese boxes as well.â
The short answer: ebayThe long answer: There is no good place to be able to consistently (ie. fixed price and fixed quantity) buy product today. This is why this question went unanswered. There used to be a few good websites for securing a couple of Japanese boxes but they have since been exploited by the wider community and now everything is optimized to a common market price. Therefore, the only place to really get product when you want it is a general marketplace like ebay, but of course youâre going to be paying the market rate at the time. Again, the conflation between collector/investor/gambler makes the question hard to answer because if youâre just interested in breaking for fun then ebay is a good place to buy but if youâre doing it for profit, the cost basis of the boxes is likely way too high. Nobody that has a secret source of getting boxes cheaply is just going to give up that information freely.
Thereâs a reason why you got the responses that you did and it probably has a lot less to do with the snobbishness of people of this community that are freely providing information and more about the ambiguity of your goals and how it may be impossible or extremely unlikely to profit in the way you are hoping to.
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Thank you for your response.
@johnathandhill, it brought me joy to see you become frustrated that none of us walked you through how to make money. Not because I donât want you to succeed, but because in my mind, the average new âinvestorâ lacks accountability to do their own homework. We have all screwed up many deals where we lost money in the hobby, but did not stop because our goals arenât the $$$.
My last answer, if you dive into what you like (sounds like modern), stay committed, donât blame others for your mishaps, and instead learn from them; you will make money. Prepare to fail as we ALL have.
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I fully understand you and I sincerely appreciate your responses, insight and information.
Lol I swear I didnât know it was that type of mentality here otherwise Iâd left out me viewing this an investment. I still donât understand what the mod and other user issue is in my asking and referencing collecting as an investment but honestly I couldnât care any less. people have their opinions and views and itâs not going to change mine, just got frustrated with the antagonistic tones in response from some of the responses and didnât get why they harped on that one single point.
I understand Iâll make mistakes, Iâm not going to be bent out of shape about it. just asking you all who have more experience to assist me in learning so I can minimize my mistakes. but youâve been more than nice and helpful and I sincerely am grateful for it.
What are your goals in Pokemon? You mentioned products you want to open, etc, but what kind of collection do you want to have? Sure, there is money to be made in Pokemon but the best ways to make money may not be the most enjoyable. What makes collecting worthwhile to me is the value, but also coupled with the joy of building my sets and upgrading my cards, doing business with people, circulating cards, etc.
I think some of the grief may be stemming from the idea that opening modern, current cards is certainly gambling and by no means âinvestingâ in the same way that, say, the SEC considers investing.
I swear if I could thanos-snap this whole âI view it as an investmentâ thing out of reality I would.
lol just really frustrating that this is the main topic of discussion when I asked several questions only 2 users have given me some genuine information and not judgement about.
I just want a good collection of American and Japanese card. that simple,
lol Got me scared to say anything here. because Iâm sure my thought process is not in line with yours and it will get me some flack lol.
Holy-Heck this is turning into a intervention rather than a âhelp out the new user who has questionsâ type thing.
Lesson definitely learned lol.
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lol this is funny. There is no clear answer on what to buy. The main thing right now is finding out what you like and focusing on that. You could like japanese play promos or 1997 carddass like me. Do you know what youâre mainly interested in besides just promos?
Nah, itâs cool. A good collection can mean a lot of things. At first, I tried modern, but being someone who is also sort of economics-driven such as yourself, drifted away from cards that are still in print for cards that are, as smpratte likes to say, older, rarer, and minter. Perhaps there was an era of Pokemon that is particularly nostalgic for you?
*sigh* @ âEconomics-driven such as yourselfâ
thanks for the reply
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Hey, I think youâre viewing this a certain way that wasnât the intent of anyone in the thread. My response along with othersâ was intended to be helpful, no need to get defensive or irritated over it. 
Pkmnflying master summed it up perfectly. You directly asked about the value and rarity of your new cards and how to get more cards, but based on the context of your post most of us summed it up that you seemed interested in how to start profiting off of modern cards. So weâre just trying to help you out based on our experiences and knowledge.
Since youâve asked a couple times, I will directly answer the questions in your original post:
what do I, for all intents and purposes a new collector, need to be aware of in properly judging the value and rarity of my cards?
The founder of this site, smpratte has a saying âolder, rarer, minter, betterâ. Which is a great general framework to evaluate the value of cards. Any cards that you can obtain by from a shelf in Walmart in 2021 are not old, and not rare. The market value is going to be limited. Many rare or holo cards from those sets may only sell fora few dollars and be widely available. Every few sets thereâs a âchaseâ card, like Celebrations Charizard, Vivid Voltage Giant Pikachu, Shining Fates Charizard, etc. which get a lot of hype and might sell in the $100 range. Again, that most this might be 1 card from a few sets each year. This is why a lot of us gave the advice to enjoy the experience of opening packs or building out your collection⊠thereâs just not really any profit to be made off of modern cards. The value is predominantly the value you get from the experience of pack opening and adding to your collection.
Also I am interested in buying booster boxes once or twice a month and I am interested in solid reputable places where I can purchase from. I especially want to get authentic Japanese boxes as well.
any help/assistance would be greatly appreciated.
For about 2 years now, people have been going bonkers for essentially every newly released set. What may have worked getting Chilling Reign 6 months ago likely didnât work for getting Celebrations last month, and that may or may not work getting Fusion Strike in a week. Most stores are either: sold out the majority of the time or priced significantly over MSRP/RRP, and/or have quantity limits for how many products you can buy.
As pkmnflyingmaster mentioned, Japanese products are even more challenging to reliably get. If you really want some, ebay is your easiest option, but you will be at the whims of the market in terms of the price each month.
Welcome back to the hobby, hope youâre able to keep building out your collection!
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Sorry for the offense OP, was only trying to communicate that there are plenty of alternatives to modern in the hobby, which seemed logical based on your first post.
(Iâm not saying this in a nasty tone but due to it being via text I must say that as toneâs are misunderstood via text)
Please let this be the last time this is bought up.
I do view collecting (anything) as an investment, if that offends anyone here then I sincerely apologize because my intentions as a new member humbly seeking information to be knowledgable on current Pokemon TCG trends was to ask for information and semi-network. If I knew me saying that 1 insignificant thing would derail this thread and have everyone make that a focal point and disregarding my questions seeking knowledge of reputable dealers and trends, I swear by a oath to any God or Goddess capable of reading this - I would have left it out. So forgive me for having to say that but please to any other fellow board member do not reply to me if youâre going to make mentions of my views on collecting in relation to profitability. I am not here to scam anyone, harm anyone, take advantage of anyone or trouble you all so please for my sanity, stop bringing this point up. Thank You
Now in response to the rest of your message;
Jawsh has been the most beneficial in response to me as they answered my initial questions and even provided me links to reputable sites and even gave his vouch for a fellow board member that sells Japanese cards. I am not disagreeing that Pkmnflying didnât give valuable information but that user I believe missed the forest for the trees and much of what they replied to me with came across as not help as much as a philosophical scorning on the merits of collecting.
I am genuinely appreciative of you pointing out smpratte, as Iâll read up on their postings to gain some insight into how to gauge cards for their rareness and popularity. and I understand your point about walmart purchases. as far as the enjoyment, itâs also a bit frustrating to assume that I have no enjoyment because I asked about profitability. I know faberge eggâs are a heck of an investment flip, but I donât find enjoyment in that so therefore Iâm not collecting and attempting to sell/trade them. You understand me? so to assume Iâm not going to get enjoyment because I am not fanatical is beyond frustrating. but Iâm not looking to harp on it, just answering your response as I read through your reply.
As far as the last portion of your response. I figured me, again, coming here humbly to request information was a means to begin networking and making contacts. I know itâs difficult to obtain releases which is why I asked about reputable dealers for Japanese. Iâm sure they (reputable Japanese card sellers) have connections with other reputable language dealers. so me coming here was primarily for networking purposes to gain knowledge and legitimate resources to purchase cards from.
Thank you for the reply and information youâve given me brother. I appreciate it.
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No problem,
Apology accepted.
You seem to misunderstand the point of my message and what others are getting at. No one is victimizing you, scorning you or judging you. No one cares if you want to make money off of this hobby because virtually everyone here has at some point.
The problem is no one can help you unless your goals are made clear. My advice to someone who just wants to open new product and throw it in a binder will be completely different to someone who wants to speculate on product.
You can pretend like I didnât directly answer your two questions and toss aside my opinion as useless philosophy. But thereâs probably a reason my first post got 29 likes. Itâs because all the experienced members here know that one of the most important things you can do when youâre new is to set clear expectations for yourself and what you want to get out of the hobby - then align those expectations with reality. Itâs very hard to help someone on their journey when itâs not clear at all where they want to go.
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glad we got that sorted
but who is this smpratte guy? can he be trusted?
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lol,
and from my understand smpratte is the founder of the site, Brother
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Not sure if itâs needed anymore but iâll bring my two cents about why this thread turned the way it did. I think op has to understand that the current hype around pokemon cards has brought a lot of new people here with first posts like âhi, i entered the hobby this year, what are the best investments to makeâ or other attempts to profit from the knowledge of people that have been collecting for years or even decades. I have no doubts that you collect pokemon cards because you enjoy them rather than primarily making money but since the first point of your post on this thread mentioned investments and profit you immediately in many peopleâs eyes went to same category than all the quick buck askers, and that category is something people here donât have a lot of sympathy for. Just had a feeling that op still didnât see why some of the responses werenât as warm and welcoming as he probably would have liked and thought iâd clear this out in a way i saw it
Not to be argumentative or an arse but I do see what youâre saying but to be 100% honest I didnât and still do not understand the cold or negative attitudes from some of the responses here (even with your explanation in mind). I could see if I was here to troll, or attempt to scam others out of money or cards but Iâm not. my OP wasnât only about profits, I asked to be brought up to date on latest trends and happenings via links or information so I would understand the current landscape. I sincerely hear what youâre saying and can see it from your point of view a bit, but majority of me feels it was a bit snobbish and purist (in a sense) to immediately villainize me for my questions.
But I do appreciate your attempts to bring some understanding to this. lol, I still donât understand some of the users instant dislike but lesson learned and Iâll be sure to word my postings a lot more carefully to side step these little hornet hives of viewpoints (when possible).