Why are there certain corners of the collecting space who are claiming there’s a vintage cabal of influencers out there trying to tear down modern singles, modern sealed, and anyone interested in that? This site, most discords, most of Reddit, honestly the vast majority of YouTube, is nothing but welcoming to people into the collecting community. I’m not seeing a shadowy group out there, sitting among a round table with swords drawn, plotting the destruction of modern. Hasn’t modern performed pretty well over the past few years? Hasn’t sealed gone up for the most part? Maybe someone can fill me in.
Pre-pandemic, modern Pokémon was not widely “invested” in and did not have many high profile cards that we are used to seeing today. But as interest in modern increased in the years following covid, there was also an appetite for community and content surrounding this burgeoning category of cards. This made a space for certain kinds of influencers to hype up their own collections and favorite cards at the expense of “traditional” categories and collections. This was not necessary as interest in modern cards was organic and common, but acting like an underdog benefitted growth.
One of the ways they hyped up their cards was specifically by positioning them against vintage, which was historically seen as the reliable stalwart when it came to investing, long-term growth, sustained interest, etc. This meant making vintage the villain of the modern success story, which plenty of people latched on to.
The idea that there is a secret evil cabal of vintage collectors who don’t want you to collect modern cards is obviously insane. But if you’ve never collected vintage or interacted with vintage-oriented communities and influencers are telling you how we HATE modern and want it to fail, that’s the only frame of reference you have.
People are always looking for a person/group to blame when they lose money. In this case, these clowns bought cases of sealed product (boxes, ETBs, supplemental products) that are mass produced, and all of their friends did the same. And then they were shocked that their sealed product didn’t go up in 1-2 years.
I don’t 100% buy into this explanation because a lot of this way of thinking started when modern (especially the japanese waifu category) was at its peak.
It’s not the full explanation, but it’s probably the backbone of the 2020-2021 craziness and downstream 2022-2023+ anger.
Across most TCGs, vintage collectors and modern collectors bicker. They inherently have competing interests (i.e., the success of their “sector” of the market), and they often look very different (i.e., young vs. old; new vs. alum, etc.).
When people don’t understand, they speculate.
When people speculate, they assume.
When people assume, they assume the worst.
When people assume the worst, they create elaborate conspiracies.
This just depends on what echochamber you come from i guess.
All i saw over the past year were modern collectors laughing and ‘bullying’ the clueless vintage collectors😅
I assumed people thought this bc it’s easy to dunk on modern cards for having bad fundamentals (really just large supply). It’s a horse that has been beaten incredibly thoroughly.
I read most of that dunking as well intentioned, cautioning people from betting the farm on Modern. Maybe people who are very interested in “investing” in modern are sensitive to those sorts of posts? Idk
