Recently became aware of the Pikachu promos for the Yokohama pokemon center. Looks like there are 4 different Pikachu promos all from 2018. The pop reports are not particularly high. Thinking about maybe starting to look to pick these up. What are the seasoned Japanese promo collectors opinions on how this will fair over the long term? Do you think PSA10 is needed to retain maximum value or would a 9 still be a good purchase decision?
Thanks!
9s are typically an uphill battle for newback promos. The quality on release is a 10 by default and are typically consistently available. 9s are the budget option and typically the budget buyers are not interested in paying top dollar
Makes sense. I was surprised on the Yokohama how there was a smaller 10 to 9 ratio than you usually see on newer cards so I’m guessing centering is a problem for a lot of them.
If you genuinely like the card, just buy it and see how it goes. It’s very hard to guess where most of these cards will end up, but most have done well in the long-term so far. Like I bought a 2019 Japanese S&M Full Art Erika card in PSA 10 for $50 just a couple years ago and it had sales for over a $1000 recently. I bought it simply because I liked the artwork, and so I bought the English and Japanese variant around the same time. I thought maybe it’d be a $100-$200 card at some point. PSA 10s tend to maximize value due to the added scarcity, but NM condition cards can also still offer a solid return once the PSA 10 gets too expensive and people increasingly look for lower grades due to supply/demand.
Anyway, my overall opinion is that there’s a good amount of opportunity in certain pre-2020 cards because it was a fundamentally different market than today.
Thanks for your thoughts I enjoyed reading your points and it gives me some good things to think about.
10’s always command a premium specially for all the condition collectors out there.
I just recently got back a 100-card submission of mostly japanese promos with multiple copies of each card. All of them were potential 10 candidates as far as my eyes can see, but some still came back as 9’s for not-so-obvious reasons. I say do the same, take multiples of the promos, grade them, sell the 10’s at a premium to the condition collectors, making your 9 copy basically free. Its not a bad strategy if you want to just expand your collection at zero cost.
Not a bad idea thanks!