I’ve been collecting Pokémon cards for 6.5 years now, and I haven’t seen it go down in general even once, so I doubt it will start doing so now. Sure, some specific cards/products might drop a bit, since fluctuations in any market is normal. But Pokémon TCG as a whole? Nope, it will only increase in general, even after this pandemic is over and loads of people stop collecting again. That’s what I personally think at least. And then I’m speaking of year by year basis obviously. As we’ve seen here, there are decreases every day if we look at it on a day by day or week by week basis, but those microtransaction fluctuations are nonsense in the big picture of the entire market.
One things I do personally dislike the most, is how fast it has grown in 2020. Some cards have grown multiplicative or even exponential in a matter of weeks in Fall 2020. As example: I’ve bought a PSA-10 red cheeks 1st edition Base Set Pikachu in March 2019 for 400 bucks. At the start of 2020 it was hovering at around 1k. But around September it went from 1-1.5k to 2k, then from 2k to 4k, and then from 4k to 8k in a 3 week timespan. When it was at 4k I was thinking about selling it, since I had a raw copy for my collection anyway, but while I was investigating how to properly send an insured package, it had already doubled in value again to 7-8k (I ended up selling it for 7.5k USD). And although it dropped to 6k around December 2020, I think it’s at around 12k+ now again. (Again, fluctuations are normal, but in general there is an upward growth.)
I had no doubt in my mind we would have had current prices eventually if you had asked me at the end of 2019 before the pandemic, but I thought it would be a process of at least 3-5 years. But nope. Due to this pandemic, famous YouTubers, and who knows what other kind of influences that all piled up, prices have doubled-quintupled for certain items in a year timespan, and every newly released card is bought up and sold for double-quintuple it’s value as well. After this pandemic is over, we’ll probably see some small price decreases for a few weeks/months on certain items, but on a year by year basis, I have no doubt in my mind it will keep increasing, which is also exactly why we see so many more investors and scalpers these days than before. We also had these in the past, but due to social media, more and more people are seeing the upwards trends with Pokémon, and getting money signs in their eyes.
Anyway, I nor anyone here can change it even if we would want to. We’re all just leaves drifting on this market flood. We can’t go against the current, only go with it, dodging rocks, and trying to not sink to the bottom.
One thing to add about the people stating: “everyone has to decide what they want to collect, and there are still loads of things to collect on a budget”: yes, completely true, but keep in mind that the more expensive the market as a whole becomes, the less amount of different choices/options there are to collect. If someone would start collecting Pikachu cards from scratch now for example, no way they’ll be able to get a similar collecting as I have rn in 6.5 years time due to finances, unless they spend hundred times more than I have thus far.
Or let’s say someone wants to collect misprints. When I started collecting you could find a lot of nice misprints for 5 bucks, and very special ones for a couple hundred USD. Nowadays even someone who gets a simple crimp on a card can ask and usually sell it for 75+ USD without too much trouble, and the kind of misprints that were a couple hundreds USD prior are a couple thousand USD nowadays.
What I’m trying to say: where 6.5 years ago primarily multiple Trophy cards, or all English cards combined, or similar goals would be (financially) close to impossible to ever complete, nowadays that applies to hundreds if not thousands of different type of collection goals if you had to start now on an average budget. There are still loads of options left to collect, but there are A LOT less than even just in 2019, and the more expensive the market as a whole becomes, the less options there are for new collectors.
Greetz,
Quuador