@pichufan , please let me know what that something with stability is. what % return are we looking at here. if you have something in mind, share it with us.
Also, do you know how many people go into “business” with 200k (essentially all their life savings) and fail? The real world will prove that there are plenty of people who make very poorly informed decisions on investments that are way riskier at 200k or more ALL THE TIME. I have family members who own small businesses who know friends who own small businesses, and this is daily.
Illustrator card will always be an outlier because it belongs in the god-tier of rarity. You will never have enough data points from sales to back-up a number.
@yz2428, Great point! The amount of “failed investments” in pokemon are dwarfed compared to failed restaurants and/or other businesses. Hell even “bad purchases” in Pokemon still retain value. Most failed businesses are worthless.
The largest part of this growth has happened in the last few years. People have more confidence as well as expendable income today. I said somewhere here that these “investments” are safe for another 5 years. After that depending on whether an administration party change occurs that optimism, and these values, could deteriorate.
But I feel like Scott. If values decline, then people will sell and there’ll be more available to the true enthusiasts:)
Improbable yes but not impossible. The Pokémon company could stuff things up but it’s theirs to lose so to say. Momentum is to the upside and I’m a believer long term which is why I have a lot of money in the hobby
Most of the people who loved Pokemon during the initial craze (i.e. Millennials) still don’t have much expendable income at all.
This is the net worth of Americans by age (using 2017 data):
Ages 18-34: $11,266
Ages 35-44: $61,146
Ages 45-54: $127,044
Ages 55-64: $191,836
Ages 65-74: $229,425
Ages 75 and older: $271,162
If you’re looking for a reason Pokemon cards are not BIG money compared to some other collectibles like baseball cards, comic books, etc, look no further. In the grand scheme of things, 20 years isn’t that long of a period of time compared to other collectibles. The kids who loved Pokemon in 1999 are only in their mid-20s to early-30s today.
And that’s not even to mention everyone who grew up loving Pokemon after that initial craze, the kids who grew up with Pokemon in Gen 4, the kids who are growing up with Pokemon today, and so on. They will grow into expendable income as well and expand the buying pool.
Obviously there are no guarantees in this. If Pokemon cards were literally guaranteed to grow in value, investment firms would have snapped all the cards up already. But again, I believe that if the popularity of Pokemon endures, the prices of the premium cards like trophies and 1st edition base set will continue to increase in the long-run, and if Pokemon falls by the wayside in the years to come then the value of all our cards will fall.
Like most stats, those obviously tell us nothing. Take the lowest savings group. The vast Majority have zero saved up. Why? Cause they see no need to and spend their money. Or they’re in school. Or they don’t work. Those types will have zero savings. The remainder are pumped up and flush with cash now and they don’t mind spending half their savings on their fun.
I’ve read somewhere online that there are 3 aspects that make a trading card an investable card (or grail). Bear in mind that the article I was reading was referencing sportscards so there are more items that fit the 3 aspects than Pokémon.
The card must be popular. Many people in and out of the hobby must know about it. There will be free publicity (organic interest) after a sale if a lot of people know about it.
The card must be rare. Not low availability, but actually rare, like knowing how many total copies are out there ensuring not many more copies will appear on the market. This works well in high-graded cards in sports but not in Pokémon as it’s still relatively young. So no, hard to grade and low pop do not equal actual rarity in Pokémon, maybe 30 years down the road but not now.
The card must have critical historical significance to the hobby it is in. Basically a nice story as to how the card or the character in the card exist. This would make people want to talk about them as it has an interesting backstory.
Look at cards like the t206 Honus Wagner (does not want to be associated with tobacco), 52 Mantle (cases upon cases were accidentally dropped in the ocean), Alpha Black Lotus (the most powerful card in MTG with the original rounded corners), 1st edition Base Charizard (the stamp and being the rookie card of the most popular Pokémon in the hobby) and Illustrator (the only card in Pokémon to have the illustrator title and pen symbol).
These cards have all 3 aspects of what makes a card ‘investable’ (not the Charizard and Black Lotus under the rarity aspect if you take into account only the high grades [mint and above]), A lot of collectors work towards owning these cards in their respective hobbies. While some are affordable in the lower grades, some will always be 6-figures in the worst possible condition (Honus Wagner PSA 2 sold for $1.2m). Sure, some of these collectors will drop out of the path of buying one due to other financial responsibilities, but every year, more collectors joined in on wanting to buy one. These are cards that represent a hobby. That is the definition of an icon.
I’m certainly not saying these stats tell us the whole story. It’s just a brief way of making the point that, as a group (the group being people who grew up loving Pokemon), most people have far less money saved up now (as you say, often no money at all) compared to how much money they will have saved up later in life. Obviously, there are people in their early 30s and younger who already have a lot of money saved up, and there are people in their early 30s and younger who will never be able to save significant money in their lives. So I’m just speaking in general terms. In general, the pool of people who grew up loving Pokemon and will eventually have enough disposable income to spend on high-end Pokemon cards will grow over time. Obviously, we have already seen the effect this had had on the market. There is no reason to think that the effect of this has already seen its full impact. There will be a continuous flow of people who grew up loving Pokemon who will age into having significant disposable income.
Certainly this does not mean growth will be continuous. We already saw prices fall slightly off their highs of late 2016 / early 2017, which was due to an increase in the supply of certain set cards in response to an explosive growth in demand. But at the same time, we’ve seen the price of booster boxes reach new highs and in turn we’ve seen the supply of old set cards being added to the population report stop almost completely. I can make a logical guess as to what happens next.
Also, there’s generally less urgency to save when you’re young so that age group spends a ton on things they like…ie pomemon;)
Edit: I’d be confident to predict that even just here on E4, the majority of our members can point to their Pokémon collections as the bulk of their savings.
The avacado joke refers to a rich property developer claiming young people are going out wasting their money on avacado toast as opposed to saving to buy one of his properties.
Are you the one selling and making some sales pitch here ;-)?
Jokes aside, what is the “next best thing” after Illustrator? Khan, newer trophies, other promo’s?
The problem is that your viewpoint assumes that these cards will have the same level of growth that they’ve had in the past couple of years. $200k is enough to get bare minimum mortgages on 3 £499,999 properties in the UK (totalling £105,000) with enough left over to deal with any work which needs doing (which if it’s a new build is likely not much). On a £499,999 property you’ll likely be able to charge around £1,500 to £2,500 per month rent - and the people paying that much on rent tend not to be the type of tenants who cause many problems.
All of a sudden your $200,000 (£157,000) investment has been turned into £1,499,996 of real estate; your mortgages are being paid off by the tenants you have and you’ll be able to put aside enough extra money from their rent to cover any repairs which may need doing.
That is a lot more stable than investing in a single Pokémon card.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t invest in a card like this, I’m saying it would be foolish to do so if you only had $200,000 to invest and you didn’t have any other assets available to you.
With regard to your Rudy video comment: that video is about selling all of your cards at once to a single buyer. I don’t think that really applies much here. If you’re looking to make some short-term profits I do believe you’d be a lot better off buying more lower-tier cards than putting all of your money into top-tier cards. These top-tier cards are not the fastest growing cards in the hobby, after all.
