@mervjackson Thread
Inspired me to voice a bit more of my thoughts and concerns about Pokémon from an Investing standpoint, since I’m getting more and more involved and spending more money on it.
The question is for international buyers and sellers. I’m living now for six months in the U.S and realized that the market here is more volatile and willing to spend more money compared to the German market, where I’m from. In a few months I will return back to Germany and I’m thinking about how to approach Investing from there. Because I think it’s more costly trying to sell to an American audience and buying from American sellers, including grading, than focusing on the German market even though the prices are not as high. While English cards and cards in your native language are also competing assets.
Especially if it comes to growth. I see the American market growing more than for example the German market. How do you international Investors approach this? Do you think, or saw in the past, that the European, or your home market is just behind the American market but has the same cycle? Or do you think alternative assets such as Pokémon simply don’t offer as much as of an ROI if you are not in the American market?
Maybe someone has a deeper insight to this since I’m only following the market for 3 years.
It is very difficult to compete with American (or Japanese) sellers/collectors if you do/did not live in these countries. So I would suggest to first and foremost focus on collecting as a hobby.
The main reasons being that all the trusted grading companies are american and that the majority of 1st edition WoTC era cards were distributed in America (all of 1st edition base was sold only in USA). Similarly to Japanese cards being released in Japan.
Another reason is import fees. Most Europeans will need to pay 25-30% in import fees when buying from american sellers. That is why it was such a big deal that PWCC did not declare full value before. Newly released American made TCG products like Pokemon or Magic are also more expensive in Europe. So we are just generally disadvantaged in all aspects you can think of in terms of building a position.
#1 tip for an ‘international investor’ that plans on buying anything remotely valuable, especially in Europe - find a middle man in a state that doesn’t collect sales tax and will declare low when shipping to you.
Buy in USA and get it home. I’ve had a couple people recently buy 50k plus and fly here to collect it.
I have a guy who sells in Europe and his wife is developing a website to compliment their business. They want to fly out here to Vegas to see “The Wall” (I’ll have to go to the storage to retrieve it all. Dang, that’s a lot of work:(
Yes, you’d need to be a pretty big player but honestly, that’s where the big bucks are.
What we do is simple: Me & a group of Argentinian collectors buy cards; ship them to someone we know well and trust (in this case, my aunt that lives in USA) and she holds the cards for us until someone in the group goes to Miami and picks everything up.
Whoever picks the card up gets them safe to our country. Sounds like a pain but it has been working flawless for a decent amount of time.
By this method we bought cards worth over U$S5K; booster boxes; complete collections; etc.
In January (this year) i took from Miami to Argentina over 20kg worth of Pokemon Cards (over 100 Slabs, booster boxes, etc…) in 2 carry on luggages
As a Canadian, the few cards I’ve sold were disproportionately to non-US buyers and also tended to be at the highest end of the market value price. But they took a while to sell.
So my experience is a combination of low liquidity, but high prices when something does sell.
But in general, if you’re actually buying investment-grade items and not just using “investment” as a justification for accumulating stacks of slave cards, the margins are large enough that it doesn’t matter where you’re selling from.
They didnt mess with my carry on at all. My girlfriend had supplements (protein…protein bars and pills) and her carry on was inspected but nothing happened.
I was carrying 2 selaed booser boxes in a crylic cases and they didnt even bother.
I am 3/4 with extra searches at security of my carry on bags and that was both ways on my round trip to each of the last two worlds. That was only having 20 or so slabs in each time flying domestically. Expect that a search can and will likely happen. Apparently the large grouping of plastic cases together drew their suspicion and was worth an extra look.
Yeah I am checked basically everytime as well. One time I even showed off my charizord to the security guy because he was interested haha. I was taking with a coworker that also does part-time security screening and she said the grouping of plastic like that will probably look like one of the bombs she was trained to identify lol
Fortunately the people who do the screening aren’t concerned about the customs value
It would be booster boxes in my case. I think that boxes have a better probability to pass without physical inspection. But I would have to expect it and not loose my cool if it happens.
I took 2 sealed yugioh boxes through 3 domestic and an international flight. Everytime except one domestic flight they inspected it but never opened it. One guy was an oh yugioh player, we had a laugh. Its due to foil being used to conceal drugs so the packs give a red flag.
The one time it didnt get flagged was when i was the last person to get screened before his shift was up.
