TPCi is making all the good modern cards into promos and not set card chases to aid the cabal and bring about the destruction of their own modern product
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psa is going to buy cgc
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That even 100,000 people have a single booster box stored in their closet… Because that’s the most popular way to enjoy the hobby…?
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A significant portion of modern collectors see pokemon as a ticket to financial freedom, not a hobby
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Oh I was just saying that I would be willing to bet less than 100k people have stored even a single booster box.
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Dunno, 5 billion world adult population, at least 50m booster boxes printed in last two years alone…100k is a drop in the bucket 
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Do you really believe this?
Sealed product markets in the U.S., Canada, the UK, Japan, Australia, Germany, The Netherlands, China, Mexico, Brazil, etc. are bigger than you may think.
Just for argument, let’s assume that 1% of the U.S. population collects Pokemon and that 1% of collectors store at least one booster box in their home in the U.S. I would bet that this number is much higher, but we’ll keep it very low for estimation. That’s 34,000 booster boxes from the U.S. alone.
Maybe 0.1% of the U.S. population collects Pokemon and some number between 1%-25% keep at least one sealed box. That would be somewhere between 3,400 - 85,000 boxes in the U.S.
Now add in the rest of the world’s countries. There is an obvious reason that sealed product was out of stock at major U.S. retail stores a few years ago, and that was largely due to people throwing it in their closet with hopes of stonking.
TL;DR: A lot of people own sealed product, and it’s definitely greater than 100,000 in my opinion.
Edit: Of the 340,000 r/PokemonTCG members, how many do we think own a single booster box? 5%, 10%, 20%, 30%, 40%? I would guess at least 25%-33%, which would be 85,000 - 112,200 members/boxes.
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There’s definitely a ton of hoarders. I think the amount that people hoard may be overestimated just from my own observations, but most collectors who like pokemon probably have some swsh sealed at this point.
You’d have to be a true modern denier to not have some at this point. At MSRP or under I don’t think there’s a ton of risk. It would have to be the only era to not appreciate for people to lose money on. And until very recently nobody was paying anything close to above MSRP on anything swsh (minus evolving skies which has been crazy for a while)
So at this point there isn’t a lot to worry about. The risks come when you start buying large quantities at 2-3x MSRP because there’s no telling the Rate that they’ll grow. But it’s obvious to me that they’ll grow. Like I said, if they did not then they’d be the only sets to do that ever. And swsh is viewed too positively for that to be the case overall. I don’t think it’ll be anything like the money obtained from hoarding past eras just due to the quantities, but the point is to just “invest” in something that you like so it can be fun at the same time
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Yes, I do believe it. You guys have to remember that booster boxes are not normal products, they’re not available at big box stores like Target and Walmart, where most people are seeing pokemon. Regardless, suppose I’m wrong and there’s actually 1M people storing away booster boxes. When did this behavior start? Was it 2020? Before then? Or is it only now in Scarlet & Violet, the era that thus far has been met with mostly “investor bro” types complaining that there’s no Evolving Skies 2.0 set?
That is important to answer, because if it’s true that there are just countless multitudes away sealed product, where does the buck stop? These are prices as of today:
| Date | Set | Total Invested | Buy In Price ($) | Price Today ($) | CAGR (%) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2014-02-05 | X & Y Base | $100.00 | $100.00 | $1,948.98 | 33.4% |
| 2014-08-13 | X & Y Furious Fists | $200.00 | $100.00 | $1,149.99 | 28.3% |
| 2014-11-05 | X & Y Phantom Forces | $300.00 | $100.00 | $2,400.00 | 39.4% |
| 2015-02-05 | X & Y Primal Clash | $400.00 | $100.00 | $568.20 | 20.5% |
| 2015-05-06 | X & Y Roaring Skies | $500.00 | $100.00 | $617.37 | 22.3% |
| 2015-08-12 | X & Y Ancient Origins | $600.00 | $100.00 | $939.99 | 29.0% |
| 2015-11-04 | X & Y Breakthrough | $700.00 | $100.00 | $642.71 | 24.3% |
| 2016-02-03 | X & Y Breakpoint | $800.00 | $100.00 | $520.00 | 21.9% |
| 2016-05-02 | X & Y Fates Collide | $900.00 | $100.00 | $492.22 | 21.8% |
| 2016-08-03 | X & Y Steam Siege | $1,000.00 | $100.00 | $362.83 | 17.9% |
| 2016-11-02 | X & Y Evolutions | $1,100.00 | $100.00 | $815.16 | 32.0% |
| 2017-02-03 | Sun & Moon Base | $1,200.00 | $100.00 | $276.55 | 14.9% |
| 2017-05-05 | Sun & Moon Guardians Rising | $1,300.00 | $100.00 | $409.44 | 22.1% |
| 2017-08-04 | Sun & Moon Burning Shadows | $1,400.00 | $100.00 | $419.43 | 23.4% |
| 2017-11-03 | Sun & Moon Crimson Invasion | $1,500.00 | $100.00 | $210.21 | 12.0% |
| 2018-02-02 | Sun & Moon Ultra Prism | $1,600.00 | $100.00 | $680.89 | 35.5% |
| 2018-05-04 | Sun & Moon Forbidden Light | $1,700.00 | $100.00 | $447.79 | 28.0% |
| 2018-08-03 | Sun & Moon Celestial Storm | $1,800.00 | $100.00 | $738.36 | 41.0% |
| 2018-11-02 | Sun & Moon Lost Thunder | $1,900.00 | $100.00 | $621.99 | 38.9% |
| 2019-02-01 | Sun & Moon Team Up | $2,000.00 | $100.00 | $2,326.66 | 80.7% |
| 2019-05-03 | Sun & Moon Unbroken Bonds | $2,100.00 | $100.00 | $629.26 | 43.8% |
| 2019-08-02 | Sun & Moon Unified Minds | $2,200.00 | $100.00 | $666.52 | 48.2% |
| 2019-11-01 | Sun & Moon Cosmic Eclipse | $2,300.00 | $100.00 | $880.88 | 61.0% |
| 2020-02-07 | Sword & Shield Base | $2,400.00 | $100.00 | $279.10 | 27.0% |
| 2020-05-01 | Sword & Shield Rebel Clash | $2,500.00 | $100.00 | $215.23 | 20.7% |
| 2020-08-14 | Sword & Shield Darkness Ablaze | $2,600.00 | $100.00 | $141.60 | 9.6% |
| 2020-11-13 | Sword & Shield Vivid Voltage | $2,700.00 | $100.00 | $135.44 | 9.0% |
| 2021-03-19 | Sword & Shield Battle Styles | $2,800.00 | $100.00 | $133.95 | 9.6% |
| 2021-06-18 | Sword & Shield Chilling Reign | $2,900.00 | $100.00 | $216.04 | 29.9% |
| 2021-08-27 | Sword & Shield Evolving Skies | $3,000.00 | $100.00 | $687.99 | 101.7% |
| 2021-11-12 | Sword & Shield Fusion Strike | $3,100.00 | $100.00 | $244.27 | 42.2% |
| 2022-02-25 | Sword & Shield Brilliant Stars | $3,200.00 | $100.00 | $192.79 | 33.9% |
| 2022-05-27 | Sword & Shield Astral Radiance | $3,300.00 | $100.00 | $176.74 | 32.9% |
| 2022-09-09 | Sword & Shield Lost Origin | $3,400.00 | $100.00 | $222.71 | 59.5% |
| 2022-11-11 | Sword & Shield Silver Tempest | $3,500.00 | $100.00 | $161.94 | 36.7% |
| 2023-03-31 | Scarlet & Violet Base | $3,600.00 | $100.00 | $94.56 | -4.7% |
| 2023-06-09 | Scarlet & Violet Paldea Evolved | $3,700.00 | $100.00 | $127.84 | 28.9% |
| 2023-08-11 | Scarlet & Violet Obsidian Flames | $3,800.00 | $100.00 | $102.83 | 3.6% |
| 2023-11-03 | Scarlet & Violet Paradox Rift | $3,900.00 | $100.00 | $100.84 | 1.5% |
| 2024-03-22 | Scarlet & Violet Temporal Forces | $4,000.00 | $100.00 | $107.59 | 49.9% |
| 2024-05-24 | Scarlet & Violet Twilight Masquerade | $4,100.00 | $100.00 | $102.44 | 1782.2% |
You can see that even SWSH boxes have impressive CAGRs, and they only started coming out in 2020, after this supposed new trend sweeping the globe is said to have begun.
Nobody is suggesting that booster boxes don’t appreciate over time.
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I know it was another poster, but these
suggest otherwise. In this thread of “pokemon conspiracies,” it is brought up as a conspiracy that “millions of people [are] all doing the same exact thing and storing cases of modern cards in their closets.”
That is the idea I am contesting. I believe the numbers of people participating are much smaller, and the actually allocations much smaller than “cases” on average as well. I believe that booster box appreciation is a clear indicator that supply is indeed continuing to dwindle, even for sets released as recently as 2020, as it always has.
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It’s impossible to know a definitive number, but I would encourage you to take a look around Pokemon subreddits, visit modern Pokemon IG accounts, go to a couple of cons, etc.
The number of people participating in this hobby by buying and storing sealed product for long-term gains is much larger than you are assuming. From what I have seen, a portion of those participating come from sports card collecting, where buying, sitting, and then reselling sealed product is much more common.
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A friend of mine inherited a large collection of mostly comic books but it also contained a lot of high dollar Magic/Yu-gi-oh/Pokemon/sports cards etc. (everything was raw except what we graded ourselves)
A man openly told my friend his entire job is to purchase collections on behalf of a very high up person at CGC in order to avoid conflict of interest concerns and made an offer on it.
We initially thought he was full of shit but he showed up with a semi and a team, verified two high dollar comic books were there, wired an obscene amount of money and loaded it up in the truck without even looking at anything else.
A few months later we checked his eBay page.
Care to take a guess what company everything was graded with?
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When it comes to conspiracy theories and grading companies and auction houses, they aren’t even theories, they are probably true lol Conflicts of interest have been hidden for decades at places like heritage, sothebys etc and recently at wata for sure and likely cgc
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It’s averaged of course. For every person with 1 box in the closet there is a “whale” with multiple cases.
I don’t believe the appreciation has anything to do with supply since the EV on opening these boxes are horrendous if you don’t hit the chase.
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Ok, if we’re talking averages, then there’s almost certainly more than 100k/total_pokemon_customers booster boxes saved, I’ll agree with that for sure. I was specifically talking about individuals, because those are not coordinated sellers in a potential future market. A single source large store/whale/whatever you want to call it is. Someone like Rudy is not going to flood the market with Lost Origin years after release even if he has 2000 boxes available in the year 2030. He won’t do it because as a business, he knows that will negatively impact the price, and therefore make him less money.
I am in general not concerned with the total quantity being kept back by large stakes, mostly because those actually able to do that are the most disciplined, best run operations, and the least likely to destroy the market going forward.
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I was trying not to name names 
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General Pokemon theories I love
- Ditto & Mew
- Cubone & Kangaskhan
- Clefable & Gengar
- Butterfree & Venonat
- Blue & Raticate
- Eeveelutions & Legendary Beasts
- Kabutops & Genesect
Not exactly a theory but I think Mewtwo is totally misunderstood and misrepresented if you haven’t seen the prelude.
- Mewtwo & Amber
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I dont have that many 
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Once you have more cases you will need to change your name to wisewailord
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