The most important question to ask during a boom is āwhy.ā Once you figure out why things are going up, you can then speculate and extrapolate as to when those conditions will change. In 2016 we had demographic factors pressuring the market (young Base Set collectors growing up and spending newly-gained disposable income), in 2020 we had the pandemic, 2023 waifu/Japanese boom aligned with new Chinese popularity/speculating and social media hype, etc. etc. I think the modern and vintage increases have different causes, so Iāll break them down separately.
My hot take is that the current modern scarcity is much more of a supply issue than a demand issue. If we look back at early SV, almost all the English booster boxes were widely available for 60% of MSRP. I was buying SV4 and SV5 in Japanese for a similar percentage off MSRP. A lot of secondary market values were approaching distributor pricing for booster boxes.
Pokemon likely responded to this by decreasing the amount that they ordered printed of the latter half of the SV sets. Unfortunately, these sets were quite good and many more people wanted Pikachu and Mewtwo and Umbreon SARs than Terapagos and Iron Valiant and 4x Ogerpon (whoāve thunk it?). Pokemon has ordered reprints, and we know it takes about 6-8 months for reprints to reach consumers.
My crystal-ball prediction is that the modern supply issues will be more or less sorted by this time next year, and product will be widely available at MSRP. However, I doubt weāll go back to sub-$100 booster boxes at all during the Mega era. Megas are much more popular and interesting than brand new Pokemon, as long as Pokemon throws us a good mega or two in each M era set we wonāt be hurting. It looks like weāre getting sets based on Lucario/Gardevoir, Charizard, Greninja, and Rayquaza to kick off the M era, so no duds there at all. Maybe weāll need to wait until the start of Gen 10 for modern prices to really drop.
In terms of vintage, it seems like the entire vintage market has shifted, and I canāt point to one cause. Vintage lagged behind modern for a long time in this boom, and it even seemed like vintage was being led by modern. Things like the rise in XY Mega cards and TRR looked to be directly correlated to Legends ZA and the return of Rocketās Pokemon in Destined Rivals. It seems like only a few months ago when certain individuals claimed vintage was relegated to the uncool trash heap of history. If this was the cause for vintage increases, Iād say that the vintage boom would be reduced and prices may start to come down once modern supply/demand stabilize.
However, now weāre seeing astonishingly high vintage sales every day, seemingly decoupled from the modern trend. Anything chase, English, and PSA 10 hits a new record every time itās sold, and it isnāt close. Prices on basically everything outside of Base Set are now are even eclipsing their 2021 highs. It seems like the vintage phenomenon is definitely not just a reaction to modern and is something in and of itself. I canāt really point to a cause though, which makes it very hard to predict where things will go.
If 2020-21 taught us anything, you can never really tell when things will stop going up. You can also never tell how far things will fall from their heights. While there will be ups and downs, by and large prices will never get back to the way they were before. $7-10k for BW full art PSA 10s feels insane to me, but these are also cards with incredibly low supply. Outside of things like Van Gogh Pika (which was selling for lots before the boom and hasnāt really gone anywhere recently) I canāt point to anything that feels like 2020ās PSA 10 Jungle Eeeves. Iām suspicious about the influence of social media hype, shilling, self-justifying prices, and the investor mentality that everything will go up forever no matter what you pay. Itās the same things I saw in 2020-21, so I do anticipate some level of significant retrace in some segments. When and where that comes is anyoneās guess. If you stuck through this fourthstar essay, thank you.
