I guess so. I am by no means all in on modern but sometimes you can’t ignore easy money. I’ve bought small numbers of newer booster boxes which I just hold on to. I have several Van Gogh promos that I’ll send to PSA at some point soon and then I’ll probably flip them for something that builds my collection goals further.
Nope. But would be cool to hold on a single modern box to buy a house in the next 15 years.
Does buying every prismatic product to flip for easy 2-3x profit the same day count? If so then yes, I am taking advantage of supply imbalance.
I just love a good deal. And since I’m going to open prismatic anyway I’ll go ahead and buy two to sell the second and pay for the first.
None of this is sustainable IMO, it will retrace but I’m taking advantage of the opportunities when they present themselves to use that money towards other goals. Just last month I sold 265 evolving skies packs and used some of the money to pick up a ancient origins etb for my collection
I think there’s an undercurrent of criticisms such as “people taking advantage of current market conditions are distracting themselves from their collecting goals” or an inference that it’s become a situation of collecting vs stonking, but these criticisms are only valid under the assumption that the people benefiting from the stonks are spending huge amounts of time obsessing over charts and price data, when for a lot of us this isn’t the case; it’s incredibly easy to make a lot of money in the current climate with relatively little effort and reinvesting funds back into collecting, allowing goals to be achieved more quickly.
For full transparency, these are some of the ways in which I’ve recently benefited from modern sealed specifically, just using some very basic predictive power:
- Purchased 1 case of Fusion Strike booster boxes and 1 case of Brilliant Stars booster boxes from the Pokemon Center UK in October.
- Purchased 30 Silver Tempest Booster Bundles from PC UK in December.
- Purchased the 5-box allocation of Terestal from Pokemon Center JP.
Even small volume purchases like the above have allowed people to make multiple thousands in profit in a very short space of time just through a bit of predictive purchasing. There are still opportunities such as the Brilliant Stars and Astral Radiance sleeved boosters and triple blisters being available at ‘MSR PEE’ on the PC UK website. If I had the money and the inclination, I’d be buying some up because it’s clear that the stock is cycling out and demand will go up when it does.
In summary, it’s relatively low effort for very easy money, and those who take advantage are more likely to be bolstering their collecting capabilities than hindering them, especially since the vintage market is not moving anywhere near as quickly as modern. If that’s what they choose to do with the money, of course.
I haven’t heard much negativity about people capitalizing on modern or collecting it recently. If anything its overly overly positive. Even I joke about it needing skill to lose money in this market.
Whether you’re using it to fund vintage or just are a tru believer that fusion strike is the next skyridge, it’s been pretty fun.
I guess the only real complaint is that people can’t find stuff in stores anymore. But that’s been the way to various degrees since COVID and it’s the new reality of Pokemon until TPCi decides to buy another printing company and run this stuff further into the dirt
Yeah, not necessarily on e4, but in many online circles wherever people are making money there’s always the hahbee gatekeepers or anti-capitalists ready to criticise. The main point is that it’s possible to be both a ‘tru collect0r’ and enjoy making money along the way. It was rife online over the early covid period. I agree about people and kids not being able to find stuff in stores, but it’s side effect of supply and demand that TPCi haven’t effectively adapted to since covid, like TPC have.
This does feel a lot like early COVID. And I think people on e4 at least know what that means…
Time to take a dump
LOL, maybe Hidden Fates ETBs will return to the 2020 highs… of nearly 5 years ago ![]()
I’m sure the stuff will continue to climb. Even long term. It’s just nice to have a weird time where easy to obtain modern is avalible & sellable while hard to obtain vintage is not increasing!
I’m excited and have already converted a lot of my modern to vintage. Will continue all year most likely
Based off the last few years, it seems the frequency of online hate and criticisms increase at times when desired product(s) or sets are harder to find. In other words, people use “evil scalper” or “evil investor” as a coping mechanism. Its easy to blame the boogeyman or some idea of what a boogeyman is. I would even go so far as to argue that scalpers and investors have virtually no influence over the ease of access to products for everyday consumers.
Its the lack of product. Plain as that. With numbers i pulled out of nowhere, for every 1 scalper or evil investor, theres thousands of people genuinely interested in and seeking product. Maybe im too naive, but maybe not?!
Thoughts? Am I living in La La Land?
Until TPCi/TPC saturates a product that is meant to be completely available to everyone upon/before release, it’s going to be much more common to blame someone/ a smaller group for things out of their control
im buying stuff that all these new people don’t know or care about. Also I wouldn’t benefit much since I don’t scam people on whatnot.
Did they not already buy out another printing facility or something in recent years? Sure I remember Rudy predicting it and it coming to fruition during the previous supply shortage of modern around the covid era.
Unless you mean them setting up yet another one on top of that.
I am constantly buying and selling.
Pokemon isnt a side-hustle, its a hobby. So my answer: No.
If im constantly buying and selling its going to seem like a job and i just wont be interested anymore.
buy them all till only pokemon is being printed
they bought millenium print group, but that didn’t really change much since they were already basically the sole client of millenium. It just gave them a streamlined production and cuts costs through vertical integration. But of course its a hefty up front cost that won’t likely pay for itself for a number of years yet. IMO, that didn’t improve their print capacity. If anything, Quality control has seemed to be on the decline since then.
time to start a print facility and get bought by pokemon. That’s the REAL flip to make. Don’t scalp pokemon cards to timmy’s, make pokemon company themselves the timmy by scalping a whole printing company.
tapping head guy meme

