My collection can be split into 2 categories. Gyarados cards and Japanese promos (mainly Japan exclusive art).
A couple of my recent puchases: Play Promo Mew in PSA 10 for £340 Play Promo Lugia for £430 Play Promo Ho-Oh in PSA 10 for £250
The Lugia and the Mew have recorded sales of approx $2000 each in 2021. So I laugh when people say we’re currently in a bubble that could burst any minute. I’ve picked these cards up for approx 20-25% of their ATH price. These are fan favourite Pokemon, so they shouldnt even really be that niche. Yet I was able to pick them up for next to nothing. This is just a couple of examples, but everyday I’m picking up cards for dirt cheap.
Trouble is, things are so cheap right now that I’m running out of powder. I want my hobby to pay for itself but I cant shift the stuff that I no longer want. My ebay account is dead. For example, I’m currently selling a Pokemon League 1st Place Greninja from XY (2016). It’s a PSA 9 copy but the pop is only 11 and no PSA 10’s exist. My listing has been up for a month and it only has 10 views. Greninja is a fan favourite Pokemon, yet there is no interest. In 2020/21 it would have sold the day I listed it.
The current market puts me in mind of 1999 rather than 2020. Sure you had the huge sales, as well as some cards that were clearly overpriced ($500 birthday pikachu), but generally when people talk about that era the focus is on how much people (kids) just loved Pokemon.
We’re always arguing about how much of the demand is ‘organic’. Obviously we can’t measure that, but the feeling I have is that this boom, in general terms, is more organic than 2020 or 2023.
The last bubble I remember niche stuff selling for mega record prices, like post cards, phone cards, topsun (lol), sealed vintage,hmm oh yeah it sold quicker than I could list it. I mean I can’t remember a day for a year straight where I didn’t wake up to 1-2% of my listings selling overnight. Didn’t matter if I had 100, 1000, or 5000 listings. Every night while I slept 1-2% of stuff sold. Bulk reverse holos, random non holo rares, ect ect. What I’m finding now with this “bubble” is that popularity priced to market is selling. This tends to be sealed modern or chase PSA cards. Another personal anecdote, popular BIN items are doing so-so while it seems like the real liquidity is via groups or through people with platforms ie smpratte, z&g, I could name some other random Canadian sellers but anyway, all personal assessment and based on pretty low volume, but yeah. It feels different. I guess it’s mainly due to during COVID bubble there was more excitement in seeking out a cool niche item, where now there’s more excitement in the regular person seeking out the most popular and stonking item.
So I imagine those who are buying at these record high prices are going to be less inclined to believe we’re in a bubble, even if the data is right in front of them.
I’ve been mostly selling. I’d like to believe that most of the cards I am selling will be cheaper in 2 years. Otherwise I probably wouldn’t sell them. Wanting that to be true will bias me into thinking those cards are in a bubble currently.
I remember in 2020 some cards increased so fast that some of my purchases doubled in price before they even arrived at my door. Literally as they were being shipped to me they doubled. It’s painfully obvious now that it was a bubble, but I didn’t want to believe it then so I ignored the signs.
Anyway, I don’t care what we call it. Prices are increasing too fast on many cards, and the last time this happened I ignored it and regretted not selling (2020). Not making that mistake again.
Ditto. I’m guessing you’re a bit like me, where you buy what you want, instead of buying what you think everyone else would want. As far as I can see, it’s mainly ultra modern and some PSA 10 chase cards that have experienced some growth. Everything else is either stagnant or has decreased in value.
100%. As a Gyarados collector, I collect anything Gyarados. My collection isnt just TCG, I also collect the Topps, Sealdass, Topsun, Carddass, Action Flipz etc. These Niche items are way cheaper to pick up now, and any of these items that I bought in 2021 has dropped by 50% or more.
Japanese is always way cheaper than it was. Now is a great time to collect Japanese promos and Japan exclusive art.
I was mostly being facetious. I’ve noticed an uptick in sales for stuff I’ve had listed for a while (which necessarily means an increase in price), but my point was it’s not rocket ships across the board. Like you say, mostly modern/desirable PSA 10s.
I think the majority of the hype is in modern, but almost all of my vintage stuff has gone up as well. Exclusive Japanese arts like GB Lugia have like doubled in price, Dark Gengar from Neo 4, of course BW/ XY (which is debatable if that falls under modern or not atp)
At first I was like, what the f do you mean “since November 2023”? I sold three cards that I’ve bought for ~4.5k USD in 2019 for 150k USD in mid-2023 and bought a house. But I guess Ethan answered that implicitly:
In this case, I do completely agree with Scott:
I’ve been collecting for 10 years now, and I’ve defintely experienced some crazy times in the hobby, like 2016 with XY Evolutions & Pokémon GO; 2019-2021 due to the pandemic; the earlier mentioned mid-2023 waifu bubble; etc. etc.
But, I almost never sell any cards, so I’m only exposed to the market from a buyer’s perspective. Also, with most of my collection goals, there are only a handful of older cards left to find right now and for the past ~1.5 years I’ve mostly been focusing on new releases (and non-TCG stuff).
I clearly see an increase in prices for every new modern release, since I buy singles for my collections, and some SR singles of new sets are 300-600 USD on release date these days. But even worse, most of them are even increasing in value over the next couple of months since their release, instead of dropping slightly before increasing again 0.5-1 year later, as usually happened in the past..
Still, I barely get any exposure to any of the other eras of cards right now, except for those cards/prices being shared here on the forum. I also don’t care too much about value, except for cards I have yet to buy for my collection goals tbh.
Anyway, I’ve voted for “This is the new normal”. Not because I think it’s normal at all, but because I’ve seen the market increase in overall value, demand, and even supply[1] every year since I came back collecting 10 years ago, and I don’t think that will stop anytime soon.
Greetz,
Quuador
with many rare and even previously unseen cards popping up these last 5 years ↩︎
In what world is it normal to be able to 3x one’s money on a brand new product they bought only 2 years ago?
Paldea Evolved booster boxes are $300 each. They were released 2 years ago. Those cards are still tournament legal.
Forget Paldea. Forget Pokemon. Look at it for what it is with all those specifics stripped away:
It is a mass produced consumer product with a 2023 barcode and trademark. Is it really normal to be able to sell a consumer good purchased in 2023 for 3x more than paid? In what other sectors of the economy would that be considered normal?
Sometimes I just think everyone gets comfortable with a status quo that could really be resting on a house of cards.
Call it whatever you want but we have been through multiple periods of times where prices of certain things detach from what is sustainable or reasonable. I think we are in one of those moments. It will correct and as always it will correct for some cards much harder than others.
The new normal of more people doing pokemon than ever is the hardest thing to reverse. It’s why after previous bubbles the market was never the same. The points about ultra modern are tired and miss the larger picture of total sales volume and total participants in the market. It’s like trying to define the entire stock market by how illogical GameStop or AMC are traded.
I kind of agree. Streaming is like a huge huge factor on why modern is so crazy. People want attention and their packs to be ripped and share an “emotion” when pulling a big card with a streamer. It’s hard to predict the market and navigate, but it is extremely tough for normal collectors. I hope this isn’t the norm, but it might be
It may be tired, but at least for me it comes from a place of genuine concern. I don’t want to see people get caught into the hype and lose money.
I know the feeling from the other side: the fomo, getting caught up in the hype. There are products I bought in 2020 that are still worth only half of what I paid. Even in this market.
Ultramodern is the lowest barrier to entry. It’s where most of these new people are going. Of course plenty of them will branch out over time, but they mostly start there.
The newcomers are most vulnerable to being misled, to thinking that what they are seeing in their sector of the market is “normal” if enough people tell them it is. The euphoria and blind optimism is easy to find on social media. It’s insane on Reddit.
Yes there’s no one universal description of what’s going on everywhere in the hobby. However, what’s going on in ultramodern in particular is not normal, it’s not sustainable, and many people are going to lose a lot of money. That’s where my frustration comes from.
100%! I fully agree! A lot of this conversation is about which segment we are discussing; I’m primarily focused on the total market. Same as prior bubbles, when the record prices settle, we are still larger than before. But you are 100% right about the potential and likely pitfalls in ultra modern for newcomers.
It’s pretty clear that Pokemon has become a mature market. It’s also pretty clear that things cannot just go up exponentially. Buying today is a hot potato. Chance you get rich in a month, chance you get burned to a crisp
But I guess Ethan answered that implicitly:
