I have a decent collection of PSA 9/10 Neo Destiny cards, and was checking card pricing on eBay and saw a lot of 9 graded holos from this set only go between $50-100, while new sealed packs go for $250-300. Even if you do pull a holo from those packs, it’s not guaranteed to receive a 10 grade either. From a buyers perspective, buying the graded 9s is definitely the financially smart thing to do.
Are packs just seriously overpriced here, are they priced accordingly because of the chance of pulling a shiny card, or should sellers with PSA 9 and 10 graded stock just be holding onto their cards until prices rise according to current pack prices? 1st jungle holo prices are priced similar, yet their booster packs are much cheaper.
Sealed product seems to always be worth more than what you can get out of it. 90% of the time you lose money when you open vintage boosters. Neo destiny is high because of shinings imo, it’s very iconic and has the most valuable WOTC cards aside from 1st ed base. And i think your example with jungle is due to the common knowledge of the silvering issues in the jungle set. 1st edition team rocket booster boxes are sitting at $1900 and while I would love to have one there’s almost no way you could open it, grade the cards and make more than $1,900.
The YouTube pack/box opening phase created such an extra disparity between the price of sealed product and the cards contained within them that there is no remaining connection. The supply dwindled to the point that they maintain a price ecosystem of their own that is based on their desirability as a self-contained collectable independent of the contents. The only remaining relationship is a potential relationship, wherein the price of the packs/boxes could still be elevated as a result of an increase in the value of the contents. But there are no signs that this is happening or likely to happen in the immediate future.
When opening product guarantees a profit people will open it until it doesn’t. Opening product lowers the supply of sealed and increases the supply of graded cards. Fixed demand for each would lead to increased prices on sealed product and decreased prices on graded cards. Since demand has risen for both we have seen greatly increased sealed product prices and generally increased graded card prices as well, though some did dip for a bit here and there during the era of mass box opening and grading.
Look at all 1st edition WOTC product a few years ago. You could open 1st base, aquapolis, fossil, jungle anything and grade all the cards and make money. Many did. It didn’t make any sense how easy it was, now the world makes sense again. Old scarce sealed product should not have a positive expected value for opening.
One of the biggest reason for the disparity between price of the holos and packs is the SHININGS. They are supposedly incapable of being weighed - meaning that all destiny packs have potential; hence the price jump.
This coupled with what the above comments say about how the expected value of a box should not be more than the box itself to prevent flippers from cracking every one they see. It’s only natural this balanced itself out over time.
Thanks for the replies, that clarifies some things. It made no sense as to why Destiny 9s/10s went for the same price as Jungle 9s/10s, yet the packs were insanely more. The chance of landing a shining would explain that. I do see a few years back a huge surge of videos where people were opening boxes, probably just making bank sadly.
Being someone who has already completed my Booster Pack Collection, I don’t have any issues with people opening Booster Boxes / Packs on YouTube - in-fact, I’d strongly encourage more people to open more-and-more Boxes / Packs! Haha
Sure, they’re opening this product for additional views / subscribers and the additional revenue. However, there is only a finite number of Sealed Products - the more that’s opened, the less that’s available, and the more rare / valuable that remaining supply becomes! I’d rather see my collection grow in rarity / value than have it sit stagnant forever! What’s the fun of collecting Sealed Product when there is ample supply and you never see any growth whatsoever? Personally, I LOVE being able to see the value of my Booster Pack Collection continue to rise overtime with the supply dwindling. It truly adds another layer of excitement for me and adds just another reason for me to hold onto my collection as I know if I sold certain Booster Packs I’d probably never be able to justify re-purchasing with the current market. For Example, I purchased my 3x 1st Ed. Base Packs for $1,000.00 Total. I could easily sell those today and nearly triple my money! However, I don’t want to sell mine anytime soon as I know that if I do sell them, I’m never going to be able to justify re-purchasing.
From what I understand, Neo destiny “Shining” cards can not be weighed out, so that means every pack can potentially have a shiny card. That in part increases the price, plus neo destiny packs are in shorter supply.
I’ve known this, but never really thought of the implications of it really. Weighed packs have a higher chance of having a shining than “honest” packs.
2 shinings per box, 12 holos per box.
So each box has 12 holos, 2 shinings, and 22 “duds”. An “honest” pack would yield 2/36 or 1/18 chance at a shining. A light pack would have 2/24 or 1/12 chances at a shining. Interesting stuff.
I think this thread covers the reasons why the packs aren’t cheap. I just wanted to mention though, this is why I collect 1st ed wotc holos in psa 9. There are a lot of them out there and they may never really see significant increases in price. But you’re getting a literal pack-fresh card. These packs are hundreds of dollars and you’re only going to pull a holo in about 1/3 of them assuming they are unweighted (ignore shinings). I have gotten neo destiny psa 9 1st ed holos for less than $25 dollars shipped. After grading fees, shipping and ebay(/pwcc) fees, these cards are basically being given away.
Again, that’s not to say 9s will ever really become trendy. But for how much a 9 costs and what you get by buying them, for me it’s a no-brainer
What got me into collecting graded cards was the price differnce between WoTC 10 and 9’s. 10 were out of my reach if I wanted to complete a full set of holos from each WoTC set, but with the discovery of the 9’s price its just so much easier and fun to collect them.
I don’t expect there to be movement in price for 9’s until the the population levels out which I don’t expect for a while. Good if you’re buying now though, makes my life that much easier
My bad I checked back and that is right. So revised numbers:
3 shinings per box, 12 holos per box.
So each box has 12 holos, 3 shinings, and 21 “duds”. An “honest” pack would yield 3/36 or 1/12 chance at a shining. A light pack would have 3/21 or 1/7 chances at a shining. Interesting stuff.
