This has given me the chance to complete binder sets in NM condition for cheap honestly.
dumb. FTFY
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To be fair, value can be found in any sub-market of Pokemon; however, I also think there is still some downward pressure coming across the whole market due to macroeconomic instability. However, I will offer a few observations:
1). Most vintage prices seem to be finding a floor (support) after a pretty severe correction. I’ve been tracking prices on some of the more notable 1st Edition WOTC holos in PSA 8-10 conditions and many have remained close to flat since January. Traditionally speaking, it’s better to purchase assets after prices have corrected and when hype is low. Just as the boom was an anomaly of demand, the subsequent saturation/liquidation of cards on the market may also prove to be transient.
2). We’ve experienced a nearly identical phenomenon in 2016 following Pokemon Go, where prices peaked quickly and aggressively; for the next 2-3 years prices corrected pretty severely, and although they were still higher than pre-2016, they stabilized much lower than the 2016 highs before slowly appreciating once more. I remember wishing I had sold more of my duplicates at the time, but holding them proved to be a much better decision. 2020-2023 feels similar, though much more extreme this time around.
3). Not all vintage cards will move together. Scott always says, “Older, Rarer, Minter, Better,” which I whole-heartedly support as a general guideline. However, I would also add popularity and historical significance as two additional fundamentals to consider. Pokemon like Charizard, Snorlax, Gengar, Umbreon, etc. have a larger buyer pool and are more liquid. Inversely, there are plenty of vintage cards that having high graded populations and low demand . . . even with the right conditions, some of these cards might not appreciate as well as others with otherwise similar fundamentals.
4). Duration is key. I think the fundamental issue in “Pokemon investing” discussions comes from not clearly defining goals. Vintage isn’t great for short-term flipping, unless you know how to source and grade mint raw cards (which is becoming increasingly difficult). This is easier to do with modern singles, provided your cards make it to market quickly; otherwise, it’s a race to the bottom. Modern is also much more liquid, especially near release. However, thinking long-term, these same modern singles have a HUGE saturation risk due to poor fundamentals. There are a lot of investment channels that specifically measure vintage price growth/decay using data from just the last three years. . . I think this is flawed though, since the boom and subsequent correction were a highly unusual anomaly in the broader context of the Pokemon market and not representative of what we should expect moving forward.
Personally, I enjoy collecting vintage and racing to flip modern isn’t something I’m interested in doing (it’s not fun to me). Given Pokemon’s history and popularity, I think vintage is a great place gradually appreciate over time with a few volatile spikes along the way.
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I used the last months to complete my NM Shadowless Set for partly stupid cheap prices tbh. It feels quite good to get so much nostalgia for almost no money
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Well I was pinging you to get you to say your signature signoff, but that works too haha
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So people having preferences are dumb? LMAO ok buddy
The classics never go out of style! 
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It was a joke that apparently didn’t land. But hey if that’s what you like go for it 
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Honestly, I like the fact there’s a lot of vintage bashing at times. Bring it on. Drive the prices down so we can collect more before the next boom! 
In all seriousness though, it’s a bit of a strange phenomenon and also a very narrow way of seeing the Pokemon hobby to me. I’m primarily a vintage collector, but I like to see the modern products succeed as well and I even collect the ones I like. I really don’t see the point of being a ‘hater’ on vintage though, it just makes no rational sense to me either. It’s like, what does one gain by doing it exactly?
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There we go! 
Sometimes I get worried about the cards correcting and finding the floor, but I also consider that the market flooded with less than mint examples of lots of cards. There were so many factors for a perfect storm that drove prices up, who knows if we’ll see that again, but mint copies are holding their value. It’s not every day you’ll come across a 9 or a 10 shadowless 1st edition or any other low pop vintage card.
The other sets are always being discovered, people are starting to shift their focus towards the art. I think there are very undervalued sets still.
Yeah I’ve noticed this, too. Vintage isn’t really dipping anymore. More or less, it has stagnated. I also pointed out the parallel to 2016 through 2018 as you did in your No. 2 point.
Even before the boom in 2020 which was accelerated due to a variety of once in a lifetime factors, things were starting to appreciate in 2019. I remember during the summer of 2019, WOTC holos were seeing some movement. Nothing crazy, but they were increasing in price. Those who were around at the time probably remember this.
I think the line that needs to be clearly drawn is the difference between graded and ungraded. This is a great time to be buying graded vintage cards. Ungraded is another story. While there was still a decent supply of raw mint WOTC in the couple of years following the Pokemon Go boom, that supply has dwindled to almost nothing now. As I said earlier, any listings for near-mint WOTC holos on eBay are almost always PSA 7-8 quality at best, but they are going for close to PSA 9 prices. That makes raw a tough buy right now, and it also make flipping a very difficult thing to do, which I definitely think is a reason so many people are down on vintage.
Let’s face it: many people in this hobby are flippers, and while there is nothing inherently wrong with that, they are naturally going to have a bias for cards they can easily buy raw, grade and make a quick buck on. You can’t do that with vintage right now, and I’m not sure you’ll ever be able to do it with vintage again. I mean, it was even relatively difficult to do that in 2017; let alone now where the raw mint supply has been swallowed up.
This might represent the best time to buy graded WOTC. There will be another spike in the hobby at some point. Will it be like late 2020? No, but prices will increase again, and we will all eventually end up having this same discussion again.
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Brownie points on YouTube and social media.
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Your whole post was excellent! To this point though: this is exactly why I think there is long-term upside potential in vintage slabs. Assuming the mint raw supply continues to dwindle, we will experience a stagnation in new graded supply hitting the market. Over the last three years, we’ve seen the opposite: a record amount of new slabs graded and sold (saturation). I expect demand to continue to grow over the years while supply diminishes (same number of slabs, but far fewer actively being liquidated at the same time).
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Those 2019 WOTC price changes are what finally lured me into the market. It felt like a big trend was starting to kick off.
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Eh markets have cycles. The boom was WAY too big of a bubble. It was inevitable to come down. The new floor seems MUCH higher. While prices on Pokemon across the board could continue to cool especially going into a recession I still feel like Pokemon is in a healthier state than ever. Tons of new people in the hobby and a lot of the pumpers from 2021 are gone.
Now the big question, how much of the pump was fueled by market manipulation from King Pokemon? 
He definitely brought a lot of people into Pokemon that are only interested in making money, and don’t really appreciate Pokemon itself. His comments about Arita’s signiture on one of his cards says it all. Idk I bring this up because when you have big players pumping things it doesn’t create organic growth. So it becomes inevitable there will be a fallout after the hype bursts.
But I still think its cool to see SO many new collectors and people coming back. Even if the market is “down” it feels way up from a decade ago and isn’t that what’s most important? The overall trend?
As far as speculating what Vintage will do in the nearterm, I admit I think WOTC could cool off more. I was at Collect-A-Con yesterday and man it really hits you in the face just how much WOTC stuff is out there, even graded. There is just a ton of those cards. Seems like some later vintage might be the better play right now because of the lower print volume? Idk but people will always love Base, Jungle, Fossil, Rocket, etc. It’s hard to say.
Hot take: I think base set Charizard is overvalued. He’s just going for WAY too much over all the other cards. Feels like investor money to me and not genuine interest. While everyone as a kid wanted Charizard, I remember almost as many Venusaur, Blastoise, and Alakazam fans and yet those cards are orders of magnitude lower than Charizard. Just seems kind of weird to me. Feels like the Pawn Stars King Pokemon thing may have lasting effects on why that card is still so hot compared to the others.
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I think everyone hit on a lot of the thoughts I have around vintage prices at the moment. Prices across the board for basically all cards are extremely strong when compared with pre-pandemic prices. @PokemonClassics made a good point that modern is experiencing, even in 2023, much more saturation due to the amount of new 10s being graded.
I think a trend that has become even more prevalent over the past few years is putting everything that is profitable into a slab. We are seeing that especially with modern cards that have margin above raw NM + grading and rarer JPN promos that can still be bought mint from Japan. I think this cycle of endless slabbing will result in modern prices being squeezed until there’s no more “meat on the bone.” I believe a part of the reason as to why vintage is stagnating, as someone else pointed out, is that a ton of mint vintage ended up in plastic during the pandemic and now buying mint raw is almost impossible now for many vintage set cards. I believe that vintage cards will stagnate for possibly years while social media and collector interest is focused around the newest flashy things.
After that, I’m not really sure what my outlook is! I think my overall feel is that the pops of vintage 10s won’t rise anywhere near the rate of modern 10s, so they’ll probably outpace them whenever we see another demand spike in Pokemon. I would say that’s my most likely estimation for the future of vintage vs modern pricing.
I think it’s also possible that some years down the road, we see a massive demand increase for Pokemon cards and (similar to 2020) enough money rushes into the hobby to push prices to record levels across all eras. It’s undeniable that there are some modern promos and middle-era low pop 10s that could be considered “blue chip” and “investable” to people coming from other hobbies.
Social media is also a huge factor that isn’t talked about much. If Logan Paul had focused on extremely rare trophies such as Wonder Platinums, Champion Leagues, etc., I believe we would see an entirely different landscape today. If someone had a crystal ball to see what was trending on Instagram in 5 years, those are the cards I would buy.
Sorry, this was way longer than I intended, thanks for listening to my ramblings
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The one thing that concerns me is how confident at lot of people are with phrases like “when the next boom happens…”. Gives me crypto vibes.
There is never a guarantee that there will be another boom. Most of the history of Pokemon is a story of a stagnating brand (2001‐2016). I find the dependence on a consistent boom-bust cycle to be unique to this hobby and a bit discomforting. In contrast, 2019 is a good example of just relatively slow and healthy growth of prices. That growth is still locked in to prices today.
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Man do I agree with this. I don’t want big boom bust cycles. I’d rather see slow steady growth. It’s definitely healthier. I think we could see that going forward. I think it took some big events like Pokemon Go and the social media craze during the Pandemic to bring a lot of people back and new collectors in. But my hope is moving forward it’s mostly slowly steady increases in interest and value.
Unfortunately human nature seems to feed boom bust cycles in all types of markets. Just look at the housing market, stock market, crypto, etc.
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I think booms mainly happen when people are not expecting them. The fact so many people are “betting” on the next boom makes it less likely it will happen. Or they move a lot quicker as so many people are ready to capitalize on them. As we have recently seen with Waifu cards and Japanese exlusive promo cards.
So the next “boom” is probably not Pokemon wide, but just some small explosions in a certain niche untill is sizzles out again.
When most of the fast money boyzz69 have matured or left, a more broad uptick might happen. Will it be a boom? Something with balls and crystal…
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