So I just have to stop eating for 10 months and I can buy one? That doesn’t seem so bad.
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why is this thread subtagged “for fun”? 
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I wish I had my current salary back in 2022-2023 when prices were more reasonable lol
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in the past when ppl would auction say a 3-4k card u would have like 3 tries to get it coz the winning buyer would never pay 
now there are rando ex reverse holos selling for 5-10k that are worth like 5 bux raw max
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Putting money into perspective is a useful exercise but it’s something most people don’t do or care to do. My degree is in finance and I have 15+ yrs of professional experience so (unfortunately) family and friends consistently reach out to me for financial advice. The people who most need my advice seldom act on it because it isn’t the answer they want to hear.
Without fail they don’t want, they need. They NEED the expensive wedding, they NEED the new car etc. I imagine if they collected Pokemon cards they would NEED those too.
This is where Pokemon gets dangerous for those with poor financial literacy. With an expensive wedding or a new car they are aware that they can’t comfortably afford it and know they are going to LOSE money on the purchase. They spend anyway because they NEED it.
With Pokemon cards, one can point to data that shows they have historically risen in price over time. In this situation they are aware they can’t comfortably afford it but believe they will MAKE money on the purchase (and likely have in the current market). This is a dangerous recipe.
I believe I’m paraphrasing @wisewailmer here? ‘Everyone thinks they’re the warren buffet of Pokemon these days. The truth is you could’ve purchased pretty much anything a year or two ago and it would be worth more today’.
I tend to agree. Until that trend stops people will continue to justify the costs.
All that to say, you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink.
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don’t you think 500 pizzas is fun?
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For me 10k would be life changing. 10k would get the new roof i desperately need.
10k would finish off my fund that ive been slowing working on for a complete restoration of my jeep.
10k would pay off the loan for when my cat had cancer, and pay off the credit card that has kore vet bills, car repairs and other emergency expenses.
Also graded cards are overrated bleh.
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A lot of the low pop sports cards have similar jumps, so I think there’s some precedent, although it’s still pretty wild to think about. The PSA set registry is a big driver of it where even “commons” can get large multipliers. For bigger name cards though as an example, 1980 Bird/Magic/Irving is $2,500 in an 8, $16k in a 9, and approaches $500k in a 10. The 1956 Topps Koufax sold at $5,700 in an 8 and $37k in a 9.
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On the thesis of it’s not just cardboard I thought this one was interesting
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10K is honestly a lot of money lmao
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Cries in Californian 
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I once did this for the Grey felt hat Pikachu when it was going up a ton. I posted on my local FB group that you could literally get a very high end couch for as much as the Pikachu. And the comments were wild.
“But a couch won’t make me money”
“I can’t hold 4 couches in my hand”
But the thing is, my wife and I have been watching home renovation shows recently, and it is 
cra:clap:zy how much you can do to your home for $10k. And the home would appreciate for a much longer term and way more steadily than that card.
$10k is a crazy amount of money for Pokemon. I’m of the thought that I don’t think that any card should be more than like $1k. But I’m talking like primo primo cards. And maybe $5k if it’s low pop or old or whatever. But even modern cards, paying $2k on a PSA 10 copy of a card that literally just came out and will be out for 2 years is absurd.
Also I just realized that it’s tax season and people are prolly getting thicc refunds back and they’re spending it on pokemans
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Almost 7 months of daycare lmao
This is why I will never buy the grail card in this season. Theres simply no justification for me
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I knew one of you would chime in 
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I think framing $10k in terms of roofs, vet bills, or debt repayment is a very natural human reaction, but it can lead us to make some heavy assumptions about who is actually buying these cards.
Money, by itself, is just stored optionality. It only acquires meaning relative to someone’s circumstances, obligations, and priorities. For one person, $10k represents life-changing security or relief. For another, it represents a fraction of their discretionary capital allocated toward a hobby. Both realities exist simultaneously.
What I think happens in threads like this is a bit of demographic projection. Because a $10k card would require dangerous financial gymnastics for the average person, it is then assumed the person buying it must be an average person making a reckless, speculative choice.
It’s true that if you look at Facebook groups or Instagram, you will easily find people overextending themselves, treating cards like crypto, and openly displaying their financial irresponsibility. But relying on those highly visible examples creates a massive confirmation bias. The people who are financially over-leveraged and treating hobbies as ‘hustles’ are incredibly loud. But the people for whom a $10k card is just a fraction of their discretionary surplus, the ones actually sustaining the high-end market, are entirely silent.
Those with that level of funding generally aren’t contributing time to these forum discussions or flexing on social media. They aren’t in the trenches complaining about price ceilings; they see a card that makes them happy, they pay whatever the market price is, and they move on - because they can.
We see this exact dynamic in almost every other high-end hobby. Classic car restorations cost a mint. People drop five to six figures on home theater builds, boats, fine art, horses or luxury watches. If you stand at a marina, you’ll see millions of dollars tied up in boats that are used three times a year. In those communities, spending isn’t usually framed as irrational because it ‘could have been a house deposit.’ It’s generally understood that the buyers are operating within their own, much wider, financial bandwidth. $10k feels irrational if it competes with necessities; it feels routine if it comes from surplus.
Finally, it’s worth considering the trajectory of this demographic. The shock value of a $10k price tag is likely only going to continue weakening (inflation aside). The core generation that grew up with Pokemon is now firmly entering its prime earning years. As the individuals within this collector pool continue to age, their net worths will naturally increase - whether through their own career accumulation, investments, or the looming generational wealth transfer via inheritances.
So I don’t think the disagreement here is really about whether $10k is ‘a lot of money.’ In most instances it is. But as the baseline wealth of the community grows, the number of people for whom $10k sits comfortably inside their discretionary budget will only expand. Once you account for the fact that these buyers are playing a very different financial game, the prices become less of a moral failing of the hobby, and more of a situational reality.
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Almost 7 months of daycare is $10K? What the actual fuck.
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At this rate cards are gonna hit price points where collectors will want to sell because they can’t turn down the money.
Idk what point that is, but you would think we see a mass sell-off at some point where people collectively are like, hey this mario pikachu isn’t worth 40k to me.
Then the question is, are there enough buyers to keep paying record price after price if there is much more volume available?
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$10k is both a lot of money and really not a lot of money.
Whenever I think of Pokemon cards in terms of market cap, the dollar amounts just still seem relatively small.
Like, the total market cap of every mint graded copy of a given mid-tier ex is like $200k. Meaning, for $200k, you could buy every single PSA/CGC 9-10 graded copy of that card in existence (theoretically).
Don’t get me wrong, $200k is a huge amount of money to me. I’m not downplaying that.
But then I go back to my day job and I see the amount of $ at stake in every transaction and, as I’m sure every other American here can attest to, $200k is literally not even a rounding error in the context of the American private sector. Again, it’s a huge amount of money to me, as a random cog in the machine just billing hours. But it’s one atom of a drop of water in an ocean of money that is changing hands on a constant basis.
And that one atom could theoretically buy every single mint graded copy of a given ex in existence.
In fact, the entire market cap of every single EX Series card in existence is still basically nothing, in relative terms. It’s not even a molecule.
So yeah, $10k is a lot. As is $200k. It sure as hell is a lot of money to me. But I also can’t help but feel that it’s also really not that much money.
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Is it bad that my first thought was ‘damn this is overvalued’
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well the difference is u can sell ur stocks to billions of ppl whereas there is just some tiny % of ppl on earth who know what an ex era reverse holo is and why it should cost $10k for a psa 10 when it was a couple hundred bux a few years ago so it would make sense that the market cap is 200k or w/e
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