The thing I’ve noticed that really bothers me and makes me say, “entry level collectors have it hard,” is that many cards are selling raw for the same price as NM, even when they’re played. I started noticing this when I was completing Vs Set 1.5 years ago, but it feels like it’s true for everything, now…
TL;DR The value proposition for raw collectors is really low right now, and to me, that means collecting far less accessible.
You have to be a slab collector to get a market value out of your purchases? That’s just absurd. It’s a trading card hobby, not a graded slab hobby. Or is it?
Has the hobby become a graded collector hobby?
Of Course, slab collectors can be casual, but I don’t think you should Have to be a slab collector to be casual.
When I see content like this, with glass cabinets full to the brim with almost every card spanning all eras, dozens and dozens of copies of old chases lined up, and we are in the biggest bull market if it needs to be reminded, I always think how pokemon cards are not rare, not scarce, except for the exceptions.
Conditionnal rarity is everything in Pokemon.
It’s not the PSA 10 that is overvalued
It’s raw prices that are overvalued, they should be cheaper, there is nothing rare about them wether modern or vintage, just look at the video
I haven’t opened packs since late SM/SWSH. I just bought a lot of about 6500 bulk cards for less than the cost of an Ascended Heroes ETB. The cards are from around 2021 to now, and include about 1500 reverse holos. I have found so many sick artworks and already have a mental list of about 20-30 binder page ideas. As the pages come together, I plan to buy some buy cheap IRs to supplement and pepper into the layouts.
That said, I also collect graded and am priced out of a lot of cards I wish I had bought “back in the day”. But I am glad to have the ones that I have, and I am still able to slowly pick of a card here and there when it makes sense.
Depends how far back you stretch your comparisons. Back when I started collecting in the WOTC days, single cards weren’t such a high proportion of your disposable income to pick up. Sets were possible to complete too.
I don’t think this is necessary always true today on a regular budget. The most expensive cards in sets are just insane money and massively higher than the top card of a set back in the day. Somebody I know is trying for a full Ascended Heroes set…I said, good luck with that with the Pikachu currently around £800 raw. Compared to when we collected Base or Fossil, we never had Base Charizard at £500 or Fossil Gengar at £700 or whatever. And those cards were realistic to pull from packs whereas these days you can rip through hundreds of packs, spend a fortune, and still not pull the chases.
I distinctly remember a consumer rights TV show back in the Base set days investigating “scandalous” practices of Charizards being sold for £60 by stores opening packs!! Even if you DID pay that sort of money, it was proportionally nowhere near what you would have to pay for the top card in a set now. It was still possible to finish the set.
(I realise there will be a lot of flaws and holes in my examples but it’s the best I could give to explain how I feel about the situation)
Not to mention modern product still not readily available on shelves. People I know with kids only get stuff for them to open and have fun with because they have high paying jobs and just pay inflated online prices for ETBs and such. There are still queues for launch day of new sets here and still not enough supply, and still perma-empty shelves in all the places I used to impulse buy a blister pack or random carded booster.
Also worth mentioning that a lot of us here spend four/five figures on rare cards or high grade slabs so don’t necessarily see current prices as roadblocks, just annoyances. If I was the age I was in the WOTC era with the same scale of allowance I had then as a child, I would certainly be priced out of cards today.
There really is no answer to this question because there are too many variables.
Excuse my Jordan Peterson impression but,
What exactly is casual collecting? Is it buying one card a week? One card a month? If it’s a specific card or set you want, does that make it more than casual?
Or is it tied to a certain amount of money spent? If so, how can there be an answer when everyone has a different opinion on what they consider expensive?
Are we even limiting the question to Pokemon cards? Almost all other Pokemon merch is much cheaper to collect than cards, so if you are fine with plushes or figures or digital Pokemon in the games, it’s definitely (more) affordable.
Next is the question of collection goals. Everyone has a different collection goal and that makes it more or less expensive. Want to collect all Crystal Pokemon as PSA 10? Expensive. Want to collect a few Bellsprout cards here and there? Not expensive.
The only question of this sort that makes sense is “Has Pokemon become too expensive of a hobby for you?”
100% on you side and the last point you made is gold!
I startet around the same time as you and for the last months I tried to keep up and collecting some old and new goals but the prices getting unreasonable.
So I’m back to the beginning when I started, searching for great art and discovered some silly looking cards from neo series and vending and enjoy them massively.
Who needs an Umbreon if you can get a dark slowking, a Jolteon looking like a hedgehog, Bulky machoke admiring a flower and some trainer cards from Sugimori are so funny.
Yes these aren’t fancy or new and not for everyone but they keep me smiling.
I’ll reply from a Latin American person perspective …
The minimum salary in Latin America is WAY LOWER than the one from USA. For example, in my country (Peru) the minimum salary (per month) is 1130 PEN ($ 325 USD approx)
Having said that … Has pokemon become too expensive of a hobby for casual collecting? … Well, imo depends of your goals in the hobby …
For Modern RAW cards, there are several Full Art cards, Promo cards, Eye-appealing variants that are affordable for most people … In case of Vintage RAW cards, there are also affordable cards. Vintage doesn’t have to be a synonym of “Extremely Expensive” …
Languages such as French, German or Italian can be cheaper than English in most cases. Personally I consider that collecting other languages makes your collection unique, but that’s subjective.
Even, Species Collecting doesn’t have to be expensive … There are several species whose cards are, for the most part, very cheap. For example, Delibird.
If you want to collect chases cards, it’s still possible, but you’d require to save money or to sacrifice cards (what makes you feel most comfortable)
Graded cards are not popular in Latin America (at least here in Peru). Graded cards are generally expensive and most local people can’t pay those prices. Instead, there’s a huge preference for English RAW cards more than any other thing.
Wasn’t there recently a post about a double print error Neo Delibird?
All jokes aside, I think species collecting is actually a really cool way to get into the Pokémon hobby, you just really need to do a ton of research before committing to a specific Pokémon.
Otherwise you end up realizing you’re missing some obscure cameo hidden in a Design Contest card, or you spend years hunting down different versions in different languages and massively overpaying for them. It can escalate pretty quickly, even if at the beginning you think “nah, that’ll never happen to me.”
To answer the actual question though: If I consider a casual collector to be someone with a median income, then the cards that are typically pushed on social media as “chase cards” for a collection seem far too expensive to be financially reasonable purchases for the average person.
Eh, while it has been, lately, for some things I NEED like shadowless holos, I will admit, dabbling in the commons/uncommons art realm for the price I can get them has, at times, far exceeded purchasing expensive shiny cardboard. I am having a blast going through old set boxes at my LCS.
Also, I’ve scored some hella deals on ending soonest auctions that end at 1am est, just sayin’
Yes, it absolutely has become too expensive for casual collecting, depending heavily on what your specific goals are. For me personally, I completely checked out of trying to chase modern sealed product. Finding anything on retail shelves is near impossible, and competing for online stock when it drops, I never succeeded to the point I gave up. So for my case specifically it has become more expensive to the point I decided to forget about modern and shifted my sight to JP sealed.
Because of that, I moved away from the gamble of ripping packs and shifted my focus entirely to buying the specific hits and grails I actually want from EN/JP. The only time I ever ripped sealed was when I was ripping it with my younger brother, outside of that, I stick strictly to buying the singles.
Yeah. It’s really disgusting how elitist and gatekept the hobby has become. The worst is certain subgroups of the hobby that will look at you like you’re trash if you’re not a millionaire.
