The Question of the Day is a way to facilitate community discussion to help members ponder the unanswered questions of the world that are somehow relating to the hobby. Questionsj are many times open ended and up to interpretation. Feel free to post your thoughts in as much or as little detail as you’d like.
Helpful Considerations may or may not help some people focus their answer, these are blurred to not bother those who have their own ideas.
Today’s Question: QotD: Has pokemon become too expensive of a hobby for casual collecting?
Helpful considerations: We know there are ways to collect cheaply, but from the outside looking in, has it become too prohibitive to many new collectors to even consider starting?
I explained to my Dad that Pokemon Card stores are the new jewelry stores when he kept seeing robbery segments on the news. Yes, you can buy cheap art rates but what if that’s not what you want? Most of my collection I either wouldn’t buy now or couldn’t afford because of the massive price difference. In a lot of ways, yes, it’s a lot harder to collect now if you were to start from scratch on things you WANT but may not be able to afford immediately. I think about just when I re-entered in 2019 to now and it’s night and day.
I remember I wrote in an earlier thread this year that you can’t have it all and the sooner you can accept it the happier you’ll be, and the market doesn’t care about feelings. This still applies.
I think it depends on your perspective and what you want collecting Pokemon cards to be. If the only goal is to relive childhood nostalgia and you want to build complete vintage sets then currently it is too expensive for the average person. I’ve had the goal of completing Gym Challenge unlimited for a while but I haven’t picked up any cards because the holos all go for $100+ AUD which is too much for me to justify currently.
The positive is that there’s never been more cards with fantastic art that fall into the realm of bulk pricing, so if you can find joy in filling a binder with cheap pickups it’s easier than ever to be a casual collector. Especially with the proliferation of card shows and a lot of game stores opening up I imagine there’s a lot of opportunity to go card hunting on a budget which is a lot of fun.
I am a firm believer that Pokemon card collecting can be enjoyed at all economic levels. Outside of trophies, select chase cards, popular species, and master sets, Pokemon card collecting is affordable.
There are hundreds of species that fit within an average collector budget, hundreds of art rares and promos priced less than the typical Starbucks order, plenty of dirt-cheap non-holo vintage cards, unlimited vintage holos flying under the radar, etc.
I feel like the opposite end of the collecting spectrum fits the prompt better: Pokemon has become too expensive for serious collectors.
For me I’d say yes it became to expensive for a casual hobby. It’s still a hobby that I love but it changed. I feel like especially as someone who collects since a long time I had to change the way of collecting or at least adjust because of the recent price explosions and boom. Like 10 years ago people could just casually pick up basically anything new without breaking the bank and it wasn’t really time critical when to pick things up. And I feel like its not just expensive in regards of money but time as well. Nowadays you got to be on top of the game to pick some cards up on time before they are gone or exploding in price.
Like I said I still love it but it’s definitely not as “casual” as it has been. I try to counter it with setting goals and writing a plan of when to buy what and I’ll just stick to it no matter what. That gives me a bit more of a casual feeling but I have to force myself not to look left and right otherwise there could be temptation of buying something else / more.
If I would be a new collector I feel like it would be easier to adjust to the situation today because there wouldn’t be “the good ol’ days” in my head and just the here and now. Maybe I’d just collect
Unless someone is truly satisfied with cheaper modern and bulk cards (which is a possibility, can’t deny that), I’d say it’s expensive.
Whether it’s “too expensive” obviously depends on other factors: if this casual happens to like vintage, certain species or have a condition threshold, then yeah.
It isnt too expensive its just the matter of “Will I pay a specific price?”. Which varies from card to card. A majority of cards arent worth their market price to me, but if people want to pay those prices, and it makes them happy then thats cool.
In a lot of ways - yes. I have to be much more picky in what I buy. Everyone can still collect of course, but we all know we’d be collecting MORE of what we truly want if everything hadn’t shot to the moon.
That last picture is absolutely not casual starter collector status. Great cards, but unique art releases in specific languages dont usually meet the “casual” definition.
I’m not sure about that.
When things were cheap they were not as desirable and you would wait for prices to drop even more before pulling the trigger, and always negotiate with the seller because the power was on the buyer side. You would think that you can always buy the card later and delay everything.
That’s what every one did
Until retail items become easily available where the average parent doesn’t have to spend markup prices on items through a 2nd hand hobby shop, my answer is pokemon is currently “unreasonable” but not “unaffordable” for the average person.
When you look at prices of retail, they aren’t astronomical in terms of cost. It might be $8 for a booster pack now, but the average person should have $8. However where it becomes unreasonable is the time and effort it takes to find product. (I excluded premium products like upc and etbs since there are cheaper options for cards)
I grew up where there was around 2 hobby stores for cards and I didn’t know about them until someone I knew told me in school.
The reason they told me is because they knew I collected and I only collected because I liked the cards and it was easy to find in stores when I would go shopping with my parents for food or clothes, etc. They could be found easily without hassle at Target, Walmart, Walgreens, Kmart, etc.
When thinking about it from a different perspective, and not as a adult collector, if I was a kid that never saw much product in stores, why would I try to collect Pokemon and not something that I could find more often than not.
For modern I completely understand all of the frustration, new product shouldn’t be this difficult to obtain. Where its more reasonable for scarce cards that have been out of print for decades to be expensive. To the point of doing this casually, its never been harder than now to casually collect. We have traded the social awkwardness of being the weirdo closeted collector who hid their ex blister packs under groceries out of shame, to now being the weirdo who has no shame and tackles someone to get an ETB to flip online for $100. At least I didn’t have to worry about getting seismic tossed 20 years ago, just quietly judged.
