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: Quadruple what your pokemon collection is worth if all valued at PSA 10, on the condition you no longer own and can never again see any of the cards. Do you take it? Why or why not(This was sorta a suggested question)
Helpful Considerations: Literal generational wealth for some but is it worth never seeing pikachu, rayquaza, and charizard again? Or maybe its only one generation of wealth and minimally leaving things to the kids? Maybe cards mean more than money to you, eff them kids’ future?
Quadrupling a collection’s value would not create generational wealth for most collectors.
Salary inflation, equity positions, and generational transfer of wealth due to familial deaths will eventually lead to much more money for most collectors than a quick 4x of their collection in 2025.
I’m not going to give up my happiness and hobby that easily. However, there is a value that I would easily walk away for, but it’s much greater than 4x. And in that case, I would find other ways to enjoy Pokemon.
I mean, isn’t this just anyone who NFTs stores most of their cards in Fanatics/PSA Vault? If I were one of those people, I’d probably take this deal as not physically having my cards around really decreases my attachment to them. Doesn’t even really feel like I own them.
But in my own case, no, I would not take this. My cards bring me more enjoyment and some of them have already 4x in value during this boom and the thought of selling never crossed my mind.
I don’t think quadruple my current collection (even if evaluated at PSA 10 level) is a life-changing amount of money. Definitely not worth the trade off for how much enjoyment it’s given me so far. But if the amount were to become very significant (doesn’t even need to be generational wealth), I could probably see myself taking this deal. I have many hobbies that already don’t see the time of day due to others crowding them out. Wouldn’t be too difficult for me to refocus my time on other things if I couldn’t collect Pokemon again. (If we’re only talking cards, even easier, as I have recently come to enjoy a lot more non-TCG/non-card Pokemon items).
Considering I’m over 60% (rough guess) from having every snorlax in all languages…I’d do this deal and then just collect non tcg snorlax items….. when I lasted checked using Collectr app said my lax collection was 16k and that’s without half my slabs or counting Raws for languages besides English and Japanese.
If every card in my collection was psa 10 and x4, I would feel obligated to take it since thats life changing money.
I would feel very sad, but 1mill+ is life changing and I guess I can buy different cards with some of that money and invest properly, then retire early.
Answer: No and my collection has seen many growth spurts in terms of value and I stood by it.
Although admittedly most of the time I see what is happening in the current Pokémon landscape it’s tough for me to engage at all & easier to look away. On the contrary it’s also a good reminder to myself that this journey has always been my own.
The beauty of a collection is that it’s tailored to our vision of what we personally want it to be. One glimpse tells you a lot about the owner when we reduce that to a purely financial equation there would be no passion.
Yea im selling in a heatbeat. It wouldnt just be 5, 10x, it would probably be closer to 50x when you consider theres tens of thousands of vintage bulk cards in my collection worth 10 cents now but as psa 10 are $50+. Sure it would suck to lose my rare boys, and it would suck to never be able to acquire them again, but my life would be changed so dramatically by the $$$. despite obsession over pokemon i try to live as though it could disappear and i would still have hobbies and goals unrelated, so pursuing those could be fun. Its an interesting hypothetical. I would probably use a decent amount of the money to buy artwork of my fave pokemon that i could hang in the new house i buy, as a way to pay respect to what selling the cards i didnt want to sell resulted in. I wouldnt miss the bulk very much, sad to say the bulk cards are not very fulfilling anymore, except the blue moons where i forgot about certain rarer bulk or language variations
This has happened to me multiple times. I’ve never sat down and calculated my total collection value, or how much it’s multiplied, but it’s easily more than 4x, probably even 40x. I think when you get into 7 figures, most are taking that deal. With that said, I remember turning down Logan Paul’s 1m offer on my illustrator. Outside of that exception, that type of money is worth more than the cards for most people in their 20-30’s. Time is more valuable than any card.
4x PSA 10 prices?
I have a small collection of JP cards and that would be a life changing amount of money that could lift up myself and the people I care about.
Additionally, the hobby is large enough that I’d still be able to have fun playing the TCG and collecting all the modern, English vintage, Phone card, video game and magazine goals I haven’t started yet.
No. I love Pokemon too much, and the hobby makes me so happy. This would exclude me from secret santa, and other stuff too probably. I do think there would be an amount to force me out of collecting the cards, but it would need to be billions.
Okay, I think I misread the prompt. I collect PSA 9s and 10s, so the 10s in my collection would 4x and the 9s would 12x-40x in value under those circumstances. And all of my binder copies would be valued at PSA 10 x4?
If i have understood the question correctly and there was an option to sell my entire collection, in 1 bulk lot, at 4x PSA10 value, i’d be mashing that Sell button like there’s no tomorrow.
As someone who grew up poor and is now only slightly less poor, you wouldn’t see me for dust. That would be life changing money for me.
Whatever i bought with the money, i’d always be thinking to myself “shiny cardboard paid for this”, so i’d be forever reminded of the collection i once owned.
On one hand I would be very sad to never be able to see/collect those cards again and it would leave a massive gap in my life, on the other hand, I have over 25k cards including my duplicates.. In terms of sheer volume alone, that’s already 1M USD if you value each card at 10 USD in PSA-10.. And considering the value of some of my cards, it’s probably closer to 15-25M in total if we’re talking about 4x PSA-10 values.. I may already own a house and car, but for that amount of money, I’d might make an exception. I’d likely just expand my non-TCG collections and Yu-Gi-Oh collections; start an MTG collection which I’ve never done before; and perhaps get my twisty puzzle collection out of their moving boxes. And I can always still collect the Pokémon TCG cards I don’t own yet, although I have the feeling I wouldn’t be able to complete most collection goals, since I might currently own one or two of them.
As much as i would like to say that i collect pokemon cards, not money, but this question is very beneficial if you just have a very large collection even if it’s mostly bulk which i do have, so i would probably have to take it and consider some new smaller goals that would be possible after selling to keep myself in the hobby, and perhaps try to get more excited over lego?
when we reduce that to a purely financial equation there would be no passion.
