anyone seen the recent price boom in xy cards. saw multiple normal psa 10 xy full arts sell from 500-800 dollars. also noticed the jpn prices arnt moving at all… any possible reasons why?
Hype + Relatively low pop PSA 10s
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For megas specifically it’s probably cause they’re coming back + we’re getting new ones in Legends Z-A late this year.
For just XY full arts it’s cause everything prior to the XY era (vintage through the B&W mid eras) are already very scarce and pricing people out.
XY era cards are notorious for bad print/cut quality so a lot of cards are actually extremely low pop.
JP cards aren’t moving in price because they’re icky and people can’t read them…unless it’s a Masaki Gengar
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I’ve definitely seen Japanese mega cards going up, but not as much and as fast as the English versions. Japanese rises seem to have happened over the past 6 months or so while English is very recent. English XY is going insane though, crazy to see these prices.
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“Mega cards will go up in price because megas are coming back”
many people buy megas under this logic, causing mega prices go up
Soon:
ZA comes out, no one is suddenly thinking about vintage megas. Prices retrace slightly higher than what they were
The current market is hyperoptimized beyond what is rational.
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It’s impossible to tell, but I do wonder how much of the recent price increases are driven by an attempt to find the “next thing to moon” before everyone else, which of course leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy. The question is (a) how many speculators there are and (b) whether the speculators are right about increased interest on the horizon or not.
I still see logical reasons for why XY is booming outside of speculation on future interest, especially when compared to the prices of the modern market. I might come down on the side of the speculators on this one, a new era entirely focused on Megas (and the recently leaked info that Z-A may release over 25 new megas) which is released into a massive boom period seems pretty promising to me–both in terms of interest in the new sets and revived interest in the old ones.
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As a cabal leader, you aren’t allowed to believe in coincidences
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My money is on speculation. Most of the XY FAs don’t have incredible art or organic desirability when compared to the fundamentally better cards for each species in S/M, SW/SH, and S/V.
What they have going for them is relatively low pop in PSA 10, being “the first” Mega printings, and being a largely stonk-less section of the hobby that could see growth. It’s really a perfect storm for speculation with the new game and sets coming out.
If it’s any consolation, I thought about buying some 6-12 months ago when I checked the pop reports and they first started to see some small increases in prices, but thought, “Nah, they’re not for me.” I’m sure others had similar thoughts as me but acted on it.
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I can’t help but feel like you’re primed to want to believe there is something potentially organic. I agree with the idea that a lot of older cards are relatively undervalued, but clearly there’s a pattern emerging of 1) people coming up with a theory 2) people trying to get ahead of the curve 3) more people joining in not to be left behind.
The level of attention capture that happens when anything sees significant price movement is unprecedented today.
You can see the same thing with TRR cards. Because with the new TR set - of course these old cards will go up. But I find these 2 braincell correlations almost never pan out, or at least not to the degree people expect them to. The new & weird phenomenon is that these things get priced in in advance so it actually does become self-fulfilling.
My prediction is that the result is an overestimation of the “new-found interest” and retracement. But because of the historical underpricing, it makes sense to see some of these cards level off higher than they were.
The irony is that ultimately there does end up being new interest in old cards but it’s primarily driven by this meta interest in trying to capitalize on something that is likely not going to manifest as predicted.
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I should clarify my initial post, I meant it more to argue that it doesn’t matter whether interest is “organic” or “speculative” rather than come down on one side of the debate. Perhaps I’m biased in some way, but I don’t have any major vested interest in XY going up. My XY collection trails EX series by far and also DP/BW. I do love the XY era cards and Megas though.
I fully agree with your post, there are lots of parallels between the Destined Rivals-TRR rises and the Z-A hype-XY rises. However, if the last five years in Pokemon have taught me anything, it’s that the “fundamentals” that us vintage cabal members swear by are dead (or at minimum temporarily indisposed). Today’s market runs on hype, gambling, social media, FOMO, finding the “next best thing,” and self-fulfilling prophecies. I have always been skeptical of how sustainable this is, but currently it shows no signs of slowing down or collapsing.
So while I agree that price rises in XY and TRR are likely driven in part by weird pricing-in-advance, speculative interest, and Veblen goods demand, I would counter by gesturing at the entire modern Pokemon market. I personally believe these prices will not significantly retrace, simply because the market for Pokemon cards doesn’t run on fundamentals anymore.
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It’s the difference between short-term and long-term outlook. The short-term market is chaotic and emotional but the long-term will always trend toward the fundamentals.
It’s the equivalent of someone in 2021 gesturing to NFT market prices in response to someone who says that fundamentally there’s nothing supporting those prices.
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I believe this part is important particularly because it implies how dependent these trends are on modern tcg’s performance, assuming it continues to do well overall
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It would be, if NFTs never crashed and each new NFT release four years later was instantly bought out and reached record prices despite more of the NFTs being minted than ever before.
I would agree with @koala that the overall market is highly intertwined with the performance of the modern TCG. Right now, modern is in the driver’s seat and the old fundamentals aren’t doing much of anything. Certainly things can change, and again I am skeptical of the modern market as a whole. But after so many years of skepticism, I have to acknowledge the factors which are actually driving the current market, which has been resistant to significant retraces over the years.
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Spotlight pointed on old, out of print cards will definitely increase prices and raise the floor because for as much hype as there may be, there will be genuine interest too.
I was buying Megas before this boom but where I am supply has always been close to non-existent so I never ended up finishing it. Haven’t even bothered to check the prices but it’s probably more than I would ever want to spend to finish it now.
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all the XY full art psa 10 have spiked. whatever i had in the psa vault got bought out in like a week notably steam siege 
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