In 2016 when we had the boom in prices for vintage Pokemon cards, for a time Jungle and Fossil cards saw similar pricing spikes to the base set (especially Jungle).
Prices were helped by the fact that the population reports for PSA 1st edition Jungle/Fossil cards was *very* low… especially for Jungle.
The problem was that, unlike 1st edition base set (which has long been nearly impossible to find boxes for) there were a good number of sealed Jungle/Fossil boxes to be found. There are some issues with opening Jungle/Fossil boxes (the holo cards are hard to get graded in a 10 and the non-holo rares/common/uncommon cards are worth very little), but when the boxes were selling for around $1000 and you had some individual cards selling for close to that, eventually something had to give. People started buying and opening the boxes. Eventually, the supply increased and prices started to fall. And for a while, things remained stable.
Fast forward to the present. Although it’s still not difficult to buy a 1st edition Jungle/Fossil box if you’re willing to pay for it, what changed is the prices the boxes sell for. A simple check at eBay sold listings shows that Jungle/Fossil boxes have been selling for $2500-$4000 (the lowest price for a Jungle box that wasn’t damaged was $2900).
As box prices have increased, fewer people have been opening them, especially as these boxes do have the difficulty of having holo cards that are very difficult to grade in PSA 10 condition right out of the box. Thus, the population of the PSA 10 1st edition holos has changed little in the past couple of years after the spike that happened around 2016-2017.
All of this is evidence that we should have a price spike for the existing PSA 10 1st edition Jungle & Fossil holo population… and lately, that’s exactly what’s happened.
Some recent sales include:
Vaporeon: I was told that the last one sold for 4 figures
Dragonite: $1,200
Snorlax: $1,100
Articuno: $1,050
Gengar: $900
Wigglytuff: $875
Lapras: $850
Clefable: $700
It definitely took prices a couple of years to get back up here, but it looks like we’re witnessing another surge in pricing for PSA 10 1st edition Jungle & Fossil holos.
And unlike last time, I think these prices should be far more sustainable because the boxes are selling for appropriate prices relative to the prices of the individual cards.
Also, if I may just give a pro tip: While I think both Jungle and Fossil are good investments, I think Jungle is an even better investment, because the populations of the PSA 10 1st editions are significantly lower… and I think anyone interested in Jungle will likely be interested in Fossil and vise-versa. The two sets go together. So I’d definitely go for the cards/boxes that have a low population for the PSA 10s, which is Jungle.
