A Recession occurs every 8 years on average and now 12 since the last one. Sooner or later it’s going to come. Well overdue at this point but hats off to the Fed for prolonging the party 
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Just want to add that graded singe price also got a nice boost the last couple of months (Checked PSA 9 1st edition Jungle, Fossil and Team Rocket, not just the boxes.
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I have seen that trend with psa10’s aswell.
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Yup. I was looking at one card in particular that’s jumped 40 dollars. Some of the ones I purchased jumped 10-25 dollars in just 1 month!
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I think alot of people are underestimating how low the supply of most cards is at the moment. Prices of for example, jungle, fossil, gym 1st ed PSA 10 cards have gone up significantly last couple of months and there aren’t really alot of new cards surfacing.
I made an excel file of my card values on 28/06/2019 and ALOT of the cards have increased in value if I am looking back at it now.
Some examples of PSA 10 1st ed cards:
Fossil dragnonite went from 450 to 700 (none on Ebay now)
Sabrina’s gengar went from 350 to 700 (none on Ebay now)
Light togetic went from 300 to 600 (none on Ebay now)
Also some examples of cheaper cards
Magneton Fossil 100 to 220 (none on Ebay now)
Rocket’s Hitmonchan 90 to 130-160 (1 on Ebay for 160 now)
And I know people will say: “that’s just single data points”. But if you combine all those cards together you will see a trend.
Availability has gone down dramatically on most sets and prices went up. Normally when this happens we automatically see alot of cards surfacing to balance this out, but this has not happend. Supply is just running VERY LOW on alot of cards and most people are not willing to let go of their cards.
I know past years we had a bumpy ride looking at prices, with price increasing and retracing rapidly. Alot of flippers were in the market, but most of those flippers have gone. I feel like the prices are much more stable now and we have created a more solid base for prices to increase, I can deffenitely see prices increase more. I am totally NOT worried about a recession hurting the hobby at this point.
Yes, we might see a momentary decline in price on the lower/mid range cards but I think most collectors (who have disposable income) will only see this as oppurtunity, and they should.
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The reason why singles will not be going up even as 9s and 10s for a while is because of the rise in scarcity of the boxes. Every box opened these days means the cards inside are immediatly graded which raises the population of those cards which will mostly be 8s 9s and 10s.
So you have supply going down for boxes and up for single which means everything is working as it should and most likely will not change. The best time to buy boxes is 100% yesterday and NOW but singles will stay stagnate if not continue to drop a bit for a a little while until the box opening and grading craze slows down.
I disagree. We’re way past the open-and-grade phase of sealed product. A couple years ago it was a financially feasible move to buy a sealed 1st edition base box, crack it and grade the singles. Several people did it. Many more did it with Jungle, Rocket, Fossil, run down the list of WOTC boxes. Fast forward to 2019, I haven’t seen or heard of anyone paying $16k for a Skyridge box, 12.5k for 1st ed. Neo Destiny, etc etc just to crack and grade when the highest price chase cards hover around $2k in PSA 10.
Back when prices allowed for crack-and-grade, there was quite the jump in PSA 9/10 WOTC holos. The market for sealed product was directly tied to the market for graded singles. As sealed product prices have climbed, that link has disappeared. Want to get a PSA 10 Crystal Charizard? No way anyone’s touching a box to try to make that happen. There will still be loose packs, but anyone that isn’t weighing a WOTC pack has some abnormally strong morals. You take away the pack-fresh option, all that’s left is grading raw cards and buying already graded ones. Sealed product has become a completely different market than the graded singles. It’s not something that makes a lot of sense to me, but I guess it does to those who are dropping bands.
It’s still certainly a buyers market for many of the chase cards from WOTC-EX series in my opinion. Right now everyone’s so hyped up on modern print-to-oblivion Zards that nobody’s noticing that you can get PSA 10 Charizards from WOTC-EX series for LESS. I wouldn’t bet on that to continue. If I had to place us somewhere, I’d say the buyers market is not too long for this world.
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Very small time table here but cards I bought last month are selling higher this month.
Cards I wanted to buy last month and didn’t have also increased in price. That may occur down the line but in the short term I think prices will continue to go up on 8,9,10s.
Boxes are going to increase as well.
With people sending every card under the sun to PSA, do you think ungraded mint cards will see a jump as it gets harder to find quality cards out of a slab compared to in one?
Totally. I don’t know why anyone would want a mint card when they could have it in a PSA 9 or PSA 10 slab. I can’t imagine most people would want to keep their mint cards ungraded when grading them exponentially increases the value
You already see mint wotc and ex holos often above PSA 9 prices at auction. I wanted to bid on some a few days ago, put in bids at psa 9 value and didn´t score a single one. People just love to grade themselves and potentially get a 10.
Yes. It’s more and more difficult trying to find ungraded mint cards for my binder sets. A random holo from, say, EX Emerald would’ve been $2 in PSA 9 worthy condition a few years ago. Now it’s sometimes easier to just buy a $15 PSA 9 and crack open.
you are wrong tho, there is more demand than supply for those cards even with more being graded.
I used to flip cards and buy collections pretty much full time, but I am having so much trouble finding anything in my area. The boxes that are being opened aren’t providing enough singles to saturate the market at the moment.
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Totally agree on the last, everyone is so focused on these hype cards, when the hype settles I am pretty certain that smart money will transition to oldschool cards
Yep. Ex cards from 2003-2007 are next in line for a big increase imo.
Agreed, there’s a few more contenders for me tho including Skryidge (holo’s) and Neo destiny 1st ed which I think are still pretty low in value. Alot of the holo’s in the sets (especially Skyridge) are only at 100 USD each
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There’s a Skyridge booster box on Ebay.co.uk going for £25k - not sure if this is overpriced ~
No way is someone going to pay $30k USD for it
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I honestly dont think anyone would pay over U$S30.000 for a Skyridge box (Today) -
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if you look at vintage mtg boxes, the EV for the cards inside the boxes are usually WAY LOWER than the value of the actual box itself. sealed box prices do not parallel the card prices within.
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