Yeah, and thanks for reminding us of the other obvious factor - that sellers had less to sell because they were drained from that record April (and again PSA being shutdown also exacerbates the supply shortage).
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I have been looking for certain sealed booster boxes for months. Demand is there, supply however is not
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A lot of my more sought after or valuable cards I had listed already sold in April, I’m now seeing my lower end cards that have been sitting on eBay for months if not over a year starting to sell. Like Ex PSA 9 holos/reverse holos I have started selling much more of.
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I’ll just say this: I bought a number of pretty expensive cards from early April to mid-May. It is going to take me a few months to recover from this but I was at least able to get some of my primary targets. For now, I’m not expecting to add anything particularly valuable to my collection for a while. I’m just one data point.
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I really don’t want to harp on semantics too much (in this case the semantics being “softening demand”) but this really isn’t how an economist would use the phrase.
If the demand was truly softening you would expect prices to be decreasing, rather than what we actually have (prices increasing). An example of demand truly softening might be something “the demand for oil is softening because alternative energy sources are increasingly viable.”
What we have is fewer sales as a result of a diminished supply and higher prices. Not truly softening demand (or at least no evidence for it).
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For certain items sure, they may be unavailable. If you really think that represents 36.7% of the market then that’s your interpretation.
If everything was really going that crazy then people would grab whatever was available leaving nothing at all. Just like in the supermakets when they were out of food.
But no, people aren’t. A lot of people had FOMO, but we are clearly seeing people purchasing less reactionary to what they did at the start of the boom.
Take a deep breath, we know how we got here, we don’t know where it is going in the immediate future, but demand is slowing.
It’s a pitstop not a destination.
Look, it’s 2:30am here in Australia (where i live). I don’t want drama. If you want to start drama take it elsewhere. I’m tired and just spent the better part of an hour making a chart for the other thread. I’m barely skimming these messages as is. If you want semantics you can have them.
Edit: Falliing asleep, going to bed.
I think we’re all looking for answers to big questions from too little data. Prices up, volume down that’s all we know. Volume down can be the CAUSE for the prices being up (less to buy pushing up prices). We can’t call a trend on one data point, and we can only guess as to the reasons. There are a lot of variables that are going to make this very difficult to do Accurately right now.
Positive:
- we continue to see record prices for cards each week
- supply feels very sparse, at least for what I’m looking for
- more collectors have come into the market
Negative:
- macroeconomic situation
- “churn” effect - prices have risen so fast that many sellers are in the money on cards which could lead to inventory glut and willingness to take profit even at “below market” prices (this was pointed out in another thread)
- distraction as fad or bandwagon collectors transition on as world opens back up
The data we have is not giving us any weighting to assign to these
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I don’t think any serious collectors I know of think prices will only trend in 1 direction forever.
If the grand prophecy here is “I don’t know exactly when prices will fall but at some point in time the prices will dip off from wherever this ascent ends” then yes that is 100% guaranteed.
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@hyruleguardian, Good take, well laid out too.
There is no grand prophecy. Volume dropped by almost 40% (massive), and total sales value by 7% which together isn’t insignificant, but forgive me for thinking it was worth sharing.
Always so controverstial.
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I really appreciate your posts. The data you share is fantastic and a great contribution to the forum. I hope you will continue to share it with us in the future.
I just disagreed with characterizing what was happening as “softening demand” and well I already laid out the reasons why.
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Anyone that draws a conclusion from singular point on a trend is going to have a bad time.
@rainbow , thanks for this. It’ll be interesting to see how the next 2 months play out. I’ll hold my analysis until then.
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I demand that you keep supplying these nice charts.
Seriously though @rainbow , well done.
That is the funny thing about numbers. Numbers don’t lie, but a single set of numbers can be interpreted a million different ways and one can shape data to fill nearly any narrative one wishes to and many will do that inserting their own biases or motives without even realizing it. On top of that, as we all know, pokemonprice is imperfect and incomplete data, but it is the best we have and should be fairly consistent at capturing a similar portion of the greater market trends, so should be fairly representative data. My own anecdotal evidence that can tie into some of this is that as others have mentioned, I literally ran out of product to sell for a lot of May as I am awaiting several hundred cards from PSA and my eBay listings are the lowest numbers I’ve seen in a few years due to Aprils sales and PSA being closed to not re-up with new inventory. I had cards sell that I listed several months prior at 2-10x their going rate at the time with BIN OBO that were snatched up at full ask price or solid offers given the price increases.
I’ve not personally been too much of a buyer for the type of cards that have seen the greatest increases as I finished my main collection goals some time ago, but I still have been putting and plan to put a relatively steady amount of capital into Pokemon for 2020 as I did in previous years. As with each year in the past I react to market trends and new developments and adjust my strategies both collection and resale wise as necessary.
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#1 and 2 there are the real drivers in my opinion. Demand is still just as strong but I see many sellers jacking up the prices 2x 3x 4x the last record price sale on eBay. Supply is constrained and sellers have a fear they’ll miss out. Blaines Charizard PSA 10 1st ed for example is on eBay for $8k last sale a few weeks ago was $3k as a record high price. Its not fesibile the next time that card sells in a short duration the price would go from 3k to 8k with such a high pop report. Thus that sale won’t happen not because the demand isn’t there but because sellers are afraid of continued growth. To the 3rd point I don’t think all of the sudden with PSA reopening a new flood of PSA 10 1st ed WotC holos are going to emerge. That ship sail long ago. Maybe lower grade or more modern cards may see in influx in supply and thus a price retrace.
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The demand is there, product isn’t.
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Brevity is the soul of wit.
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I really appreciate the charts @rainbow
I’m not seeing too much drama here. I don’t think having a discussion can be called drama.
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Yeah, I’ve spoken about this at length. PSA 10s are much better protected against sudden population increases than PSA 9s, PSA 9s are much better protected against sudden population increases than PSA 8s, etc.
The higher grades are better protected because people already recognized the value of sending these cards into PSA. And with the prices of sealed product being what they are it will constrain the number of box breaks / pack openings severely.
Lower grades are far less protected because we all know there’s going to be a flood of cards sent in for grading that were previously not deemed to be valuable enough to bother with.
How much the pop will change will just depend on what the cards were valued at before. So for a PSA 7 1st edition Base Set Zard, I wouldn’t expect any major changes because if people had a Near Mint 1st editon Zard they were already going to grade that before. On the other hand, if we’re talking about a Near Mint Unlimited Zard people may not have considered grading that before, but with price increases that will definitely change.
In fact, I think there were *a lot* of sets for which people wouldn’t have thought cards were worth grading unless the cards had at least a chance to be a PSA 9. But things are definitely set for a big change.
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Yes very much agree with this! I also think that not only price will constrain people from opening vintage 1st ed WotC but also supply. The boxes are getting fewer and fewer and with boxes yielding 12-13 holos each of which 1-2 might be PSA 10 with others likely a 9 and maybe an 8. It would take 10s and 10s of newly opened boxes to start to affect the PSA 10 pop of a specific holo set. Just not a feasible concept now in 2020
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