I recently just started gaining an interest in Russian Pokémon cards. The thing I notice most is the variance in pricing. Seems like most regular cards sell for $6-$10 (more for chase Pokémon) and $9-$12 for the reverse holos. Once you get into the cards that have an English price of $100 or more, the pricing goes anywhere from 75% English market value up to 400%+. Best examples for my confusion is the Primal Kyogre sold for about $300 (English market of close to $400), while the XY Emolga sold for $275 ($53 market). Is it grading that makes it that much more valuable? I almost assume grading doesn’t change the price too much, because its the only copy for sale either way. I am just unsure on what prices are good/expected/normal and looking for help starting out. Thanks!
Pricing is likely a popularity contest. A popular species reverse holo can be $100, where a less popular reverse holo is $10
releases were limited
some cards are really hard to come by (especially in decent condition)
PSA only grades certain sets and doesn’t recognize some promos because there’s little to no source information on them
i think the pricing of them comes down to the fact that they are a niche language and if someone is willing to pay 3x english price, then thats the market
but also there is an infinite amount of the english version compared to russian
As a buyer of Russian Pokemon cards (this is an ad, please sell them to me cheaply thanks):
The market is just super duper underdeveloped. And it’s a niche enough product that unless someone starts creating a baseline price and staying on top of it with a well of money, it will stay underdeveloped.
Great news: That means you can find deals! They’re the rarest standard booster based cards printed in Pokemon history and you’re getting them for the price of a casual pack buy here and there.
Bad news: Barring unforeseen circumstances, it’s probably not unlimited free tendies just for having held them for some period of time. The deals I get now are remarkably similar to the deals I got 10 years ago. Haha.
My recommendation: Pick what price range feels right, keep your eyes out for them, and have fun! When the price looks like something else might be more fun at the same cost, skip it. When you can eat chicken and broccoli for a few nights and pay for the lot with your savings: buy it now!
Yeah no, that would go to some of the rare unlimited print runs. And even not counting those, I’m pretty certain that Polish got printed in lower quantities.
and Korean ADV
Also note that the print runs for each of the Russian sets are not equal. I’m trying to finish the Hoenn starter set in Russian and it has been infinitely easier to get the cards from Ancient Origins than Primal Clash (and especially) Furious Fists.
This is all very helpful! (In its own way). So there really is no way of saying the $2000 Gengar (the $750 market price full art) is high or low, its just wait until someone wants it bad enough to pay that? Or is that actually an insane number? Just a lot to gauge from taking a first look at it.
2k is a very high number. The only Russian cards worth 2k in my opinion are possibly the white wings vivillons.
I guess my next question on this is if grading increases the value of the card (assuming it grades 8+)? My assumption would be that its less relevant than it would be for English cards, but I would also understand that grading may still impact it the same way. Is there any general consensus on this?
Grading cards by and large increases their value, full stop. For Russian cards especially this is even more of a thing because 1) all grades Russian versions of cards are going to be very low population by nature of being far more rare than most other cards from XY era, and 2) Russian cards often do not grade well (that is to say it is extremely difficult to get PSA 9 or 10, compared to other languages). You can chalk this up to quality control, age of the cards at this point (people only really started grading every piece of Pokemon cardboard in the last few years so they had a few years to roll around unsleeved in someone’s bulk bin) etc.
Trying to gauge the inherent market “value” of something especially something rare and niche is really amorphous-- it’s worth whatever someone is willing to pay for it at the end of the day. I have a lot of Russian cards; I opened a booster box and some single packs back when you could do that at MSRP. I’ve been picking up cards I like when I find them, and have gone out of my way to look for a few specific ones, and I am still missing missing some. There isn’t a special reason, they aren’t magically more difficult to find, it’s just often times if you are looking for a hyper niche specific version of a card out of hundreds of millions of Pokemon cards on this earth, the right person or people have to know to and want to offer it for sale.
Have you heard about the XY Vivillon wing color variants? There’s a Russian exclusive color. That card is very rare and very expensive-- but you can find more copies available than you can for a reverse holo common card because the people who have it know its desirable and wil fetch a high price.
Respectfully disagree. The localized tests in Russia for most sets were definitively smaller than the reprint runs in Japan. Polish is of similar size, so that part is correct. It is as rare.
But both are obviously quite scarce to an extreme degree.
Unlimited Legend (L2, L3) in Japanese likely is the lowest printed set in history.
An example is in my years of actively trying to find L2 unlimited mirrors, I’ve only seen 2 Espeons. Whereas not even trying to find Russian cards, I’ve seen 3 of Furious Fist Eevee reverse. I get its one small sample, but everyone struggled with L2 and L3 unlimited
So in general:
- RU Print run is very short, so should hold a premium to English
- There is no defined premium, just generally a price that someone is willing to pay
- From brief research, low end of $5-$10, high end typically doesn’t exceed 50% over English
- Grading cards will add value if it grades well, similar to adding value to the English counterpart
I guess lastly, does a complete set have any weighted value? I see someone selling a master set of XY (with white wing Vivillons) for $50,000 but I can’t see that gaining much interest at that price.
Thanks again everyone for the feedback!
A complete set in Russian is worth less than the individual cards combined. Reason: all language species collectors will pay up for their species in Russian. Other than species collectors, I don’t think many people collect Russian specifically.
The white wings Vivillon are doing a significant amount of work for that asking price. I’m sure some may disagree with me here but I don’t think XY base set, regardless of language, is particularly desirable or full of hits
Yea, from the rest of the conversation, it seems like cards like Pikachu and Greninja will be the top cards that are desired, and then the rest are just there