Very true the card is fantastic. Gotcha that sounds about right haha 
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Wow! Another auction ending at a stunningly low price:
I had a low snipe on this, which I was stunned to see wasn’t that far off from actually winning the card lol. For the record, the card is pop 21 and the most recent sale of it (prior to this one) was for $1530.
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did the zero feedback seller have anything to do with it?
Very possible. Still, I don’t really understand why that would have much of an impact for a PSA-graded card. That impact is usually more pronounced on the auction end prices of booster boxes and raw cards.
Also from New Zealand. Many US buyers don’t want to deal with international shipping especially with these mail delays.
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Eh, maybe. Shipping was only $10 and I don’t see why anyone would be in a giant rush to have a PSA 10 Scizor ex in hand lol. But you’re right that the location probably didn’t help.
I before mid 2020 it didn’t seem like feedback and location would affect the price all that much. I could be wrong on this, but I purposely didn’t bid in the UK because the prices would be higher. This $610 price tag is surprising. The lower ex cards are going up in price still or maintaining the prices they’ve gained while many bigger cards are falling. As some have mentioned, some previously high valued ex cards have only gone up double while lesser ones have gone up 4-5x. Ex TRR was an example mentioned where cards were $400 in PSA 10 and now are $800-1200. Cards like power keepers have gone from $50-75 a card to $300-500. I gave a theory previously as to why I think this could be happening, but I also believe that many folks that are beginning their ex journey are not fully aware of the ex series’ history. We are all still learning about and trying to unwind the mystery behind it. Hopefully as more people begin their pokemon collecting journey they will discover the ex series and it’ll grow.
One question I want to discuss about ex series prices is the relationship with the boxes. I’m not sure if you have noticed, but 1st edition jungle dropped by 50% and other WOTC boxes have seen declines. Maybe I’m more aware of the WOTC sales because it seems like we see more of them in comparison to the ex series.
Have the ex series boxes been relatively stable the last few months?
How much does the ex series box affect the current prices of ex cards?
considering the low ex and SR pull rate should they be worth more since the boxes are rare and expensive?
- I believe Gold Stars fair better here considering many have higher pops than most exs.
I’ve noticed ex holos growing in value. Considering the box price this seems natural.
What’s your opinion on the value of ex series holos?
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The lack of price history is the primary factor, IMO. That coupled with the fact that people don’t seem to be giving much weight to pop reports. Without price history and pop reports, many new ex buyers probably don’t feel it’s justifiable to spend $1500 on a PSA 10 Scizor ex vs. a $400 PSA 10 PK Walrein ex. People are basically just buying the cheapest PSA 10s they can find, and disregarding all relevant information (like the fact that Unseen Forces has the most difficult to pull exs in the entire EX Series, or that Power Keepers was printed into oblivion, or just pop reports/price history).
To me, based on all of the relevant variables (and as someone who owns neither Scizor nor Walrein in PSA 10), Scizor should be at least 5x the price of Walrein, if not significantly more. The fact that it only ended at 1.5x the price of the recent Walrein sale is fucking nuts, and makes no objective sense.
I have noticed that. But the current WotC box prices still seem to be higher than they were pre-Logan Paul (so back in September-ish). And while EX Series boxes haven’t retraced (at all, AFAICT), they also haven’t increased at all in the past several months. So the WotC boxes are still up significantly more, even with the retraces. Especially when we consider the price history over the past year; for example:
December 2019: Ruby box = $4k
December 2019: Base Unlimited box = $4k
December 2020: Ruby box = $8k
December 2020: Base box = $25k
Personally, the fact that Ruby boxes have “only” doubled over the past year makes very little sense to me. The cards inside have easily increased by 4x or 5x, yet the box has only increased 2x. So either the box was overvalued last year or it’s undervalued now.
Re: EX Series holos – I think the upward price movement on the early EX Series (Ruby through Dragon) holos makes sense. The pull rates were stupidly low (5-6 holos per box) and they are basically all “rookie” cards. So it’s not surprising to me to see some of the holos surpass the exs in price.
But I think that the upward movement on some of the later EX Series holos is absurd, and is a result of people being clueless. Like, the PSA 9 Wigglytuff holo from Crystal Guardians that sold for $100 recently. Most buyers seemingly have no clue that the late EX Series holos were much easier to pull than the early EX Series holos and that the sets they came from had higher print runs. And none of them are first appearances. There’s a reason why they’re all worth like $1 a piece in raw NM condition lol, whereas some of the early EX Series holos buylist for $30-$40 a piece to Troll and Toad.
My personal opinion is that many of the early EX Series holos will eventually eclipse many of the less desirable early EX Series exs (i.e., Magcargo, Magmar, Kingdra) in price. For me, I’d much rather own, say, a Sandstorm Lunatone holo than a Dragon Magcargo ex. The Lunatone is rarer and is the first English TCG appearance of that Pokemon. I think that the fact that the Ruby/Sandstorm/Dragon holos are both the rarest cards from those sets androokie cards will make them more relevant and desirable as time moves on. It’s something that most people simply haven’t realized. But this is just my opinion.
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@zorloth, I don’t have the time right now to get too in depth on the whole price discrepancy debate but I will weigh in on the box vs card price thing.
For the longest time EX Series boxes have been overvalued in comparison to the cards (or the cards have been undervalued, take your pick). For the gold-star era EX boxes you’d be paying 5-10k while the biggest ex cards in PSA 10 were $400. Keep in mind you’d get 2-3 ex per box if you’re lucky (Delta Species and Holon Phantoms you could get 1 per box). Holos were $5 cards mint. Until about December of 2019 the most expensive PSA 10 ex was Charizard at like $600, excluding the low pop ones with little sales data.
I never understood why boxes of Unseen Forces, Emerald, Crystal Guardians, etc. were so expensive when the cards inside were relatively cheap. Leaving aside the larger question of whether booster boxes are detachable collectible items from the cards that they contain, seeing a more tempered rise on the boxes compared to the cards makes sense to me right now.
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True – the discrepancy between the value of the cards and the value of the box was gigantic a year ago. I remember when I discovered that my Ruby box was worth 10x more than I thought it was (this about 14-15 months ago at this point). And I was dumbfounded. All of the cards were dirt cheap but the box was $2k+. Made very little sense to me at the time. And it made even less sense to me when the box sold for $4k within an hour or two of listing it.
I think the reality is, though, that the premium on boxes stemmed from the fact that EX Series sealed product is unusually scarce. If even 25 completionist booster box collectors needed one of each sealed EX Series box for their collection, that would put a HUGE strain on the supply. There would be fierce competition for the few boxes that came up for sale.
I don’t think this means that the boxes were necessarily overvalued a year ago. But I do see your point that the growth would naturally be less than the WotC boxes. Another factor is that live booster box breaks have become a huge thing over the past year. I remember back in February or March or whenever, buying two boosters from PokeRev’s Hidden Legends box break as soon as it went live, and then, a day or two later, deciding to buy another one. And his price was reasonable, too. IIRC it was like $75 or $80 a pack, which was only like 10% above the going rate for loose packs. The packs weren’t exactly flying off the shelves.
Compare that to his box breaks now, which he puts a much larger price premium on AND they sell out instantly. And now there are tons of other people breaking boxes live. But the thing is that people (besides PokeRev, occasionally) are almost only breaking WotC boxes. I think this is part of why WotC boxes have increased so much more than EX Series boxes. The demand for them has increased much more. Whereas EX Series boxes are still basically only desired by sealed collectors. And fewer of them are being opened. I think all of these factors are also behind the lack of growth of EX Series boxes relative to WotC boxes.
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Do you think it was easier for Rev and other box breakers to use WOTC and modern product than it was ex series?
With the sudden explosion in interest would these newcomers have spent $500+ on pack they were unfamiliar with
and didn’t look like the base set design, (yellow border and holos were the big hits). Seems like it would be
an easier sell.
I do agree that some boxes and sealed products deserve a premium because they are so scarce.
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Definitely. Early WotC is more widely recognizable and has a lot more nostalgia driving it. Not that many collectors seem to be super nostalgic for the early EX Series. Fewer people collected during that era and the people who grew up with are currently only in their early-mid 20s, whereas most people don’t return to childhood hobbies until their late 20s/early 30s. So the EX Series hasn’t really benefited from any of the nostalgia that may (or may not) exist for it.
I will say, though, that PokeRev opened EX Sandstorm and EX TRR recently and he sold out both of them pretty quickly. But I think that’s more of a function of how popular his breaks are now than a high amount of market demand for EX Series box breaks.
This is slightly incorrect. Milotic ex was $2000 in December last year. Overall I agree tho, the boxes were overpriced before relative of the value of the cards. It seems the opposite way to me now.
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Exactly. At current market values, many boxes are actually positive EV. Like, Ruby Sapphire non-holo bulk commons/uncommons are selling for $30-$50 a card in PSA 10 (I personally don’t expect these to hold, but people are actually paying this much for them right now). PSA 9 reverses are minimum like $35, and some PSA 10s are in the hundreds. And then you have the exs and holos. Even if you get 9s on all 12 hits in the box AND you pull the lower-value cards, you’re still looking at ~$700+ in exs and ~$400+ in holos.
So absolute worst-case scenario is like $4k. But the average box is going to be closer to $7k to $10k. This is at current prices, which may decrease as supply comes back from PSA. And PSA turnaround times are insanely long right now, so none of this can actually be done within a reasonable time frame. But it’s still reasonably good value, especially compared to the EV a year ago. A year ago, the prices of PSA 9/10 exs and holos were easily 1/5th what they are now. I remember buying the lesser PSA 9 exs for $25 a piece. So if the cards don’t retrace, then I would expect the box to increase in price. I’ve given serious consideration to buying a box for $7k and just opening it lol. It would be a hell of an experience to have again.
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Yes, if you see I specified in the first post that was excluding the low pop ones with little sales data, of which Milotic is certainly one. I often find it counterproductive to just look at “most expensive PSA 10 ex” because that’s often dictated by set completionists. Milotic PSA 9 is cheaper than Charizard PSA 9 and maybe even a few others, indicating that the high price of Milotic in a 10 is not because of the Pokemon’s inherent popularity. Something like Charizard is a better indicator of the ex market at the time (and the likelihood of scoring a 10 pack fresh is much higher than Milotic), which is why I used it for that example.
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From europe here and I don’t bid or buy cards from the US. The market is yours. GSP fees are ridicolous. I’m not going to bid on an auction, win it for 700$ and then pay additional ~300$ for GSP shipping.
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Yes, but this was from a European seller. U.S. buyers aren’t charged import fees (or wouldn’t be on an item of this value), so there’s nothing that should’ve dissuaded people from bidding on it.
I think it’s worth disregarding this scizor sale in my list as it was from 0 feedback account. What’s everyone’s thoughts as to if I should include or not as the most recent sale?
Well it was the most recent sale afterall so I say put it on there. Kind of like with the Kingdra sale from a few weeks backs maybe we can learn something from the next scizor sale compared to this one.
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I’m new to the forum and just wanted to say this is an awesome thread. Thanks for compiling all this info! I’m trying to put together a (not PSA 10) set of the ex cards myself.
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