Whilst sealed product sky rockets? What is going on. A lot of gold star and crystal cards are lower than 1-2 years ago or the same roughly.
Sealed boxes are in a crazy uptrend…
Gold star and Crystal cards were the hype beast purchase of 2018/2019 but the steady supply has outpaced the combined might of the hype beast army.
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Not to be pedantic, but those are not high end cards. With the added qualifier of a high grade they definitely can earn a premium, but there are thousands of those cards printed. I think at times the high prices or even general terms can mask the specifics of a cards release.
They are great cards to collect; gold stars are the gold standard for chase cards. However there simply is more available supply than assumed.
Keep in mind this price settle is all short term focused. 5-10 years from now the price point/availability can be totally different.
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I agree with @smpratte, we are seeing a slight drop in price for different cards, but not others depending on availability more than anything. I’m chasing a PSA 9 shadowless set. Just picked up the Blastoise for 275 and clefairy for 96, which is really good considering a couple years ago, BUT Chansey still sits at $400 or more because it’s not as available. It’s not a trophy card, but it’s doesn’t have the thousands out there either.
Everything will follow along. As boxes dry up and more cards get graded, prices will rise, but it takes time. The correlation may take a while still, like years…
When product is opened, box supply goes down and singles supply goes up
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Not high end cards? Maybe for the .000001% they aren’t, but for the VASSTTTT majority of Pokemon card collectors they are the high end chase cards and that’s the point he was trying to make… I can’t even fathom thinking a Crystal Charizard isn’t a high end card myself… Does that make me a broke boi?
And to add to OP’s topic… Gold stars, crystals, and other high end cards are highly subject to price fluctuation because they are in a higher price tier so you will notice them change a lot. This goes up… This goes down… so on and so forth… Demand and supply are constantly changing and the supply is almost always on the upswing for these things as box breaks happen; which brings me to my next point. Boxes are constantly decreasing in quantity and even if the demand stays the same they will continue to increase in price because of this. We are past the days of the cards inside being an exact correlation with the boxes price. Hope this helps 
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Gold Stars are desirable but they aren’t high end, they’re just very popular set cards.
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@marco, If you want to look at the market and have an idea of why some cards have risen or fallen, why some cards have just exploded and why other cards are stagnant you have to draw distinctions.
Price tags aren’t everything.
As we often say we give name and surname: leaving out the trophy, if we want to be really honest from 2 years to now, only these cards (and maybe other 1 or 2 at least) have been climbed and have all point to go up in the future and only if gem mint (9.5 stong, pristine 10 or psa 10): charizard no rarity, charizard 1 edition, shadowless charizard, lugia 1 ed, thylosyon 17 1 ed. and rayquaza gold star. So let’s say this: these are the high end of pokemon card SET (only if gem mint). The rest is not high end and stagnant moment is evident. Nothing else to write for me.
Really appreciate the reply and insight only part I would disagree on is the high end part but I guess that is subjective. For me personally, anything in the thousands of USD for a single card is high end but I guess that equation changes depending on the person
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I think the emotional reaction people are having to the term “high end” is exactly why some are surprised prices aren’t moving.
Every wotc Holo is basically at cost. If we are adding variables like high grade then sure, that adds a qualifier. But then you have PSA 9 Holos listed like dogs for adoption!
The answer isn’t even specific to Pokémon, it’s just supply and demand. We can argue all day on what we believe is high end, but the easiest way to define that term are the cards that aren’t always available and/or stagnant.
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The problem here is how some of us are defining high end. Smpratte defines it as low availability and coveted. Others view it simply as price.
Smpratte: Prerelease clefable, not high end, but PSA 9 prerelease clefable, definitely high end. Not so much for price, but availability and scarcity.
Shadowless charizard PSA 9? It’s expensive, but very available and based on what someone is willing to pay due to the market having so many.
Simple difference in how you define high end. Take it as you may. I don’t own any “high end” cards by this definition, but I have some valuable ones. Huzzah.
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I think you just misinterpreted OP’s question he was posing. His post talked about boxes, gold stars, and crystals. He related those things to the words “high end”. OP clearly isn’t talking about trophies and other cards that aren’t readily available. Those cards are affected by the economic status of people and have very little to do with the pokemon market. They aren’t in the same realm of fluctuation that OP was wanting to know about. I guess I just don’t know why you had to disagree with him about what is “high end” when that term is relative.
P.S. Not attacking you directly and have no emotional attachment to this subject at all. Just sounded a bit like you were belittling him with how it came off so I wanted to defend the situation…
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Even a Bugatti Chiron if you have the money you can buy it every morning you want. However, this does not imply that it is equally the holy grail of cars.
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Appreciate this reply
And yes my question is more centered around how single PSA 10 ‘expensive cards’ like gold star charizard and crystal zard has been stagnant for some time or declining whilst similar priced boxes are going parabolic. This trend does not seem sustainable to me. And the answer isn’t availability I feel because unlimited base boxes are plentiful, yet they go up every week the last few months and are roughly the same cost as these ‘expensive cards’ I am referring to. Anyway it’s an interesting dynamic for sure!
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‘Expensive’ probably won’t work either.
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They are high end set cards. There’s not really any point in bringing up trophy cards when the discussion is around booster boxes, since trophy cards cannot be pulled from boxes. A nice Mercedes is still considered a “high end” car even though $2 million Bugattis exist. And a Bugatti is still considered a “high end supercar” even though $20 million vintage Ferraris exist.
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Tl;dr
Prices aren’t moving because the cards people thought had less supply have more supply, and/or not as much interest at the current price.
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So a $5000 highly sought after piece of cardboard is not a high end piece of cardboard because there’s a higher end…interesting. Aren’t all of magic’s high end cards set cards?
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