Warning: wall-of-text / boring history analysis incoming!
All we can really do is take lessons from previous market experiences and extrapolate them to envision the future, but even then it’s not that helpful because one of the key lessons learned is that the most significant market shifts have been caused by an unpredictable, complementary mix of events from both within and outside the TCG.
Jumping on the back of pfm’s post in the other speculation thread, 2016 brought what would quickly become the world’s most popular mobile gaming app tied directly to Pokemon. This occurred at a time following a long period (mainly 2003 - 2012) of market stagnation with the TCG, having barely been in the peripheral vision of mainstream entertainment for over a decade. This suddenly brought a huge amount of global attention back to Pokemon, and therefore the TCG. Conveniently, this also fell at a time when the millennial generation was starting to get some real discretionary income and nostalgic thirst. Evolutions then released later in 2016, which couldn’t have been a more perfect expansion for drawing people back into the hobby using staples they were familiar with, in a more modernised format. It was a near perfect mixture of events.
Roll on a few years and we got to Autumn 2019, at which point there was a noticeable but “healthy” uptrend in prices for cards and products across the board, which had followed 2.5 years of organic growth. Hidden Fates was a phenomenal release in September 2019 that brought more people back into the hobby. That said, during its initial release Hidden Fates didn’t immediately go out of stock before it had even hit the shelves, as it would have if it been released a couple of years later.
There was several months of bedding-in, drawing more people back in, which was massively reinforced shortly after by a complete black swan event in the form of the COVID lockdowns. When we first learned of the impending lockdowns, initial speculation was that it would spell disaster for economies and that similarly the TCG market would suffer. The complete opposite happened. Interest surged, people had spare time, spare cash and a renewed nostalgia borne partly from the boredom brought on from lockdown restrictions. The economy likewise boomed. Then enter Logan Paul and everything went crazy. Simultaneously, this began right at the beginning of the introduction of SWSH, which is currently considered one of the best eras in PTCG collecting history. Hidden Fates, along with many other products could no longer be simply taken off the shelves. Interestingly, this all happened during a period between anniversaries.
Anticipation of the 25th anniversary helped continue to propel demand, and despite its relatively lacklustre offerings, managed to prove a huge success with collectors. What these years brought with them was obviously a massive influx of people - inevitably a portion of which would go on to leave the “safari zone” (to quote smpratte) and gain interest in the prize card market, which also proved to acquire significant demand and therefore price increases.
Despite 2022 seeing the beginning of the decline in hype and furore around the TCG, and the accompanying exodus of many people from the hobby (read: Timmys who realised free tendies had been taken off the table), what this period left us with is a new baseline collectorbase, as was the case after 2016. This means a paradigm-shift in interest, and therefore a paradigm-shift in the market. This is a key reason prices will never (source: me) go back to pre-2020. This is where we are now: in a stabilised, post-2020, “paradigm-shifted” market.
The point of this boring history lesson that everyone already knows is unfortunately quite frustrating; to highlight that there is such an incredibly diverse mixture of factors both out- and inside the TCG that need to occur under the right conditions for the market to see any kind of serious shift. To be able to predict when that might occur is near impossible. The 30th anniversary could fall at an economically-appropriate point in time, and simultaneously bring with it high quality and enjoyable releases that appeal to the broadest possible audiences, which marks a new shift. Then again, it could be crap!
