Go and look at the growth WotC product and singles (or even TPCi product prior to 2007) has experienced in the last 12-24 months and then ask yourself this:
Why should I buy mass produced, easily available and new product when I can buy into WotC singles and sealed product instead?
In a world where everyone and their dog can buy 24 cases of something and sit on it for a few years we have an issue with saturation. New product just simply isn’t going to have a better ROI than buying old product that had much smaller print runs 15+ years ago before Pokemon became mainstream.
The exception (with English sealed product) is product with limited print runs like the Mew & Mewtwo Premium Collection which was a Gamestop/EB Games exclusive or ETBs of certain sought after sets without regular booster box releases but even then huge print runs still mean that you’re better off buying old product or graded singles. These are the types of sets you should be looking for if you want to dabble in new product.
The greatest demand for Pokemon product and singles is from most iconic and nostalgic sets (Base-e-series) and also the sets where the game was at its lowest point in popularity with the smallest print runs in 2001-2007, this includes the Neo sets and ex-series. I’d start with anything in this bracket before I considered picking up anything printed in the last year.
This is what people with money now who were children in the early 2000’s remember. This is what cross collectors are after. This is what is straight up stupidly hard to find. People cheer internally when they see people open a $7000 box of Skyridge because they’ve just made sealed boxes a little more scarce.
Sets like Evolutions or Shining Legends are interesting and are great sets in their own ways BUT they’re new and the market is saturated with them.
The Shining Pokemon from Shining Legends are going to have a larger population of mint/gem mint cards in 1 year than the Shining Pokemon from Neo Revelations and Neo Destiny will have accrued in the last 15 years.People plough through product with the intent to grade hundreds of 10s and this will keep the prices of these cards down for a long time. This just didn’t happen like it did back in the day and if people did do this it was on a much smaller scale than what happens in 2017.
Just remember: The older and minter, the better.
To the people completely new to this I’m not going to give you a list of old cards you should buy. You’re going to have to do a little bit research and asking around yourself.
If your only goal is to make money… you will. The Pokemon market is rock solid and not just a fad due to Pokemon Go’s popularity last year. *There is no bubble.*If you’re here like so many of us because you enjoy collecting then prioritise the most expensive card you want to add to your collection first. I’m not saying you should re-finance your house to buy a PSA 10 1st Base Charizard (there’s better cards to pick up if you’re purely looking for a large ROI) but remember; 99.99% of cards from the WotC era will never be cheaper than they are right now.
This may sound stupid, but the best advice for “investing” is to simply buy what you’re interested-in! If you’re not emotionally attached / interested in what you’re “investing-in”, you’re almost guaranteed to fail. Sure, you might get lucky here and there, but that’s not the norm…
Best Example: When I got back into collecting the first time around (2009), I had a collection of WotC-Era Booster Packs (1st Ed. and Unl. - One of Ea. Art-Work). Unfortunately, I sold this along with everything else when I thought I was “quitting” from the hobby. Well, after getting back into collecting the second time around (2016) this was the first thing I wanted to re-build! Not because I was “investing” but more because this was my favorite portion to my old collection and I wanted it back! Well, I finished this collection this past July with the 3x 1st Ed. Base Set Booster Packs. After just four months, nearly every WotC-Era Booster Pack I purchased has increased in value DRASTICALLY! 1st Ed. Base Set went from around $350.00 / Pack to $1,000+ / Pack, 1st Ed. Neo Destiny went from $75.00 / Pack to $150.00+ / Pack…
If I weren’t interested in this collection of mine, I could cash-in right now and make a decent amount of money! However, I’ve done my research - spending hours everyday on eBay / E4 and know these packs are only going increase in value overtime - not to mention at these prices I’d never be able to re-build that collection again!
I fully agree with you, but I think what is happening is people are looking for the next best investment. Good luck with that. That’s like people that were stocking up on sealed/mint Comics in the late 90s. Or even the current sports cards market… everything is mass produced and well preserved nowadays.
There’s certain product that might appreciate more than we expect so it’s fine if you want to diversify and hoard some of the new stuff, but WOTC is the best option really, with the exception of older sets(EX series, Gold Stars,etc…).
How much higher can sealed WOTC get? Surely there is a ceiling? I mean, 20 years from now when there’s 10 packs of each left I can see crazy figures but is that super realistic?
And my thinking was the Ho-Oh boxes ect of Shining Legends would grow in value far down the line, due to the same reason some people will pay big for WOTC sealed product: the nostalgia of opening your favourite sets again and the rarity due to it only contained in special packs?
Who knows? Some old MTG boxes go for $50k+ … inflation alone will probably push the boxes higher over time.
The new boxes might grow in value but they will be much smaller and slower growth than old product. The difference between wotc and the new stuff is the print run on the new stuff is insanely higher, they will print to demand and at the moment the demand is massive compared to how much wotc/1st edition & early nintendo stuff was printed and is still available now.
I think it’s most certainly realistic for WOTC product.
The increasing demand (increasing number of collector’s in the hobby) doesn’t look to stop any time soon and the decreasing supply means that competition for cards is becoming much stronger. So then you have a higher number of individuals bidding and thereby you have a greater likelihood of varying levels of spending power.
So for example:
Let’s say you have “Card-A” and only 8 people want to bid on “Card-A” and only 2 of them have the spending power to make it competitive.
1 year later as demand increases (or supply decreases or both occur) you now have maybe 25 people bidding on a card, where let’s say 5 of them have competitive levels of spending power. So, there is more pressure and more need to bid a little higher to beat the other high rollers, so that drives the price up.
Now, bump this up to 50 or 100 bidders and you then have huge groups of people who are bidding competitively who maybe are computer engineers, doctors, lawyers, business owners or just investors who have thousands of dollars of expendable income.
Then what about all the non-competitive lower spending power bidders? They become competitive bidders in the next grade down, and so on and so forth.
That’s essentially what we have seen this year for a lot of cards especially in the 1st edition and shadowless holo region.
I’m not saying pokemon cards are going to follow a similar path as sports cards, but there doesn’t seem to be a ceiling with sports collectables.
I think we’ll see some kind of ceiling on certain product.
For example, I don’t see things like Base Unlimited boxes go for $10,000+. I’d love to be proven wrong though
@mattydx93 brings fair points tbh. There’s also nothing wrong if you want to save some sealed product of the new stuff to see how you do a few years from now. A lot of the guys here have a few cases even if they don’t expect much out of them. You just never know.
I think it will depend how relevant Pokemon is xx years from now really. When you’re talking sports, you’re talking some 100+ years old franchises.
None of you guys think this is mostly a nostalgia for Kanto and the first sets type of thing? I don’t think anything past WOTC product will ever gain much value…
I don’t think so, it extends past wotc - take a look at the gold stars, they’re setting all kinds of new highs. Going past gold stars I don’t know, that’s where my interest tapers so I can’t comment.
Pokemon spreads across a few generations at this point. It remains to be seen how nostalgic some of the newer generations are in the coming years… Kids that are now 7-15 years old don’t have that WOTC nostalgia.
No one expects the same kind of growth, but we just don’t know. It would be wrong to overlook all of these sets and assume they will all be worthless.
