Brand new here… first post… hope this isn’t out of place.
Like a lot of people I collected back in 1999 with Base Set, slowly shifted away from the TCG and then Pokemon GO happened in 2016. I returned to the hobby just before the release of BreakPoint. At the time Sun & Moon base was releasing, I remember being able to trade 1500 bulk for a sealed booster box or cash($90-$95)… so basically $0.06 per card.
Fast forward to 2020. I havent traded in bulk in years and now I see the going rate is about half 2016 rates at about $0.03 per card.
So Im trying to work this out. The hobby exploded in 2016. It feels like the hobby has exploded MORE in 2020 (based off my utter inability to find product at my local retail shops, there are several WalMarts in my area that are completely wiped out of EVERYTHING Pokemon TCG). So, based off my understanding of bulk; buyers absorb the bulk, create lots from them and sell them on various sites (e.g. 500 random cards with a guaranteed/chance for a holo, ex, gx).
If Pokemon TCG product is arguably more popular today than it was in 2016, should we expect to see a shift in the cost of bulk? or were the bulk rates of 2016 unsustainable? I suppose also the demand for those bulk lots could have decreased…
There are a few threads on the bulk price movement over the past few years. Bulk prices crashed a couple years ago down to 0.01 per u/c and I personally never expected to see them back up to 0.03 as they are now some times even reaching 0.035 or 0.04.
It’s a weird dynamic that too much popularity I think can hurt the price of bulk even though it doesn’t seem to follow logically. I think this is due to the fact that SOOO much new product is opened especially lately on charizard chases. That increase in product being opened causes so many more people selling bulk in and therefore the price drops. If Troll and Toad for instance needs 1 million bulk per month (total guess) and they can keep that flowing in with prices at 0.03 then why would they be any higher regardless of what they are able to sell the lots at. I’ve always been shocked at the comparatively high price of Pokemon bulk compared to other TCG’s.
To add to this, the recent trend for modern sets has been huge set lists of 200-250 cards or so, with the usual limited # of chase cards everyone is after… meaning more packs opened to get the 1 or 2 cards that you really want. Plus overall sales of modern cards are as strong as they’ve ever been, so there’s a ton of bulk supply.