Lmfao very very very true.
$1k for a psa 10 moonbreon is burning your money.
!remindme 1 year
This thread is doomed.
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Unless I’m misreading your previous messages, this rhetoric seems to imply that nobody in their right mind should be shilling out that kind of money for a PSA 10 slab when a raw version exists for a fraction of the price. If you believe the premium is absurd that’s fine, but other users such as @thsigma and @fourthstartcg have raised good points as to why people are willing to spend more for the same card with a number attached to it.
Which cards in particular? Umbreon is the most popular set card in years and has some factors behind it that make its crazy price feel somewhat “reasonable”. Some of it (or all of it) could just be “flavor of the month” hype, but then again, maybe not. I wouldnt be surprised either way if the raw or graded price jumped up or down a couple hundred bucks
Topic is back to normal posting! Just try and keep things civil when you disagree. No one is in trouble or anything, just a friendly reminder! 
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I see a lot of emotion around “Gem variants”: Black label, Pristine, PSA Gem. I’m not as well versed as I could be, I’ll admit, but it seems to me that if I’m perceiving the emotions accurately, it’s an indicator of something about the overall Black Label vs PSA Gem vs Pristine debate. What, exactly? Well, I don’t feel like stepping on toes this morning. Just an element worth noting.
A slight tangent, has anything come of the computerized grading endeavor?
I personally prefer PSA for Pokémon. PSA 10 is the top for PSA cards. But I also can’t ignore bgs 10s for vintage wotc era cards either. I feel as though anything after say 2010ish then bgs 10 goes down.
The PSA 10 premium is so strong cgc completely overhauled their grading scale to be more like psa.
If the topic is psa 10 isn’t high enough, and condition collectors need a stronger dose with a super 10 grade, the problem is those super 10s aren’t consistently carrying a premium. In fact the same argument of why apparently psa 10s aren’t carrying a premium can be applied to the super 10s.
Realistically, price fluctuation is mostly due to supply and demand. Just like with market manipulation claims, price rising is usually upswing in demand, prices cooling off is usually an increase in supply. The latter is exactly what is happening with the referenced psa 10 set cards. Everyone and their dog is selling cards now. What used to be rare events like a psa 10 charizard auctioning or a wotc box being opened is more frequent than ever. That is why prices are lower now.
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Also cgc doesn’t hold a candle to PSA. Even bgs can’t compete in terms of quality of grading compared to PSA
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Grading companies are josling for position in a bear market. People who think we are in a bull market are free to believe what they want. @smpratte summing it all up pretty good.
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Imo It’s tough to say bull or bear overall. For example, in what everyone agrees was a crazy bull run for wotc in 2020, Japanese mostly stayed the same. Where today Japanese is more bullish and wotc is more bearish. Basically the entire Pokémon card market is so large it typically doesn’t simultaneously move in one direction.
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^ This
There is no single “Pokemon market.” Each sector operates differently with supply, demand, and exposure. One market may be doing well (e.g., Japanese modern) while another (e.g., English vintage) may be doing poorly. That is OK and expected. I would not want everything to behave identically.
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Again we come to averages. As a whole we have left the high and have yet to bottom out. Fluctuations is normal distribution whether up, down or the same.
That’s a like for like graph. A very short answer for you on just that graph. If that continues flatlining inflation will eat it up for starters.