The Giant English Market Thread

[A.P.Speeze]

@shinycards

@eeveeteam

@neoashuri , everybody and their mother are sitting on sealed modern as an “investment” right now.
Hard to see it do much of anything long term that couldn’t be outdone by a normal stock market investment. Having to store sealed product and risk of damage due to shipping 10 years from now doesn’t sound fun to me.

There’s definitely way more people doing it now than 3 years ago but I disagree that it would be easier to pick a stock with less risk/more reward. Who’d have thought Facebook stocks would have dropped like 30% since 1 year ago? I doubt you will see any decent sealed Pokemon product drop that much from RRP.

Agree on your point about storage/insurance although it is highly unlikely, there is a chance you can lose it all if you don’t take precautions (which is admittedly more problematic for bulky items like booster cases).

If you watch Alpha Invesments Youtube he’s been going through the same cycle over and over for years with MTG and now Pokemon cards. He gets hundreds of comments saying things are too overprinted to be a good investment yet continuously proves them all wrong year-after-year. The appreciation of modern sealed products for a popular hobby is pretty universal.

Eventually those printers have to move onto new sets so the supply is finite, whilst the demand is always going to be there in our lifetime. Lots of people just can’t stop themselves from opening packs so patience and being able to fight that urge is where the money is made. Naturally those boxes are going to increase in value over time, it’s just a matter of how long that could be.

We are already seeing 1-2 year old sets creeping up from $80-100 to $120-140 a box which is typical. In the best case that could continue to $200, $300, $500 etc which in the stock market is a great % return (even after shipping and fees). In the worst case a set may not increase in value by much over 5 years and then all of a sudden explode like Generations and Evolutions did.

So yes I agree that because more people are doing it, it could take longer to see the same gains this time around but just look at Crimson Invasion and Steam Siege box prices and ask yourself how realistic it is that Evolving Skies booster boxes will still be $100 5 years after they stop printing them?

However I think your point totally applies to things like Charizard V Champions Path Promo which currently has a PSA population of 26k sooo many people have graded it that surely all the undercutting will mean everyone that sells it anytime soon are going to lose out on the raw cost + grading fee.

Nothing in life is guaranteed and different Pokemon items perform differently over time but in the current situation inflation is getting worse so sealed products of a super popular hobby is almost certainly a worthwhile bet

Seems crazy that I am typing up a response to this, but I saw what I think are some misconceptions.

The risk for buying a physical item and storing it is almost always going to be higher than the risk of buying a stock. There is so much more that can go wrong from product being damaged, stolen, lost, and faked. Stocks don’t have this extra risk and it’s hard to quantify the extra risk that comes with collectibles. This is one of the many reasons why it’s not really possible to compare pokemon products to the stock market like you did with facebook. Liquidity and fungibility also come to mind as things that make it impossible to compare the two.

Then you talk about demand always being there in our lifetime which is just a baseless claim. You also say the worst case scenario is a set exploding like generations or evolutions when you detailed above that it’s possible to literally lose your entire collection. It happened to someone here after FedEx lost a box with hundreds of thousands worth of cards at the time that were sent to PWCC without insurance.

Lastly, you talk about inflation getting worse (increasing). When inflation increases, interest rates typically increase as well. When this happens people usually stop buying things. Especially non-essential items. Pokemon cards are a luxury good. It would be one of the first things people stop buying if they are struggling to buy essentials due to increased inflation.