Welcome back! Yeah in a nut shell COVID hit, people are staying home discovering Pokémon again, more disposable income (not being spent on vacations, movies, etc.). Big increases in pretty much anything Pokémon since March-April. A month or so ago Logan Paul did a stream opening up a 1st Edition Base box which caused another huge spike. We are seeing retraces this month from the Logan Paul spike but most cards are still way up from the beginning of 2020. It’s difficult for anyone to say if now is a good time to buy or sell since the market has been all over the place. Best advice I’ve seen is if you have that spare $300 and you’re not over leveraging yourself it may be a good idea to just buy that card if it is a card you don’t want to miss out on. On the flip side you should ask yourself if you’d be okay buying the card at $300 if it went down to $100 in a few weeks/months. If you love the card enough to hold onto it in the long term it might be a good idea.
www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/during-covid-19-pandemic-avid-collectors-find-joy-in-their-prized-possessions-180976281/ sums it up pretty well I think.
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Welcome back! Yeah in a nut shell COVID hit, people are staying home discovering Pokémon again, more disposable income (not being spent on vacations, movies, etc.). Big increases in pretty much anything Pokémon since March-April. A month or so ago Logan Paul did a stream opening up a 1st Edition Base box which caused another huge spike. We are seeing retraces this month from the Logan Paul spike but most cards are still way up from the beginning of 2020. It’s difficult for anyone to say if now is a good time to buy or sell since the market has been all over the place. Best advice I’ve seen is if you have that spare $300 and you’re not over leveraging yourself it may be a good idea to just buy that card if it is a card you don’t want to miss out on. On the flip side you should ask yourself if you’d be okay buying the card at $300 if it went down to $100 in a few weeks/months. If you love the card enough to hold onto it in the long term it might be a good idea.[/quote]
Appreciate the input. I have no desire to offload the cards I have currently, at least not in their current state. I sniped some 1st Ed gym heroes way back when that I’ve yet to get graded that I was hoping would fund my pursuit of the remaining unlimited cards I need. The price of PSA grading is a whole additional topic for another day XD
I do like that advice though. It may be a matter of my acquisitions slowing down due to the price hikes, but anything I’d be purchasing at this point would be held on for the foreseeable future. So wild how quickly things can change. Had a double-take when viewing eBay and kept referencing my old spreadsheets because I couldn’t believe the prices!
Thanks again!
Welcome back! Yeah in a nut shell COVID hit, people are staying home discovering Pokémon again, more disposable income (not being spent on vacations, movies, etc.). Big increases in pretty much anything Pokémon since March-April. A month or so ago Logan Paul did a stream opening up a 1st Edition Base box which caused another huge spike. We are seeing retraces this month from the Logan Paul spike but most cards are still way up from the beginning of 2020. It’s difficult for anyone to say if now is a good time to buy or sell since the market has been all over the place. Best advice I’ve seen is if you have that spare $300 and you’re not over leveraging yourself it may be a good idea to just buy that card if it is a card you don’t want to miss out on. On the flip side you should ask yourself if you’d be okay buying the card at $300 if it went down to $100 in a few weeks/months. If you love the card enough to hold onto it in the long term it might be a good idea.[/quote]
Appreciate the input. I have no desire to offload the cards I have currently, at least not in their current state. I sniped some 1st Ed gym heroes way back when that I’ve yet to get graded that I was hoping would fund my pursuit of the remaining unlimited cards I need. The price of PSA grading is a whole additional topic for another day XD
I do like that advice though. It may be a matter of my acquisitions slowing down due to the price hikes, but anything I’d be purchasing at this point would be held on for the foreseeable future. So wild how quickly things can change. Had a double-take when viewing eBay and kept referencing my old spreadsheets because I couldn’t believe the prices!
Thanks again!
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No problem. Yeah those numbers will make your eyes pop out! I think taking a slow approach is wise during this time of uncertainty.
Btw, if you are thinking of sending those cards to PSA, know that another new change is that they are majorly backlogged due to the amount of people trying to grade their cards. I’ve heard it can take anywhere from 6 to 12 months (others can correct me if I’m wrong there).
Nice read! Did you all notice the Pokémon pez dispensers?
Haha no I hadn’t!
Haha! Yeah, second shelf from the bottom.
Hi all,
I recently purchased a binder of cards that had a lot of Shadowless cards and I am trying to better understand their value. I have commons, uncommons, non holo rares, trainers, and energies. From what I understand, there was a print run of 1st edition shadowless, 1 print run of shhadowless, then many print runs of unlimited, and finally 1 print run of base set 2000. The Shadowless cards are the same as the 1st edition cards minus the stamp.
So from a value standpoint they are both rare and have the original art. Its like they are a silver medal for collectors. Now when I look at pop reports on PSA I see that they are almost identical to unlimited. Does anyone have any idea why this is? With the influx of cards how do you think that will shift?
In terms of grading, what do you think makes sense to send in for the commons, uncommons, non holo rares, trainers, and energies?
I think the pop report for non-holo Unlimited Base is definitely expected to grow significantly in the coming years. Shadowless will grow too, but to a much lesser extent. The pops for commons and uncommons are only similar right now because Base Unlimited wasn’t worth grading until quite recently. Shadowless is rarer, perhaps even as rare as 1st edition, though I’m not certain about that.
Although Unlimited Base is more common and its population will grow a lot in the future, that doesn’t mean shadowless will greatly outperform unlimited. Shadowless has and always will be a niche. It’s worth a premium, certainly, but it might not scale linearly with rarity. By that I mean, let’s suppose eventually there are 10x more Unlimited Pikachus vs. Shadowless (yellow cheek) Pikachus in the pop report. I don’t think that would translate to shadowless being worth 10x as much, even if it is 10x rarer, because it probably isn’t 10x more popular. These are just random numbers, but you get the idea.
Personally I would send in any Shadowless card that I think would get either a PSA 9 or PSA 10. For cards in worse condition, it would depend on what the card is. Shadowless starters are worth sending in at lower grades, and so might some non-holo rares and other favorites. Trainers and energies, probably not.
I was just watching Z&G’s video for the PSA submissions and all I can say is the amount of submissions that had 10x or more of base set unlimited Bulbasaur, Charmander or Squirtle was absolutely shocking. All I can say is be extremely cautious about submitting those common cards especially if you are planning to resell them. I don’t see how the prices on those cards is sustainable long-term at the current prices. They are way too common to be worth a few hundred bucks even at PSA 10. People have binders full of those cards that they can just keep submitting to flood the market. Anything WOTC unlimited, especially the first few sets, was printed much more than people imagine. The prices are kept up high now because of how long the backlog is.
Agreed. Though, Z&G also mentioned in a recent video that they think it’s still totally worth submitting those starters, even if the prices retrace by 90%, which they could. I share the same opinion. I think I’m in the minority, but I consider spending $10 to turn a $10 card into a $30 card to be worthwhile. Of course more is better, I’m just saying even in what I think would be the worst-case scenario, it should still be worthwhile to submit mint starters.
Also, I was specifically referring to Shadowless cards in my suggestion to phenoz. For non-Shadowless Unlimited non-holos I would be pickier, and definitely not submit anything under PSA 9 condition.
Makes sense, thanks for the input guys.
I had one more question about Base set 2000, or the 4th print of base set. Whatever you want to call it, I’ve found that I have a few of these cards. In terms of rarity, it sounds like they are similar to Shadowless and 1st edition. Obviously its very niche, and they aren’t even recognized by PSA. I was thinking of sending some of these in to CGC. So far its just common cards and trainers but I do have a Pikachu. Any insight into this would be appreciated!
You know, if you just casually scroll through (the bottom bit of) this last page it’s pretty confusing to see all these default avatars, even though four different people are commenting. 
I’ll just leave this here for those interested:
Greetz,
Quuador
@phenoz
I think Base 2000 is more similar to 1st ED or even rarer, I’ve seen a lot of shadowless and almost no 2000.
Anywhoo, what are y’all’s take on how Mid-December Christmas rush impacts sales volumes and prices? From what I hear, vintage and niche cards are unaffected while modern spikes a little?
(I mean who can resist buying from a Lapras pulling Santa’s sleigh full of Pokemon cards right?? XD)
I’d expect more retracing on most vintage set cards (besides low pop, low availability cards), especially with the quantity entering the market right now through PWCC. I hope I’m wrong though, since vintage set cards are mostly what I collect/sell. Just trying to be objective.
Some of that might just be because its harder to identify right? I also know that the booster packs used unlimited holos a lot of the time.
None of this necessarily means its going to be significantly more valuable than unlimited but I agree about the rarity. I wonder if it’ll get more popular over time.
As I’ve said every few days in here for the past couple weeks, I haven’t seen any retrace on lower-end ($5-$100) vintage cards whatsoever, even as the obviously inflated prices for graded Base tank (which we all knew was going to happen). Haven’t experienced any decrease in sales volume on eBay, and haven’t dropped my prices at all from the bumped up values of the last few months.
I’m wondering about this myself. We’re in a bit of a unique position this year. The market has skyrocketed, but unlike previous hype trains (such as that surrounding Pokémon Go), this increase in interest isn’t due to a non-TCG factor. The uptick in interest this year is specific to vintage cards. So while your assessment that the Christmas bump usually results in a slight boost in modern and no/minimal change to vintage, I’m not sure that will be the case this year. Even if things have slowed down a little, there are still plenty of newcomers to the hobby… Even if they aren’t asking their parents/significant others/whatever for specific secondary market cards (which some people do), the general consumerism frenzy around Christmas means that people will spend more money on themselves, as well.
I bet that at the very least, the holiday season will prolong the price spike for low-to-mid-end vintage cards a little longer than it would otherwise last.
More sales for sure but personally I think people should prepare for the impacts when COVID starts to get vaccinated. To me, the writing it on the wall but of course people here don’t necessarily want to hear that. What I see happening is a combination of increased spending from quarantine restricting people’s spending options. So they have more money to spend from not going out of their homes. Pokemon TCG is a natural “at home” hobby so we naturally benefited. This increase in natural spending caused prices to rise and then a speculative frenzy occurred following that. I’m seeing so many sales on ebay where you can tell someone bought the item with very limited knowledge…paying far above and beyond the market value. The PSA backlog has further added to this since it has created artificial scarcity for certain cards like base set unlimited starters. These cards weren’t popular to grade until only recently so starting with an already small supply and rocketing demand, the price soars. Overtime though, the price for those cards that aren’t legitimately rare is just going to collapse. I don’t see anything getting spared but some cards will get hurt much more than others.
I’ve been going through my PSA cards recently and selling anything that is not legitimately rare. I plan to rebuy these cards in 1-2 years and only if PSA doesn’t have a huge backlog.
@politoed666, PSA 8-9 Base, Jungle, Fossil, Team Rocket, Gym Heroes, and Gym Challenge have all seen a pretty substantial retrace. Neo sets are going strong though.