Thank you. I dont mind differing opinions. To the contrary, I am open to hearing different perspectives. There are some very insightful and knowledgable people on this forum.
What is frustrating is vocalizing a differing opinion and then just receiving push back without actually having a conversation. And thats what it seemed like to me whenever I saw a post discussing bubbles, crashes, etc.
I appreciate your comment!
I too wish market conversations could be had without such polarized responses. If someone is seeing what they think is a trend in the data, thatās their perception based on what they have seen. Let them share that. Maybe they are āwrongā, but nothing here is an exact science anyway.
Even in regulated markets like the stock market it is hard to draw serious conclusions, and people do it for a living. That doesnāt stop people from trying to draw conclusions (almost to a fault). Every time I open the Stocks app on my phone, I see an article with a title like the following:
āDow is down 200 points as stimulus negotiations failā
or,
āDow is up 300 points on positive news about vaccineā
How aboutā¦ the Dow is up or down simply because more people are buying or selling shares today. Why does there always have to be an explanation in every single article title? Regardless, the writers are attempting to draw conclusions and tie together two seemingly disjoint events. No one can really say with certainty whether they are right or wrong, but we can certainly have a debate about it.
I brought this up because I feel like similar statements are not as well received on forums. For example, if someone says
āCharizard is down 70% as it was overvalued to begin withā, itās the second half of that phrase that draws so much controversy. Frankly, even the first half of that phrase tends to illicit negative responses on this thread, because youāll have someone who tries to claim it isnāt down that much even if sales data says otherwise.
Thereās a reason I lurked here as a guest off and on for almost 4 years before I finally registered. Itās because I have a general dislike for how so many discussions tend to go on internet forums. If you post anything too far outside of the popular opinion, thereās a good chance someone will respond with some form of ridicule or condescension. It isnāt simply enough to just respectfully disagree or ignore the post. No, people too often respond rudely. Why would I want to subject myself to that during what is supposed to be my free time, meant for relaxation and entertainment?
Nevertheless, I did register, because the pros outweigh the cons. I love the community, but I do wish the dynamics were a little bit different at times.
@admiral77 Iām not trying to be rude but your initial post kind of just sounded like you were saying you were right, majority of the people on here were wrong because they told you that you were wrong, some cards went down a lot, and that a lot of people on here are still in denial about it. Most people donāt like dealing with the I told you so mindset (even if you didnāt mean to come off that way) so thatās probably why youāre going to have trouble initiating a discussion lol.
Also, just because price rises werenāt sustainable doesnāt mean that theyāre in a bubble. We all know that every card canāt sell for 10% higher than the previous sale forever. Itās very possible that without the Logan paul spike, that the covid boom price growth wouldāve simply slowed down, stagnated or dropped a bit, but also wouldāve created a new and significantly higher price floor rather than the prices āpoppingā and crashing down to pre covid boom or even early covid boom prices. The post Logan paul boom PSA 9 base unlimited charizards that were mentioned, as well as a lot of other cards, were absolutely in a bubble (very high AND steadily increasing supply with diminishing demand at new price point, especially from the new collectors or āinvestorsā that heavily targeted this card) while others were not in a bubble (lower supply, little population growth, most likely not targeted by new collectors or investors so demand is less volatile, price didnāt spike up as much & has been more stable).
You should also always feel comfortable to post your opinion but remember weāre on a PokĆ©mon forum so even if youāre perfectly polite in sharing your opinion, itās very possible that someone is gonna get pissed off and come at you rudely lol. Kill them with kindness 
Regarding price drops:
I think Iām stating the obvious, but the PSA 9 Base Unlimited Charizard did not drop because the sellers all agreed it was worth 70% less, and begrudgingly lowered their prices that much. It dropped because supply outpaced demand.
PSA 9 Base Unlimited Charizard is a card that will always attract a buyer at whatever the current market price is. Itās a card someone will always want, no matter the market price, $1k or $100k. I donāt think the same is true for every card. There are obscure error cards that might be worth a lot, but genuinely have a price ceiling much lower than the ceiling for a Base Set Charizard. This is why I think for Charizard we are mostly seeing an issue of there being too much supply on the market at once.
Massively excess supply of this card is unique in the history of this hobby, because for many years the prices steadily rose due to collector absorption. These fundamentals have changed, since there are more speculators now. So I think we can expect a lot more volatility in this cardās price now and in the future. The card will be bound to go through periods of higher and lower availability as speculators buy and sell.
Itās just so much different for many low-pop cards. Take 1st Edition Error Ivy Pikachu for example. I watch that card closely. A PSA 9 copy has been listed for $5k for many months. No one has bought it, but no one has tried to undercut the seller, either.
The āpriceā of that Pikachu is probably somewhere between 1.5k (the last sale in September), and 5k (the current lowest available). How close the āpriceā is to 1.5k vs. 5k might have moved a ton over the last two months. That is to say, maybe during the height of the Logan Paul surge someone almost paid 5k for that one and only available Pikachu, versus today when maybe no one would touch it for over 2k. That Pikachu could have easily had its āpriceā cut in half over the last month, like a lot of Base Unlimited cards, but since we have zero sales data we canāt say anything, so it gets no attention.
Anyway, I think Charizard is just getting so much attention/blame because itās so rich with data. Due to its high supply and high demand, one sells almost every day. In my personal opinion I think itās near the bottom of where it will go, since it has fully retraced to pre-Logan Paul levels, but only time will tell.
Hello everybody, I have two questions in regards to cards cards from the Ex era.
On average, how hard are these cards to grade?
Would you say that a fair price for a raw ungraded card would be the price you receive for a PSA 7 (risk, transaction fees and potential for PSA 8,9,10 summed up)? E.g. for a Rayquaza Ex from Ex Dragon threre exist two sold listings for 65$ and 56$ PSA 7s so a fair price would be ~ 60$?
www.psacard.com/auctionprices/tcg-cards/2003-pokemon-ex-dragon/rayquaza-ex-holo/values/619156#g=7
Thank you for the input. But thatās the problem I have right there. My grading skills are no that developed, especially with cards from EX with fickle holo boarder.
Iām from Europe so cards are hard to come by from this era, since everybody is looking at WOTC era, shipping fees from the US with GSP are killing me and cardmarket prices are off the charts. So I guess Iāll have to calculate a premium for the ability to buy several nm cards in one order when the posssibility arises.
Not sure if I should make a new thread but I have a question that seems to fit this thread well enough.
So Iāve never collected PSA rated cards and recently started looking into collecting some evolutionary lines Iām fond of. But Iām concerned about the price trend, where it seems like a lot of cards have tripled in price over the last year. For example, PSA 10 Gardevoir 2003 EX Ruby and Sapphire had listings of 43$ last year, to 101$ beginning of this year, to 200$ middle of this year, and this trend is similar with others as well. With trends like this, is it simply a bad time to try to collect? How likely is it that prices will decrease?
It depends on what you are collecting and what your goals are. Thereās a lot of nuances to the market. Are you just collecting EX Ruby-Sapphire cards? Are you buying to collect or invest? Holos, reverse holos, or EX cards? Personally I think the prices for EX Ruby-Sapphire cards have been justified in their increases and wouldnāt worry esp if you are buying PSA 10s. Just negotiate and try to be as disciplined as you can on the purchases. If youāre buying to try and flip the cards I wouldnāt recommend that to anyone.
It depends on how much the pops increase. For Gardevoir and other early EX Series holos in PSA 10, I think the pop reports are far from optimized. Very few have been submitted. I also happen to be collecting them, and Iāve been pretty conservative in my purchases because I fully expect the pops to increase significantly on them over the next year. Then again, Iāve also been trying to acquire raw PSA 10 candidates of these holos for months now, and Iāve had close to zero luck. So it remains to be seen how much the 10 pops in particular increase.
I just wanted to make a quick comment about the last few pages. I have seen the word ācensorshipā thrown around alot and while I completely agree that on an internet forum there should be freedom to have any opinion you like (provided it is not intentionally targeting a specific person/race/gender etc) I also understand that some topics and threads need to get locked or removed if they are just hashing out the same old things for the thousandth time. over the last few weeks alone there have been so many comments like āOMG BASE UNLIMITED ZARD IS DROPPING X%ā ect. there doesnāt need to be 20 different threads for this so removing some of them is not due to censorship but rather just cleaning up the space for other topics.
I also donāt think that people are attacking others for their belief or not that there is a bubble. I think that people are just getting frustrated by the same cards being mentioned time and time again (see base unlimited)
If you are a member of this forum then you are probably pretty into pokemon and have a vested interest in following the market/trends whether it is for investment or collection purposes and so most are not surprised that certain cards (Unlimited base etc) are going back down a bit. The people who bought in at the high were either caught up in the hype, which happens to us all at some point, or buying without doing research. Anybody who takes time to research can see that the supply of unlimited is huge and therefore it will take YEARS and possibly Decades for the demand to exceed supply.
This is not meant to target anybody in particular, but there have been a few times this has come up recently on different threads and this one most of all.
I just want to say that the mods are doing a fantastic job of keeping the peace and making this a place for Diverse conversation. if that means occasionally closing a thread that has already been hashed out to death then so be it.
Rant over.
haha
Thanks for the info from both of you. I did find it strange that the pops were so low - Iām guessing as demand/price goes up more people will have those sets sent in for grading, which will increase the pops, assuming the set was printed enough. And yeah Iām just a casual collector, so my concern is more about avoiding spending more than I need to.
Nobody knows for sure what prices will do in the future and how much 10 pop reports will increase. The best advice for someone who is buying for collecting is just pay what it is worth to you. that way if prices go down you will have no regrets. Good luck.
Well it could also be becasue PSA still hasnāt gotten through their May backlog and the only things (more or less) getting cleared are the pokemon special and express orders.
Some people seem to think there will be some āfloodgateā type moment where there are thousands more late 4x and 5x certs coming to market but a moment like that will not happen. The way for this to happen would be if PSA multiplied their daily output suddenly and I just donāt believe it will happen that way. Yes theyāve announced expanded space for new graders and adding employees but that will most likely cause a tiered increase of their output and not some magical day where suddenly 2 times or however more graders are outputting cards.
so when is the market getting flooded with PSA cards?
Right now. Look at the population chart of the PSA 9 on this card. 600 new PSA 9s last month, up from 50 a month this time last year.
www.pokemonprice.com/CardDetails/533e7b34-b730-4c05-80dc-108a518c3766/charizard-holo
The border doesnāt seem to make them any tougher to grade, really, but you will also have a hard time finding raw copies in grade able condition if we are talking 2003ish ex cards. I believe they are still out there and I donāt think the pop report is optimized yet, but same old issue with English back chipping in cards that were probably not overproduced, and also on the whole not cared for in a way that leads to a ton of PSA 10 copies waiting to be graded. $60 sounds really low for the Rayquaza rookie in PSA 7 condition. I would search eBay sold listings over the PSA site which has probably missed a few sales. Again, I donāt think the pop report is optimized, but Iād buy that card at that price all day long For $60 for at least a 7. The last PSA 10 on eBay went for about $1700 if I recall (PWCC), and thereās another in their current auction block.
It all comes back to the card in question.
PSA 9 Evolutions Charizard population has increased by more than 700 over the last 7 weeks.
PSA 10 1st edition Base Set Charizard population has increased by 1 over the last 2 years.
This is why it has been stressed for months that itās a huge mistake to buy into cards that have a much larger supply than the PSA pop indicates. This is why having knowledge about what youāre buying into is critical.
Weāre on 10 months since March so we are probably still waiting for many of the pre-corona bulk orders to finish