It all depends on the stimulus recipient’s situation. A lot of people are broke, jobless and need this $ to pay for groceries and essentials. Others are in a better financial situation and this will be unexpected $ they can spend on discretionary items. People also may elect to save instead of spending. It certainly doesn’t hurt the hobby and may lead to a slight bump in sales short term but there are so many other things people can do with the $ it is hard to say. It will also be hard to directly correlate any bump in sales to the stimulus in particular.
1 Like
I have my own business, I’ll basically end up collecting everyone’s checks and spend some of it it on Pokémon cards.
1 Like
This is a very specific question (hoping it belongs here rather than creating a new thread): anybody know what the energy color error Dialga G Lv.X is worth? It’s a known error, and a fairly substantial one, and I don’t see any on eBay at the moment.
1 Like
I don’t think it will be significant but the stimulus potentially could have a small impact on prices. Psychologically I think people are willing to overpay if they look at it as “free money” rather than their “hard earned money.” So while they may have previously been struggling with spending $500 on a PSA 7 Charizard because they think it’s too much or the price might come down, they look at the stimulus as bonus money and the government essentially sending them a free Charizard. So I think in the short term it may cause an uptick in cards like that.
2 Likes
A stimulus is designed to stimulate (duh) the economy by encouraging consumer spending, which will be dire necessities and rent for some, and Pokémon cards for others.
Based on next week’s elections there is a possibility of a $2000 total stimulus of which adult dependents (such as college students) may be eligible for.
There was absolutely a “trickle - up” effect earlier this year in which lower end cards flew off the shelf, which brought more money into the pockets of long time collectors, who were thus willing to spend more than usual even as cards climbed in March through May.
Think of it like this. Sally gets a stimulus check, pays off some critical bills, and then decides to spend $200 more than usual on Pokémon in February. She buys cards from Brian who loves Pokémon and Brian decides to spend $100 of that $200 on his own cards from Mark. Mark is also a pokemon collector and since his cards have risen in value he spends $50 more on a card himself.
Thus you have $350 in additional money instead of just $200 flowing through the Pokémon eco-system since the sellers are buying cards themselves.
Edit to add: A thought I see on e4 is “well what can you buy with $600? I don’t need modern / WOTC psa 9. That $600 will do nothing for high tier cards”
This presumes the people selling those low tier cards for $600 have zero interest in purchasing cards themselves. If enough people push up a given Charizard from $400 to $500 due to increased short term spending, who do you think benefits? Unless those people are buying from someone completely cashing out or a major store front, there’s a solid chance whoever sold that Charizard for $500 actively buys and sells cards themselves. And now they have an extra $100 in their pocket which maybe makes a $1000 card more in reach. Cycle upward.
Can you trickle up this way to five and six figure cards? Probably not, the buyer pool starts to separate too much, but heightened spending on the low and mid level = price rises and market activity = increased consumer confidence in the market overall = a lower perceived risk in taking the plunge on high end cards.
10 Likes
I feel compelled to add –
A prevailing thought I see on the forum is “no, a $1200 one-time check didn’t magically boost the Pokémon market”. The line of thinking here is that the Pokémon market would have to be special and an anomaly to be boosted by a trillion dollar economic stimulus.
The reality is the other way around. The Pokémon market would have to be oddly special and extraordinary to NOT be boosted by a stimulus. Pokémon was not singled out but like almost everything else it reaps the benefits of short term increased consumer spending.
10 Likes
So you’re saying ANY stimulus amount will noticeably elevate Pokémon again? PresTrump has demanded 2000.00 per adult but that doesn’t mean it will happen.
1 Like
@garyis2000, I think $600 could provide a slight boost but not to the same effect as the first round of payments. With that little it’s more “bills to pay” and less “money left over”. $2000 I would definitely expect a boost in consumer spending and thus Pokemon.
2 Likes
Look at the allocation of the first stimulus check. A small % will enter the market.
The question is what % is entering, circulating & exiting the market.
With the market cap, this amount of “new” money will cause less and less impact.
I’d be interested if anyone looked into how the last stimulus was distributed across sets/eras/services. Understanding how much of that money is going into modern,wotc,ex-era,grading I think is a more fruitful discussion.
1 Like
@odds,I would like to see that formulaic breakdown yes I surely would. You remember Mr. Scott’s Transwarp Beaming analogy, right?
2 Likes
I can’t say I know the analogy you’re speaking about, what is the correlation?
1 Like
That correlation is not causation, and that trying to account for how and in what manner the last stimulus check affected the Pokémon market is like trying to hit a bullet with a smaller bullet whilst wearing a blindfold, riding a horse.
4 Likes
If you believe that:
-People having extra $ to spend due to spending alternatives (eating out, concerts, travel, sporting events, etc.) not being available and
-People with discretionary spending available are spending that money on things that make them happy (i.e. Pokemon cards)
have led to increased demand of Pokemon cards, and prices continue on an overall upwards trend given the increased demand, and there’s not any immediate supply available to meet the demand…
Then it’s fair to assume the extra $600 can only create more demand and increase prices. To what extent, we’ll find out soon.
The wheel is already in motion, stimulus checks will just make it spin faster.
3 Likes
It is called asset price inflation. Due to the FEDs and EZBs money printer going brrrr, all asset classes are basically being inflated because people are desperately trying to invest their money into something that’s not gonna lose it’s value by being printed into oblivion and dissolving into thin air… Stocks are up, Real Estate is up, Gold is up (for boomers), Bitcoin is up (for the cool kids) and tech boys flys to the moon not with SpaceX but with Tesla. I’m not following what you guys are doing in the U.S. but $ 900 billion does sound like a shit load to me. Every Timmy can invest into Pokemon now and even his mother, too. So yes, Pokemon card prices are absolutely inflated as well.
2 Likes
I saw an excellent- near mint one sell for $80 a few months back. People are not familiar enough yet with the error. I think if you graded with CGC and posted to the Pokémon Misprint Facebook group you could get enough offers to gauge value.
2 Likes
The issue with the “stimulus check” bros is that they completely ignore literally everything else that happened from January-April to juice prices and instead focus on one $1200 check given by one country. It’s the logical equivalent of a tunnel-vision toddler, we get stimmy then pricies go stonkies, now new stimmy omg stonk time!!11!
Sure, Pokemon is mainly a US-centric hobby, but many other countries issued nearly full income replacement if not above for unemployed individuals (Canada gave anyone who lost their job $2000/month). So to equate global market rises with one thing done by one country is fallacious. Furthermore, the US also offered $600/week enhanced unemployment coverage and multiple other programs. While the measures taken weren’t perfect, they saved a lot of people and actually put a good bit of money in people’s pockets. If you live in the US and qualified for enhanced unemployment, you made a stimulus check every two weeks regardless of your original income. So if you’re talking in terms of actual monetary input, other programs did more than the stimulus check. The stimulus gets all the attention because it’s succinct and clear, “everyone gets $1200,” but it’s not that big in the grand scheme of what governments did.
As others have noted, across the world the pandemic resulted in two distinct but equally important key factors that likely resulted in the market rise. First, a significant lifestyle change where traditional entertainment was not only unavailable but dangerous to access. Second, an unprecedented response by governments to get money out the door to stop the economy from crashing. In many places this was largely successful. The stimulus check in the US was a small part of that second key factor, but a part nonetheless. I’d argue that it’s impossible to determine the effect of each constituent of the second part (US: Paycheck Protection Program, small business loans, stimulus, enhanced UI, etc).
All in all, the whole discussion about “what effect did the stimulus have on the market” is pointless because you’re never going to be able to isolate the actual effect $1200 had within the worldwide money-printing deluge and massive lifestyle change that happened. It will always be conjecture, but the least people can do is make accurate and informed judgements about it. So the stimulus probably did have some minor effect on prices, but not nearly as much as people think and only in conjunction with everything else that was going on at the time. Certainly not enough of an effect to make any noticeable change the next time it happens.
10 Likes
I spent most of my 600 dollars on vivid voltage booster boxes.
1 Like
Yes, enhanced UI, PPP, etc. all helped as well. The US eUI was more generous than Canada especially in low cost of living areas. However, even if you can not isolate the exact influence of direct-payments, that does not mean they should be ignored as a major economic boost. I am sure there is emerging research on what people spent the money on.
The US has almost ten times the population of Canada and is the driving force for the Western market currently for Pokemon. We are talking nearly $500 billion total in direct-payments assuming $600 this round. That’s what, six times the amount of Canada’s entire major relief bill?
Much to my surprise, the data modelling I rely on is putting it at about 70-30 McConnell will be replaced. That would be 53/60 votes for $2000 and I suspect seven GOP Senators are persuadable due to a variety of factors.
2 Likes
these are financial instruments the govt and fed have used to help boost the economy. everything is based on theory only because we don’t have the tools to really measure the effect. that’s why economics is so interesting. all these models, etc are all based on a lot of assumptions and very little concrete evidence, from what i understand because of the vast butterfly effect. you can’t measure this so easily like in a clinical trial with developing drugs/vaccines. i agree, the size of the stimulus is more than the 1200 handed out. the enhanced unemployment checks handed out were very significant, not to mention all the money that businesses received. i have family friends in CA who are still getting good money right now and they’ve been unemployed since March! i think they’ve pocketed over 15k since last year and they sat at home this whole time.
and yes, the stimulus was on a global level. i’d say this certainly has an effect on pokemon as a hobby, but i do agree that we won’t ever know the direct impact. i would bet that inflation and more money supply can only help assets that have limited supplies, such as bitcoin and vintage pokemon.
1 Like
All the ideas posted here are very US centric, as some have said it is the biggest market for Pokemon. A lot of these “stimulus” checks, inflation, etc are literally non existent in a a lot of countries. Some countries had their currency lose a lot of value vs the USD while others actually gained value.
For some countries where the economy is going downwards and unemployment rises, there’s no margin to buy pokemon cards and even worse, with the absurd prices even in sets released months ago. What happens is that as prices rises, people just don’t want to pay for pokemon cards (in these countries) while US still gets their free money and keep inflating the cards prices.
Like it or not a large segment of the market is bound to US behavior and the rest gotta adapt to that.
4 Likes