To be fair, it’s kind of a different situation. The people who whined about MTG prices being too high were players. The people who are currently whining about MTG prices being too low are collectors/speculators. It’s not the same people who were whining. I don’t think people are being inconsistent – it’s just that it’s even tougher to satisfy the MTG market than it is the Pokemon market. The vast majority of demand for Pokemon cards is from collectors/speculators. Whereas the demand for MTG cards is a mix of players and collectors/speculators. And the desires of players and collectors/speculators are directly opposed to each other. Players want it to be affordable to play the game while collectors/speculators want cards to be valuable. You just can’t please the MTG market lol.
Personally, I’m fairly bearish at the moment so I would wait to see how the next couple of months play out.
Regardless of anyone’s market feelings or predications, I’d advise you to not let emotions get in the way of investing. Your original post was titled “Once in a lifetime opportunity” which was a little concerning for me, you’re getting a ~13% discount off the recent PWCC sale on an item that sells around 10 times a month - this isn’t a once in a lifetime opportunity, you’ll get more chances in the future if you really want it and really feel it is worth it.
My gut, bullshit arm chair psychologist analysis is that if you really thought it was a once in a lifetime opportunity you’d have already bought it. As you haven’t, you’d benefit from more thought and research.
If you’re dead set on putting that $28k into Pokemon cards in this market, you could do a lot worse than 1st Ed. WotC boxes – that much is safe to say lol.
As hypernova said, what it really boils down to is how personally significant $28k is to you. Based on the tone of your post, it sounds like $28k is a personally significant amount of money. If so, it’s probably wise to just hold onto the money and see where the market goes.
I agree with much of what has been said. Depending on your financial risk tolerance ($28K is huge!), this may not be a prudent investment, given the market volatility and your lack of experience in the hobby. Even for those of us with 10+ years of experience, none of us could have forecasted the events of the last 12 months, so take any advice with a grain of salt.
However, I feel that sealed WOTC booster boxes have a lot of upside. They are highly liquid and have consistent demand from a broad spectrum of individuals in the hobby: streamers, sealed collectors, set collectors, etc. The supply of sealed vintage boxes is also decreasing fairly rapidly. Short-term forecast could be bumpy, especially given the parabolic growth this last year. I feel like they have a lot of potential in the long-term though.
Tough call . . . if you’re not 100% comfortable with the risk, I’d recommend finding something else.
I know a fair share of players who are dissatisfied with the current prices, they already cried when their stuff rotated but it’s even worse today as prices slowly bleed from release - but other than that I agree, it’s basically impossible to satisfy the mtg market as it’s too segmented with too many motives behind.
I wouldn’t recommend someone coming in relatively fresh to put all their eggs in one basket. And well I wouldn’t recommend them to put all their eggs in many baskets either. I would say start divvying out your eggs slowly because there is no rush, the hobby will be around for the rest of our lives. Research, and take your time with reasonably budgeted collecting goals. The slower you go, the better you become at finding the best bang for your buck. Be conservative and picky with what you buy. That doesn’t necessarily mean don’t spend a lot of money, it just means don’t be reckless. I would recommend budgeting a certain amount each month for the next few months, and set a good portion of that $28K aside (at least half) for safe keeping so that you can work your way up to some kind of big purchase if you finally see fit to do so and feel comfortable financially that you wont have to sell. And the day should come where you’ve built up enough knowledge and experience over a good amount of time to know for sure on your own what you simply must buy. With this method you’ll learn a lot more through collecting engagement and probably enjoy it a lot more than just sitting on a couple sealed boxes for 20 years. I think almost definitely they will significantly increase in value in that amount of time. But so will everything else in that case. Sealed is great, everyone should probably have some amount of sealed product. But its hard to build up knowledge and experience and to stay engaged if all of your capital is tied up in sealed. And I hate to see people do that, because they don’t know what they are missing out on.
Very astute of you. You’re right, maybe it’s my childish desires that are trying to convince myself of the opportunity while my adult reasoning skills are saying…“hold up…” Thanks for reading between the lines.
Sellers are cracking me up lately; I’ve been sitting on a majority unchanging watchlist for weeks and weeks now, and yet sellers still refuse to take less than peak price points. That ship has sailed.
Agreed. Put a PSA 6 card on my watchlist for fun cause it was priced at nearly psa 10 prices and dude has dropped it now multiple times and it’s still crazy overpriced. I guess they are just hoping for a dumb buyer that does no research, like the good old days of October 2020
When prices are in decline it’s better to do auctions in my opinion. I almost exclusively used auctions in 2017/18 because the cards would go for much less than the closest BIN. However during a bull market like we saw last year I would BIN cards I really wanted because the next auction would generally set a new high. Between the seller and buyer it comes down to who has more patience. Usually the sellers have more patience than the buyer so they can list high BIN prices relative to ongoing auctions.
And sellers aren’t required to sell you anything. I get messages all the time over the years “this card has been up for X amount of time, its not worth blah blah”, then it sells for list or a small amount under. Don’t be that guy, that guy gets blocked and is super annoying.