I can’t stop spending money. I see cards I like, I buy. Why is it so complicated .
On a serious note. I was listening to the book Atomic Habits and he talked about how folks who have spent time in fields long enough can instantly recognize fakes, health symptoms, etc. Ive heard Scott say many times in videos that the card just hits fundamentals. He knows it is a good buy. I feel similar and I’m sure many others in the hobby do as well. We can just tell by looking at the card if it’ll do well or it’s something work picking up.
These discussions are great afterwards. Like an after actions debrief. I see some folks writing dissertations of what they think is going on. I’m constantly buying and selling.
I think there’s more organic interest in Pokemon now than there’s ever been in a very, very long time.
Base Set just happened to attract lots of speculators without genuine interest in Pokemon that wanted to hop onto the train. Now that this particular segment is trending downward, many of these speculators want out. Compounded with all bulk at PSA, it’s not going to be a very fun ride for some. This is the consequence of buying into prices heavily driven by speculation. Base Set still has plenty of organic interest, but I feel speculators really aggravated that.
Many other segments that haven’t been so heavily driven by speculation, but by organic demand and genuine collectors, appear to be doing just fine.
When the price of petrol drops, a driver shouldn’t worry about the value of petrol currently in the car. He should be happy that he could now consume more at lesser cost.
What I have now is insignificant compared to what I will be buying in the future.
Yep. And if you have to spend hours and hours justifying your purchases because you’re so uncertain(aka people justifying their october base set purchases) then find something out there that doesn’t take too much thought because the art actually resonates with you. I see too many people buying cards because it’s a great “investment” but the artwork is mediocre to them. What’s the fun in that? Especially if in a lot of those cases, those “investments” aren’t even good lol
I’ve been a set collector (plus promos) for so long that when I complete that project I look forward of just having a weird binder full of unrelated cards I really like.
So much of the energy I’ve put in to my collection revolves around completion percentage, sorting, storage, display, and structuring cards that go together in a predetermined way and I am just filling in the blanks. In the future when I am free from this framework it will be fun to just buy random cards I like and not worry about how they do or don’t fit together.
Break out as soon as you can! I’m a very achievement driven person, and completing something has always been a huge driver for me. I realized at some point that I wasn’t enjoying putting together sets, I was thinking more about the cards I’d buy when a set was finished. So instead of pushing through, I dumped basically everything to focus on the cards I wanted. It was so freeing not to have to finish those sets. Granted, I didn’t up buying any more cards for a few years after that, but getting back into things last year has just been so much fun. I literally buy any whatever pretty cardboard my heart desires with no rules attached. Neo Revelation Octillery? Yup. Whatever Amazing Rare I can get my hands on? You bet. Raw collection of Primes? All over it.
There’s no rhyme or reason to any of it, and it. is. awesome. I understand that finding a niche can be beneficial, but when you’ve been set collecting for so long, and break free, you reward yourself
As someone who got back into the hobby at the peak I must say it’s been a fun ride down. Luckily I don’t need to sell anything and plan to hold for a long time but I still get queasy when I see what I paid back in feb to april🤢
Hope youre ready for more. PSA hasnt even finished grading October/November submissions yet. With summer coming soon, most new people will be instead putting their money towards other activities. Most likely well see prices continue to decline as less buying will be happening for various reasons. Even Logan Paul has moved on to prepare for his fight against Mayweather.
But like you said, at least you wont have to sell and you spent what you thought the cards we worth to you. Thinking of it as building up your collection instead of as an investment may help. I think its sad that some people have to lock their collections away in a vault, and are only able to enjoy a picture of it at home.
I agree with you overall, but I think the price decreases will vary dramatically from card to card. Overall, my guess is the decreases would be roughly proportionate to the amount in the backlog. How many to-be-graded PSA 10 1st Ed. Neo holos or exs or gold stars are in the backlog? Based on the pop growth figures, very few (relatively speaking). I would personally be surprised to see cards like that retrace dramatically (i.e., 50%+ decrease in value) – but I’d love to be wrong, because there are quite a few PSA 10 exs that I want but not at the current prices lol.
Yeah Im sure there will be cards that continue to grow throughout all this, especially low pop, high value cards like some that you mentioned. But overall majority of the slabs that the average collector can afford will continue to decline in value as the backlog comes out and people finish their primary collecting goals and move on.
Lol yeah the slab wave will be huge. My only regret in this hobby so far is finding out about grading/this sub after I locked away capital in a raw collection. Had I known I would have waited for the potential slab dip in July.
As a related aside: I collected some data on the sub compositions from a couple of Z&G’s grading submission videos (where he shows the cards from the submissions of viewers). 98%+ is comprised of modern, non-holos, and pre-Neo WotC holos. There were next to zero English gold stars, exs, 1st Ed. Neo holos, e-Series holos, etc. in the submissions. Like, a negligible amount. And of the few that were in the submissions, how many will get PSA 10s? I don’t think I need to answer this; my line of reasoning should be pretty clear .
Two caveats: modern is likely underrepresented among Z&G viewer submissions because his channel is mainly WotC-focused. Second, my “research” obviously has a relatively small sample size – it’s impossible to say how representative it is of all of the cards in the backlog. I just collected the data for fun and out of curiosity.
With that being true, don’t underestimate the amount of pack fresh WOTC cards as well. There were a lot and I mean a lot of box breaks that happened in the past 6-9 months alone. Apart from the bigger channels, I know of 2-3 FB groups that were/are doing WOTC box breaks in their own little bubble. Not to mention a lot of others that I/we don’t know of. Of course it’s still a drop in the ocean compared to modern. But don’t underestimate the amount of PSA 9s (and some 10s) that will come out of these when they come back from PSA. Hence I do expect a further price decrease by the end of this year (everything else being the same) with a gradual increase in prices again per usual
The vast majority of box breaks you’re referring to were Base/Jungle/Fossil/Rocket/Gym breaks. And then a tiny minority were Neo box breaks. And then an even tinier minority were e-Series box breaks. And don’t even get me started on EX, which had basically zero box breaks relative to any WotC set.
So the pack fresh holos you’re referring to are almost all from the pre-Neo era that I specified.
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