I completely agree just right now that’s not gonna be the case
1 Like
Generally because they spiked so hard in the first place, you could get the mid-lower tier 1st ed psa 10 base holos for 2kish beginning of last year, they spiked to 10-15k and came down to 6-10k for example. It´s certainly a harsh drop if you only consider the latest price history for these cards but in the grand scheme it´s not a big deal.
This applies to most other wotc sets as well, even though there are several examples that even increased in price post hype.
Edit: I should add to most other PSA 10 wotc set cards, if we´re talking about other things we have to look into those in detail
2 Likes
“Crash” is such a big word. But as for why modern is doing “better” than wotc, maybe we underestimated the number of new collectors driving the market, and overestimated the number of veterans. Someone who just recently joined the hobby and grew up with Pokemon XY and onwards will also have a bigger interest in modern cards than in wotc. And since the Pokemon franchise grew over time, chances are that there are more “modern collectors” than old-school people. The old-school people might pay more for a single old-school card than a young person would pay for a single modern card, but I wouldn’t be surprised if overall demand for modern is much higher than for vintage. That feeling of nostalgia we have for old cards isn’t present in young people, instead they will develop a feeling of nostalgia for modern. And there are certainly more “modern collectors” now than there were “modern collectors” in 2000
2 Likes
Unlikely I’d say. Imagine being a middle class person in 2019. A Skyridge booster box is worth as much as a car, you learn that it was worth just north of 100 bucks 7 years earlier. Then you see cases and cases and boxes and cases of SM, XY sets, BW sets, i.e things you presume to be the same because you’re a beginner, sell on ebay for 100-600 dollars. Pokemon = free money. You think you can repeat whatever the WOTC guys did a decade earlier. The game is on.
Now, you’re already in a frenzy. Then, BAM, Covid. Even those Dragons Exalted boxes you didn’t dare to buy go from 300 to 3000 dollars. People on youtube are going crazy, people in real life are going crazy, all your more seasoned pokevestor colleagues are mocking you for not investing sooner (and simultaneously telling you that it can’t be repeated i.e “haha, enjoy being poor”). Even the most seasoned investors confuse the speculative glut with renewed mass-interest in the franchise (because all of a sudden, millions of additional people care about pUkEymoN cArdb0ardzz).
We had a speculative bump in 2014, then another in 2016, and more ever since. Now, we’re dining with Caligula and Epicurus in the house of Mammon. Things have changed forever. The “investable” aspect can’t be washed out, too many people have seen too many other people get filthy rich from it. And so we will live in this heightened state, this eternal vigilance, until the end of Pokemon.
3 Likes
Man, history really does repeat itself. The identical mindset drove the comic/sports card booms in the 80s/90s. People saw original comics and sports cards starting to become really valuable, and then started hoarding the new stuff with the mindset that it would also eventually become vintage/valuable. And we all know what happened next…I’ll just leave this here – from HA’s comic book value guide:
6 Likes
That sentence is really beautifully written.
How was the price of those now worthless items during the 90s, when they just came out?
2 Likes
A lot of the flashy 90s comic variants were quite expensive and desirable at the time of their release. As it turned out, those prices were inflated by speculative demand. Speculators are only in markets during boom periods. After the comic book boom ended, speculators left the market in droves. Ultimately, there just wasn’t (and still isn’t) enough organic collector demand to absorb the supply of 80s/90s books that speculators hoarded and perfectly preserved en masse. Ironically, if those same speculators would’ve just paid up for the Golden and Silver Age keys and held them through today, they would’ve made a *killing.*The history of comic book collecting is fascinating. Pokemon card collectors should really study the history of other collectibles markets; there are many lessons to be learned. People are making mistakes that they don’t have to.
7 Likes
There are similar parallels with sports cards which are an even clearer comparison to Pokémon.
9 Likes
Is there an equivalent to the Golden era and ex era of Pokemon in the sports cards and comic book realm? If so, how have these equivalents been doing?
What’s the “Golden era of Pokemon?” Not sure what you’re referring to; WotC?
Re: EX era – the closest equivalent in comic books is the late Golden Age or early Silver Age. But the EX Series is a very unique case because the print runs were significantly lower than the original era, whereas this wasn’t true for Silver Age comic books.
Re: how are late Golden/early Silver comics doing? – market’s at an ATH.
The most important thing for the EX Series is that it was released well before WotC became valuable – and so very little of it was hoarded and perfectly preserved by speculators. There are fewer mint EX Series cards than from any other generation of the TCG. It has stellar fundamentals, in my view. But I’ll admit that I’m biased 
.
3 Likes
Yeah, the golden era is basically everything that has the old card back in Japan, so it’s basically the wotc era. And it makes sense that collectibles overall are doing great right now. Oh wait, there’s Magic…
Magic’s doing insanely well; not sure what you’re talking about. Vintage Magic prices are at an ATH right now. In my 13 years of collecting Magic I’ve never seen the market stronger than it is currently.
2 Likes
Wait, seriously? I should definitely check that out again
Yeah…Magic prices are nuts right now. You could run over an Unlimited Timetwister with a truck and wipe your ass with it, and you’d still be looking at over $5k.
6 Likes
My vintage auctions are going for next to nothing, which sucks. I won’t be doing any more auctions for a while and am going back to fixed price. People will still pay $100 BiN so it doesn’t make sense to sell it for $30 at auction.
I never did auctions before and always did fixed price, but during the pandemic hysteria I had a lot of good fortune with dollar auctions netting higher than average sale prices in the end. That good fortune is clearly over for me. Back to fixed price!
1 Like
Especially high grade abu went absolutely nuts, some 9.5 alpha moxen just sold for 60-100k each.
1 Like
My auctions are great! To the point where I am considering shifting some of my mid range inventory to auctions. I think its more to do with the specific item than the format. Even looking at PWCC, the cards doing well are the ones that aren’t constantly being dumped by everyone.
For the popular cards with high quantity, I don’t think the dagger has fully fallen.
Not sure if this has been posted here already, but if not, this appeared and sold yesterday: www.mercari.com/us/item/m78411066490.
Product ID 14,138; Special Delivery Pikachu was 14,137.
5 Likes
Interesting that the delivery zards have already been printed and are just not being released yet. I had assumed with all the printing issues they hadn’t actually been printed yet which accounted for the long delay in release after official announcement.