Guess this happens when 100 psa 9’s gets converted to cgc 10’s in a few months and all of them are dumped on the market at the same time.
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Yep I could not believe how many of these sellers decided to sell at literally the same time. Silly season.
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If you were looking to capitalise financially on the new label CGC 10 fad, it was now or never. The hype from the general public was going to die very fast.
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On a kind of related note, attention span really is the enemy of the modern reseller. You best be sure you’re gonna get a quick turn-around or your margin’s gone in an instant. Especially in an era where TPC is rapid-firing out so many S-tier new releases.
This is why it’s so bizarre that self-proclaimed modern “bag holders” are so flippantly dismissive of vintage, which just calmly trundles along holding its value, going up over time, independent of memetic market trends.
It’s like a desperate carry-over from the Covid era of this whole idea of quick free tendies (to quote Rudy). Nobody wants to patiently build, it’s the quick-gain or nothing. Except it’s harder to do post-Covid, so people are now funnelling this mantra into not just flipping product and graded cards, but now into flipping grades themselves. It’s like, at what point do people realise that they don’t have to base a business model on a race of anxiety? I suppose for as long as there are customers to indulge the practice the trend will continue 
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About 20k gain, pretty low price
my worst fear
As the current english market moves at the speed of light, i think we are at the beginning of a paradigm shift for post 2020 modern Pokemon cards.
I have looked at forums over the last year and im seeing people slowly waking up right now.
99% of the chase cards while lacking almost every fundamental were expected to only go up in price.
Now a few months / years later a lot of these cards instead of going up, crashed 50% + in price. Some people are still clueless and dont understand why it is happening but i think most of them are waking up and starting to understand that the demand cant keep up with the neverending mountains of freshly graded modern psa 10’s. This will hurt the appreciation of sealed product too, why would a lottery ticket be more expensive than the jackpot?
There will always be outliers and i know prices always go down right after release but this is just my current view as of right now.
Im curious if im the only one noticing this shift and the views of you all.
I will add some screenshots here too.
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Thanks for sharing this, @bill.
What you’re describing in English modern right now is modeled in statistics as an exponential decay curve.
Exponential decay can be described as the gradual decrease in the price of a card over time, and this decrease in price occurs at a constant relative rate. Under this assumption, the rate at which a card decreases in price is directly proportional to the current price of that card.
It happens in a few stages:
- The card starts off very high as first-to-market copies are auctioned off.
- The card price decrease exponentially while more copies are graded and brought to market.
- The card price stabilizes at a floor, but never reaches a value of zero.
Here are some examples:
Now, not every modern card follows an exponential decay curve (e.g., look at Umbreon VMAX Alt Art from Evolving Skies). But it is, and has always been, the “average” trajectory for ultramodern chase cards that have incredible supply.
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Yeah Bill these are misleading graphics. They don’t show when the start price was taken relative to release. They mention months but would be better to say date the price was taken compared to release date. Like if this is comparing to the price right when the set is released it is always way too high at first. @Dyl shows it well. We expect the card to settle out at a floor. And it may take a couple years to find the floor. I don’t think anyone expects something brand new to immediately yield profits.
I reckon that the best of the chase cards with time will increase slowly from this floor at some point unless the Pokemon market collapses and no one collects anymore. Relatively speaking the market has grown from its inception in the late 90’s until now. There have been spikes of interest and people exit after but generally the market is larger than before after these. Seems like the only period where most of the market left was after Neo when Pokemon was first released. The fact it even continued and re-grew is a testament to the fun of this hobby and how good the Pokemon Company is at nurturing their franchise.
Provided the trend of growing market continues over time the best of the modern cards will likely do well. There are more collectors interested in Alt Art Lugia than Neo Genesis Lugia. Because there are more modern collectors than vintage. The vintage collectors have more money though no doubt. But I really believe the buyer pool for vintage is generally smaller than the buyer pool for modern. Kids are still getting into Pokemon these days. All interest in the hobby isn’t just 30 something year olds who were there at the beginning coming back to the hobby. There are a lot more young people who missed that era coming into the hobby and for them XY, Sun & Moon, and Sword and Shield are more interesting.
I personally like both and collect both, but as someone who enjoys art, it’s hard to beat the Alt Art from that standpoint and in that way I enjoy looking at those cards more than my vintage ones.
Dude add some spaces to your post!
haha but in all seriousness I think there may be some confusion; nobody on e4 is heavy into modern investing. E4 people may own literal pallets of modern but even for those who do, that represents probably like 5% of their pokemon portfolio so the modern hate isnt really needed here, nobody is super deep or all in on the modern stonks as far as I know and we all are aware of its volatility
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Sorry for the lack of spaces and I apologize if my post came off at all sounded like modern “hate”. Certainly wasn’t my intention. I think its fine for me to share a positive counter-opinion on modern when there are so many negative ones being shared.
I just think for a young new collector coming in, we may be misleading them telling them their modern chase cards aren’t going to be worth anything in the future. Will a lot of modern cards be worthless? Absolutely. But I don’t think its fair to say the Alt Arts or other chases will have no value. Is moonbreon going to perform as well as 1st edition base set charizard? Heck No. But Moonbreon may perform better than most holo rares from the post neo vintage era.
If there is enough young kids getting in and wanting that card in the years to come, then there ya go. PS I don’t own Moonbreon or intend to get one. I don’t personally see the excitement for the card but you can’t doubt a lot of people like it. If it’s their chase today like base Charizard was ours as kids, then it’s not unreasonable to think it will continue in popularity years to come. Of course the pop is higher. Of course it’s not going to perform like Charizard. But if doesn’t have to in order to still stay valuable in a collection over time.
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lol I actually meant that towards @bill who seems to hate modern with a passion
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Gotcha yeah bill does seem to hate modern.
Everyone has their own interests and I certainly get being only into vintage. But i think we have to be fair and recognize with a growth in the hobby, you will have tons of people that like the modern more.
I’m a recovering modern hater. I wish I took a liking to it a bit earlier tbh. So many kickin cards
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Agreed! Vintage carries the nostalgia for me, but honestly favorite pokemon art is mostly in these newer sets. These modern artists are doing an incredible job with the Illustration rares and secret illustration rares. Also the including of trainers with their pokemon has been a really fun thing in the sword & shield era.
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It’s a sign of a hopeless society.
Why are you inventing your own narratives? The norm is for cards go down in price for YEARS before they see any appreciation. Using ridiculous first sale prices for your graphics is also in bad faith.
Also treating cards like stocks with LOSS written on them is dumb.
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I think you’ll find on e4 that nearly everyone agrees modern has the best art, even if they don’t collect it personally. When it comes to value and “investment “ though, the entire history of collectibles would tell you though that buying modern is not going to be a good investment in the long term. Easy to pull, immediately protected, extremely easy to grade. That’s not the recipe for long term organic appreciation as a collectible.
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couple thoughts:
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Heres a thinker: what if the sets with lots of cheap cards (celebrations, crown zenith, shining fates) are actually the best longterm plays
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Perhaps a set having loads of cheap cards is a good thing for collecting and building nostalgia for a set/packs/product
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buy pogo
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Just for your insights, im not a modern hater. Just observing the market. I have full binder sets of some of the smaller holiday sets and a 1 boosterbox of most modern released sets. I think the cards look amazing, much better than some vintage cards, but i feel some people need a wake up call instead of echoing to each other how smart they are chasing the newest shiny thing.
Edit: but as of my first post, i think they are slowly finding out right now so this problem should mostly go away.
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So are most modern cards down? It’s always been short term flip long term dip for modern cards. The ones I check still fit that mold. Even though I know that true I just spent $2500 on modern cards for a binder. 
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