This is why I am so outspoken. No one can ever provide actual examples. Mainly because its an arbitrary projection. Market demand outpaces any individual with high capital.
There is a deep irony in the buyout fantasy that people miss. Say Jeff Bezos comes in and wants to buy every card. How do you realistically achieve that? How would this be worth someones time? At that level of capital you can park that money into 5% and do nothing. Volume trading stocks at that level is much easier and better than wasting time buying out cards.
It simply isn’t a viable strategy. Lets say Jeff Bezos wants to buy out University magikarp. He buys the PSA 10’s at 30k. Naturally costs increase so next one is listed at 40k. Then at 50k. You end up competing with yourself. Also, these people are taking massive risks for a highly speculative negligible gain.
Most importantly, there is competition. Jeff Bezos isn’t the only person with 30-50k to spend. So he is competing with other buyers that will take some of those cards. Which is why Market demand outpaces any individual.
I probably already said it over the past few months (and was wrong so far), but I don’t see a scenario where more than half of the mid 2020 high prices won’t see a significant >30% drop. I mean dropping 30% from today’s prices across the board would still be most cards worth 2x or more than they were on 1-1-2020. We may still have 2x or 3x to go in this current increase though, who knows. I just don’t see it being sustainable for most cards the price increases we are seeing. I think when record high prices stopped being achieved daily you will see a decent portion of people realize that the market values some of their cards more than they do and they’ll come to market.
I mean this forum mainly lives in the high end WOTC 9/10 1st edition holos, trophies, legitimately rare promos, 1st ed base, hi grade gold stars, sealed product etc. and I think those will be largely unaffected, but honestly a lot of the lower grade holos, or super super high pop holos, non holo c/u, modern cards especially I just don’t see maintaining it. I mean a lot of hidden fates, evolutions, similar modern product is mirroring if not outperforming some of the WOTC stuff. It just feels crazy. You could have hit buy it now on almost anything listed on eBay in Jan-Feb of 2020 and you’d have doubled your money. I think too many people have too much free time to put into the hobby and are getting a bit overambitious with the extra money they can’t spend elsewhere currently.
I am relatively small time and probably have ~20,000 cards that became “gradable” in the past two months sitting in my bulk monster boxes.
These are just my thoughts and are very likely to be wrong and are most certainly worth less than you paid for them.
Disclaimers:
I have a lot of cards I plan to sell throughout this year and stand to gain from prices increasing.
I have a lot of cards I plan to buy throughout this year and stand to gain from prices decreasing.
Claims of market manipulation - or whale-conspiracy-buyouts - are just another symptom of a victim-hood mentality that has developed from an inability to buy cards that collectors feel entitled to, but now suddenly can’t afford. Are you also gonna say that Netflix stock price has been manipulated into unnatural growth over the last few years too? Or could it just be that media consumption habits have evolved, and the higher stock price reflects earnings from a massive influx of paying subscribers?
Anyway, that’s my cynicism exercised for the evening.
I feel like across the board is highly unlikely because of the collectibility (not a word) of certain cards. Many people are picking up their grail 1st Edition Charizards in fear of never being able to pick one up below $5,000 in the future. I feel these buyers (collectors) have very low incentives to sell their grail cards, and therefore the supply isn’t getting any higher after the pandemic. There are definitely many cards being milked right now such as these Unlimited/Shadowless base cards that I can see a possible drop, though those grail cards I just don’t see it. Just my thoughts though!
No; I did not “assume it was due to COVID.” The recession is BECAUSE of COVID, hence me saying “because of COVID.” This is just you trying to make something out of nothing.
Yes, it was funny, because that is exactly what happened. People assumed prices would plummet in the short term. Instead, they rose. Is it over? No. Can prices dip? Yes. But that is not what we are seeing right now. Literally no one expected prices to double, triple and even quadruple in some cases.
You are also entirely wrong that prices were subdued leading up to COVID. They were growing at the tail end of 2019 and into 2020. Quarantine only assisted the growth; it was not the primary factor. Your other post mentions the first case of COVID, which occurred in January when in fact quarantine did not even begin until mid-to-late March. So yeah. Your “analysis” was wrong. A link to another thread in October 2019 about a price spike was even provided in your thread: www.elitefourum.com/t/recent-price-surges-for-psa-10-1st-edition-jungle-fossil/24440/1
It’s also not “gloating”; it’s telling people to actually look at the evidence and to stop backtracking when things change. Even if no one knows, some outcomes are more likely than others. The market crashing is unlikely.
Speaking within the realms of short-term speculation, the nature of the current spending in the hobby is going to dictate the price direction once the lock down has eased, and while I’d tend to agree with you, I wouldn’t assume to know enough to place a bet either way. There are some things we do know though. PTCG has become very investor-centric over the last couple of years; the financial aspect of the hobby is as prevalent as it’s ever been. The market is demonstrating that it offers what appears to be financially viable long-term assets, and is attracting people of a certain profile, namely;
Mid 20s to mid 30s thinking about their future
Likely more financially savvy (FIRE movement, can soak up financial literacy podcasts like a sponge with Spotify)
Looking for alternative investment routes (let’s face it, passive investing in indices and equity funds, while sensible, is boring AF)
The long and short of it is, people are realising “holy shit, you mean I can relive childhood nostalgia AND create an investment portfolio with high long-term growth potential?!?”. The people who took the greatest risks buying into the hobby (early Nintendo era down-time all the way to just before Pokemon Go) are now reaping the greatest benefits. More are realising this. We see similar trends in many other financial markets; they’re tested for their viability and kept buoyant by those initial risk-takers, and, once that market has proven its worth, new investors move in en-masse and push those prices up. There could be a retrace (read: “market correction”) at the end of the quarantine, but it will soon be ballasted by the likes of Scott, Rudy and Gary and the rest of us who will seize an opportunity to buy what are - in our minds - discounted cards.
I know it’s a very clinical and unromantic way of looking at it, but to make the best predictions we have to be realistic. Savvy Poke-investors will have their emergency funds ready, they’ll have their goals and financial roadmaps planned out. Recession - and possibly job-loss - certainly won’t be enough to make a solid core of collectors relinquish their treasured cards.
price increases before covid made more sense, in that it started from a very low base; I recall moltreses going for 80 bucks at one low point many months back, pretty wtf in hindsight. But now it’s just rampant across the board.
significant retraces will happen (and I do not believe wotc is immune based on precedents, but trophies and extremely low pop wotc likely are as they have an almost completely different demand profile and drivers). take a look at the bidding history of the record cards. In the past it used to look more like 950,925,855,800,750…deep demand that could support new records. Now it often looks like 1700,1650,1200,1150,1050…prices are flimsier in general and susceptible to new supply (which will come).
for the good stuff like wotc, you don’t need to “buyout” much to drive prices up, if I had to guess it’s more like 5-10% of the market. It happened to fossil and jungle - I distinctly recall public listings disappearing almost overnight suddenly. I knew exactly what happened, because I’ve done it before myself as well on other cards and contemplated doing it for fossil and jungle (but decided not to because international shipping was 25% of holo price, so dumb in hindsight). Alas I was biting on my thumbs. I respect the guys that did it, because to me, they decided to make a intelligent call that something is underpriced (given its historical importance, actual scarcity, high replacement costs given rising sealed boxes at the time) and betting money on it. P.S. Maybe rather than using the word “buyout”, the more accurate term is “investing in multiple copies of a card that seem underpriced”
Correct. I believe @ebulb posted recently that there has been less than 10 high grade 1st Ed holos added to the pop for each card since end of 2018. It’s silly to think that people are stashing and didn’t believe they were worth grading then and that that will change in the future at higher prices.
I believe a lot of the bubblebath talk in general is when people see stuff like psa 4 base Charizards jumping 100% ytd or random Ex cards jumping 300% and those will almost certainly retrace at some point.
I was talking to a co-worker about my Pokemon card investment purchases early into the pandemic, and they asked me if I was worried about prices dropping…
I told him no, because there are many people who would choose a Pokemon card over their next meal… i was half joking.
I can’t predict the future, but I think as prices increase, many collectors will become all the more desperate to snag the finite cards they want before they become out of reach financially. This also applies to me… cards I did not purchase due to price in 2018 I am now purchasing.
@chris B What was the username. I was following this convo and now it just says deleted haha. It’s getting to the point where talking Pokemon prices is a no no like talking politics or religion
