The Giant English Market Thread

Suicune Aquapolis up from 3.9k to 7.2k

hasn’t sold since the post boom boom so not surprising

Kingdra Aquapolis, Bellossom Aquapolis both had record sales too

Exp Magby, Aqua Arc, Aqua Entei all pretty stable with last solds

Jeeeeeezzzzz, this is one I hadn’t followed. I didn’t realize these went up that much. I opened one of these a few years ago. Paid ~$1100 IIRC. $30k is genuinely insane.

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TBH, I think PSA 10 sales aren’t a very good indicator of demand/overall market health. 100% of the people paying even the post-“retrace” numbers for those cards are new market participants, because most of these are still up like 2000% from last year lol.

Like, look at this trajectory for a moment:

These are all sales from within 1 yr. Is the takeaway that Hitmontop declined by 60% in value? IMO, no. The $5.8k sale was never a reflection of anything other than the willingness of a two irrational people to pay an irrational price for a card at a single point in time. I think the more natural takeaway is that we’re still in a period of irrational exuberance where people think paying 7x the price that something sold for a year ago is a decision that will work out.

Many of the prices you quoted are the equivalent of the $5.8k Hitmontop sale. They were outlier sales that were never replicable, let alone indicative of anything meaningful.

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Firstly, my comment isn’t commentary on “market health”, so i hope it doesn’t come off as such.
I’m merely noting large ups and downs for big cards in notable auctions. But unfortuantely, lots of excitable people use these big sales as drivers for their hype-based model.

My main point, which i think agrees with your comment, and as i have stated here before, is that one off sales of big cards are difficult to use as price guides for the value of cards in the future.

All a big sale means, is that someone really wanted that specific card at that one moment in time.

Good or bad, people will use a big sale as a marker for pricing their own item for sale, and as seen on Instagram and other places, these cards can go unsold for periods of time as the person who was willing to pay that, already bought it.

Taking the hitmontop example. To say that the Hitmontop has declined 60% in value is of course completely nonsense, and is why i never talk about “value”, just data points of sales. If it sells again in the next few months, it’ll probably by 3k+, so yeah, +1000% YoY - by far and away from a 60% decrease!

This is a perfect example of “it’s worth what someone is willing to pay for it”, rather than “it’s worth what the last person bought it for”

The post wasn’t meant to come across as shitting on the market and that everything is falling, PANIK - more that people shouldn’t get sucked into the hype-beast, super stonks, every Holo is now worth 100k trap that is bubbling around (less so on here granted, where people are more level headed)

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I wasn’t really disagreeing with you. Was basically just giving a perspective on it that might conflict with what some people might immediately conclude given the #s you mentioned. Basically agree with what you wrote here. Using a single comp is a very dangerous game for PSA 10s.

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Whoever paid $5800 for a Hitmontop has had a lobotomy and needs therapy.

For people who find this helpful I’d recommend giving collectibleinvestor a follow on IG.

I believe all this data is from his stories, he’s been giving really insightful and balanced market summaries after each weekend’s big auction blocks finish for a few months now.

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There was a guy on reddit back in 2018 who had a good amount of them and could not move them for $300 no matter how hard he tried. Kinda hope he held them past 2020

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man, every time I save up. The price went up even more. :weary_face:

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Hi there everyone! I’m so sorry if I’m posting this in the wrong thread. If so, feel free to re-direct me. :victory_hand:

How does one calculate the “value” of their card if the pop is quite low and the online sales are varied? Card in question: Murkrow [Trainer Mag Promo] #198. I’m updating my inventory and trying to set a fair price, while not getting low-balled.

*I’m not trying to breach rule 2.4. I don’t sell online, only local.

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make an ebay account and search last solds here
https://www.ebay.com/sh/research

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Just auction it off. I auctioned a low pop 28 card. Shopped it around a local card show but it was too niche so people were low balling sub $800. Card ended up selling on eBay via ZnG for $3k+

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I’m 100% convinced we’ll se heavy corrections (like 50%) for most slabs mid 2027.

Everyone who’s been a collector through the pandemic boom knows it’ll happen.

Market has become wild to a point i can’t tell if a price is a meme or not.

For example my grail card, Shining Mew CoroCoro PSA 9, 3x its price in the last 3 months and 7x its price in the last 12 months. If you look at graphs for almost every PSA 9 or PSA 10 you’ll see a freacking vertical line.

This is unsustainable and everyone that tell me otherwise he’s either delusional or he’s spent 10k on a card valued 1500$ 6 months ago.

There’s a thread here on E4 made after the 2020-2021 hype wave burst which perfectly summarize where we’re at right now.

Here’s the post:

I don’t think prices will return to 2023-2024 prices, but there’ll be a “return to the mean”

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ppl paying 30-35k for corocoro mew (idk whats it even at anymore) when it has like 4-500 psa 10s will never not be funny :rofl:its also like always available as well

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exactly, it’s my grail but paying that price for that pop is just the proof that the greater fool theory is real

4-500 pop is low pop now :upside_down_face:

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All aboard!
The ascended sealed etb hype train

I see now 3 different sales at $500

Take a look at the PC version:

I want to say it’s early and to wait but, they have been out for over 2 months now and people were ripping these a few weeks early as well.
Look at the absolutely abysmal gem rates. I can confirm after looking at dozens of sealed promos that not a single one was worth sending in to psa.

The catch here is that these were mostly the people using regular and express tier that got their copies back. You dont pay that kind of money unless you think the card will grade well… so imagine these are some of the best copies that were sent to psa. The gem rate might even drop from here

I can only imagine how this will drive the price of AH ETB over time. Both standard and PC

I think the total pop of 96 being an indictment of the QC for the promos. Yes this set is new but that doesnt stop some of these mega attack rares from having pops around 1000! Add in that the MARs are significantly more rare. This card comes with every single etb and tens of thousands of these have been opened. If you think you have a psa10 on your hands you want to use a speedy service to get ahead of the market but the reality is hardly anyone is getting nice copies. I actually think that the 13% gem rate is currently overinflated after taking into consideration everything I mentioned

I agree there will be a correction at some point, but a big difference between this bull run and the covid boom is covid boom started with a massive uptick in liquidity as the FED juiced the market. All assets exploded, but then inflation ramped up in 2021 constraining people’s spending and then in 2022 the FED did one of the fastest interest rate hikes in history to try to curb the inflation. So the covid boom ended because of a major shift in liquidity as interest rates went up.

For the current bull market, we are coming out of a high interest rate environment instead of into one and global liquidity is on the rise. As interest rates come down, especially as Warsh takes over as FED chair, liquidity will continue to go up. This will create even more positive tailwinds for asset prices. Then add to that the intention of current admin to juice the economy as we move into the midterms, liquidity is likely to accelerate vs. slow down.

Unless we enter a major recession, the GLI (global liquidity index) will likely continue to move higher along with asset prices.

With the macro environment in mind, we also have the 30th anniversary coming up, so I see more tailwinds for pokemon over the next year than headwinds.

I definitely agree with your argument that prices moved up so quickly the past year that there will be pullbacks on some items, but I think it will be more selective and the general market trend will still be to the upside for at least the next 1-2 years. Any pullback could also resemble Q4 2025 when we had a short-lived correction, but then moved higher to start the year. I think there will be corrections here and there, but I’m struggling to see what would cause us to mimic the 2022 crash and the stagnant couple years that followed, other than a major recession.

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Is that not still early?

Idk if people were ripping these though. I think most people probably held them as an “investment”.

Every set that I’ve known since entering back into the hobby this has happened to. I’m wondering what you think is different this time?

Good to remember that not everyone sends stuff to PSA/grading companies. The gem rates are only for cards sent in and is not reflective of the card quality/quantity as a whole.

but the gem rate is
2 of 41 copies graded as a 10 on the PC promo
and only 13 of 96 copies graded as a ten on standard. Dont care how you slice it the gem rate is abysmal
English ETB promos tend to have poor QC but even comparing to something like Prismatic evolutions eevee promo, almost 30,000 psa10s with a decent gem rate.
How about the charizard upc promo that just came out? 47% gem rate with 38k graded

dont you think with sales in the thousands of dollars that people would rush to grade their pokemon center stamped N’s Zekrom with express tier? yet still, only 2 ps10s… because the quality isnt there. if there was any indication that the QC was even somewhat decent, people would be ripping their PC boxes and sending in the promos

type in N’s Zekrom ascended promo onto ebay and you get 1900+ results… this isnt a case of people just hanging on to their promos they are actively selling. And many of these are lots

I want to wait 2 more months to look at gem rates and readdress after a much higher graded pop. but the early indication is that the ETBs in particular will outperform due to low gem rates of the promo which is actually desirable as the psa10s should continue to garner large sale prices
The implication of this is to load up on sealed AH ETBs. When considering the popularity of the hits, the unique MARs, pull rates, and overall breath of cards in the set (meaning 33 IRs, 22 different SIRs, among other notable cards) on top of the promo which should outperform expectations; we could have a situation here where fast forward 10 years from now we could see the price of Ascended ETBs exceed both prismatic and even possibly evolving skies