I think people are quickly realizing if you want an alt art, the only viable answer is buy the card. While I think chase cards and boxes are connected, today its more of a long distance relationship. Honestly until the arrival of alt arts I wouldn’t mind breaking boxes to complete a set. Now its just foolish unless you are a large store or can monetize the breaks.
Sure boxes will probably go up, I just don’t think its that great of a move unless you scale. Outside of the monetary aspect, its just boring af. I’d rather speculate on a card or item I can at least enjoy.
I don’t doubt his wealth, but I’m sure if hes sitting on a 40% stock loss and losing sales on a lot of sealed MTG due to Hasbro screwing everything up, that he is still trying to make up for something in other areas that he can. I mean, if he does legitimately have $100s of thousands tied up in 2022 MTG products that no one wants to buy now, he has to at least try something IMO. He does seem to be ultimately concerned with money in the end, so it’s the logical thing for him to do to me. I could be wrong.
Rudy has many millions tied up in sealed product. Historically, he has sat on unwanted product and watched it appreciate over time (e.g., Pokemon XY-era Products, MTG Amonkhet Block, MTG Ixalan Block) . For people at his level of wealth, they have the privilege to sit and wait.
I do not disagree that he wants a larger channel and more views to increase sources of passive income (he also owns and rents out properties in Florida which contribute to this goal of his). I agree that he will act eccentric to gain traction. As @pfm stated above, Rudy is largely a card news entertainment channel with bits and pieces of wealth education thrown in there.
Look, at the end of the day Rudy does run a business. Businesses’ sole purpose is to make money, and that has been his goal since day one.
That said, Rudy isn’t “pumping” Pokemon sales. If you’re on his patreon, he will maybe have one opportunity to buy ultramodern boxes per month just above or at MSRP. He does not regularly sell Pokemon products. But who knows, that might change as TCPi looks more favorable to him compared to the show that is WoTC.
Totally agree with all points. I’ve been thinking about it some lately, and I think largely the post-2020 market has caught him and others off-guard across different TCGs, and a lot of things have come full circle this year seeing the winners & losers financially speaking. The sentiment has shifted a lot in many areas.
For example, in this recent Pokemon video, it’s the first time I’ve heard Rudy acknowledge Pokemon singles (modern singles for that matter) as having a real legitimate value to him. In the past, Rudy said he wanted nothing to do with Pokemon singles (vintage or modern) due to supply concerns and other things. To be fair, I mostly agree with him in regards to set cards since there are definitely on average a lot more Pokemon set cards compared to say early vintage Magic with some exceptions here and there, but there’s no doubt hes changed his tune now I think.
What I think this could be telling us is that diversification in collectibles/TCGs may be more important than initially realized. I love my MTG and Pokemon cards, but there’s no doubt that they are going through much different cycles right now on the finance side. I think Hasbro/WOTC has a lot of work to do right now, and they need to go back to the drawing board on a lot of things after the past few months to rebuild player & collector trust. Pokemon has simply just done a much better job all around.
I have a feeling that Rudy is looking to diversify further into Pokemon given his recent cuts to major MTG products (e.g., draft booster boxes and jumpstart booster boxes, commander decks, etc.).
Not only have dual lands not crashed, but he’s even incorrect that buylists have crashed. I’ve been keeping data weekly on Card Kingdom and ABU buylist prices for several years – and I can tell you for a fact that not a single Revised dual land CK buy price has fluctuated by more than 25% since the 30th anniversary announcement. And most are within 15% of their September prices (a few are even 10-15% higher). On average, though, CK buy prices on Revised duals are down by 10-15% as compared to September. Basically: the 50% number he cites is a complete fabrication.
Rudy is either (1) incredibly gullible and was misled by someone, or (2) trying to manipulate the market. I don’t know or care which, but in case it wasn’t clear to people: Rudy has never been viewed as a credible source of info. The people who have said otherwise in this thread are mistaken. His high subscriber count merely reflects that people subscribe to him because he’s funny/entertaining and sometimes shows off cool cards/items.
Good to know. I honestly didn’t look too far into Rudy’s claims at the time, he sort of just listed off a bunch of numbers from various stores. I guess the notion is that since WOTC is printing Dual Land proxies and ‘legitimized’ them, that apparently more casual players are instead going to start using proxies for EDH and things if they weren’t already, and thus drive down the demand for actual Dual Lands (primarily Revised).
However, I don’t see how this really should take away the fundamental collector value in actual Dual Land related cards. Even if Revised is on the higher supply side, it’s still a near 30 year old set and that hasn’t changed with the 30th anniversary. So to me, they’re still more collectible over a proxy, unless I’m really misunderstanding the situation here.
Anyway, the combination of the clickbait title and stuff is annoying for sure. I’m going to assume at the very least he was misinformed in that video… or he’s painting a broad brush across the market without looking at the facts, intentionally or not.
This is the other side of what I mentioned in this post a little while ago:
I can certainly see what Rudy is saying here coming to pass. If Pokemon “gives up” on reprinting to tamp down prices for these sets, interest remains high, and alt arts continue to be seen as some of the best and most collectible set cards of all time, I can understand a modern takeoff, especially in the box prices.
That being said, I stand by what I mentioned earlier that this is an incredibly risky play. People have been hoarding these boxes since release. Pokemon can reprint them at a moment’s notice. As @gengarbrigade mentioned, some of us are old enough to remember how it went the last time Rudy made a play on sealed Pokemon. He bought in to mid-era XY boxes, sang their praises, the market tanked due to plentiful reprints and Rudy couldn’t offload these boxes for $80 apiece. And in that market, he was one of the few people keeping those boxes as investments.
High risk, high reward on this kind of stuff. I’m not touching most modern with a 10 foot pole. Alt arts are beautiful, but I’ll take NM gold stars over them all day long.
Yea, i definitely enjoy watching some ruby vids from time to time, but its typically more of an entertainment thing. Its just difficult to watch his Pokemon takes and not start fedora-tipping lmao.
By the time rudy starts talking about pokemon, its usually pretty late-game into a hype cycle, i find. Im sure it doesnt make a difference to him either way, as he even said he’s not planning to change what hes doing. If anything, a rudy pokemon vid might be a canary in the coal mine situation lmao
Only comparisons being made, is that Gold Stars have comparatively greater value than alt arts relative to price
Alt arts are beautiful, but you can buy a complete C/UC/R/H + reverse + most V/VMAX/VSTAR hits for around $100 for most of these modern sets. IMO there’s so much more value (not for investment, but enjoyment) on spending that, or - for example - $600 for 98% of the Lost Origin set, then spending $1,200 for that extra 2%. I likely won’t attempt to buy many of the alts until my vintage and mid era goals are mostly complete.
Maybe. The size of the reprint matters. If it’s not large enough, it could actually have the inverse effect where there’s just enough more fresh supply that people can have fun with it which generates more interest in the set. Eevee Heroes had a small reprint which didn’t send prices tanking. JP Moonbreon is still the hottest modern card.
I agree, size of the reprint matters. Take a look at the first, small reprint of Evolving Skies. Booster boxes were down by ~20%, but they later climbed to greater heights when the additional supply dried up.
Good points. I think for someone like Rudy the focus on sealed product is more than just strategic. It’s also the only thing he can really do with such a low level of engagement in the hobby. He doesn’t know much about the actual cards, and that’s ok for him since he views sealed product like a mutual fund on the set. Less risk, but less potential reward. He also seems to care more about minimizing downside risk rather than maximizing potential gains. It is hard to do better on this than modern sealed at distributor pricing.
Oh absolutely I agree, like I say it would have to be massive, especially for evolving skies. I firmly believe they have the capacity to reprint enough evolving skies that it goes back to msrp if they really wanted to. The question is, will they bother?
Rudy position is based on solely observation on what happened in the past and analysis on the current sentiment. It’s views are not wrong in that sense. Nobody has a crystal ball but at least he has the balls to say it publicly.
He is entertaining and content wise greater than the majority of youtubers around.
Not saying he is right, but neither saying he is wrong… He has taken a “rendez-vous” on checking whether his gut feeling are right.
I am hesistent to say this but last time I had an issue was with a Venusaur VMAX collection box. I have had a few people message me about concerns, but it is something very rare on my end.
I also try to keep my boxes atleast $5 off the lower limit which crazy enough will weed out a lot of the garbage. Usually people who will to pay $5+ more from me rather than someone else is a buyer I have built a reputation with or they at least trust the product due to reviews. I do not get the Football Pete kind of movement, but I could not handle that type of volume anyways.
show that is WoTC.
