Relax.
It’s clearly a bigger problem in Pokemon than in MTG. I was painting too broad of strokes in my statement.
Where did you get the sense that I was anything but relaxed? Or is that just your response when someone calmly and correctly points out that you’re mistaken?
Anyway, this is a fruitless argument. People can believe what they want to believe, and I don’t care enough to litigate this further lol.
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ES is the exception here, but I think that may be the only booster box within the past two years people are aggressively speculating on, so I’ll ignore that one.
As for the casual collector that wants to rip boxes, there’s the rest to choose from; between Battle Styles for $115, up to Brilliant Stars for $170. I can totally see that supply being eaten up by people intending to open the product.
Also, I should mention that I don’t have any sealed products. I collect modern singles and classic ex.
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New (english) packs can’t be weighed and vintage has the fear of the box being resealed. I don’t think anyones buying a booster box to avoid weighing but rather to have a booster box which may have its own rarity beyond 36 packs (Like how some older etbs are worth a ton).
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Your statement below gave me that sense.
No, this is not how I generically respond.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to argue. I was trying to answer your question below, suggesting that the lower price for loose packs in Pokemon is due to fears of pack weighing.
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I think modern sealed boxes are highly speculative but I’ve slowly realized people are gonna what they’re gonna do and it doesn’t affect me so whatever.
I’d rather spend $400 on a Lugia ex PSA 9 Japanese than a evolving skies box. Every. Single. Time.
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Whether the packs can be weighed or not, there is genuine fear among the general public. I see this every month from collectors looking to buy sealed product.
I’m not saying that I agree with the sentiment, just that it exists outside of e4.
Yeah, I think tone is tough to judge from written word. I meant “challenge” in a respectful way lol.
If you’re right that loose packs are cheaper because of pack-weighing fears, then it’s an irrational fear. There’s a 0% chance that T&T are weighing ES packs, yet I can purchase loose packs from them at a 40% discount compared to the box.
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Agreed. Sorry about that.
100% agreed that it is an irrational fear. There is a lot of irrationality in the modern market, some of which is fueled by inexperience and social media-driven fear.
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It just feels like speculators selling to other speculators.
Especially when singles price don’t match the EV of the box. Pretty sure you can complete Evolutions 2x or 3x at $700 lol.
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You aren’t guarnteed to hit anything in those $250 worth of packs. Granted, it can go either way and you could hit a ton. Buying a box is “safer” in terms of you actually getting hits.
Recently, I bought 12 of those 2 pack Crown Zenith tins from Aldi’s to open and enjoy for around $96. I hit 1 V and 1 gallery card. My value purchase erupted spectacularly in my face…giggity. I know they are different products (ETB vs. BB) and that ETBs don’t guarntee hits. Yet, if I was faced with the choice of spending X amount of money to obtain 36 Evolving Skies packs. In the current market right now, I’d choose to go with the booster box even though it’s more money. I’d rather lock in guaranteed hits and risk not getting anything or slightly less hits than what a booster box provides.
Now that stance can change once the $$$$ gap between 36 loose packs and a sealed booster box of ES increases.
But is that preferable? It’s not like the odds are different with loose packs; it’s just that the outcome distribution has a higher standard deviation. I could see this maybe being a relevant factor if the box price was 10% higher than the loose pack price. But in this situation, the box price is 60% above the loose pack price. You’re telling me that you would spend 60% more to open a sealed ES box solely for a different distribution of outcomes?
Or to put it another way: if you wanted to spend $400 on ES packs to open, you’d opt for the booster box over buying 50-60 loose packs? For the same price, you’d be getting 1.5x the number of packs, which should more than make up for the outcome distribution concern.
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how much is a Steam Siege booster box right now?
And people still think Evolutions at $700 or Evolving Skies at $400 is in a bubble lol
Steam siege is sitting around $350 with a whopping…12 boxes listed on eBay. I’m not going to count all the Evolving Skies booster boxes among 1,000 listings but you’re welcome to do so. It’s supply and demand and XY is not comparable to in-print SwSh
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This conversation would be way more interesting if we knew the people buying these boxes at these prices and why they bought them.
Yet for some reason I never see such purchases in the “what’s your most recent purchase” thread. I think I know the reason.
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Oh I definitely see your point and it’s definitely a valid one. Honestly, both options are very unappealing to me because I’ve been very unlucky opening sealed.
Correct me if I’m wrong but opening 36 loose booster packs vs. opening a booster box gives you less of a chance to hit an alternate art. This is from a statistics standpoint since booster boxes should on average have a guaranteed 6 to 8 hits. Opening 36 loose packs wouldn’t start with those guaranteed odds.
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Depends what you mean by odds – do you mean the chance of hitting at least 1 alt art? Then yeah, it’s very possible that the distribution is such that a box would give you higher chance of pulling at least 1 alt art. But if instead you’re talking about the pull rate (i.e., mean # of alt arts pulled), that figure should be identical between boxes and loose packs.
That is, unless there’s something I’m missing. I’m assuming it’s the same sort of distribution normalization that happened with gold stars – where if you opened a sealed case, you’d always pull 2 or 3 (e.g., opening 6 loose boxes of the same set would less reliably result in at least 2 gold stars, but the mean # of gold stars pulled would be identical).
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Evolving skies seems to me to be the only oddball, the rest are just up small percentages over msrp. Not sure ehat the fuss is about. Its ok if 1 set outperforms. The others are slowly climbing due to being mostly out of print. Seems fairly normal to me. No need to avoid vintage for modern, but as someone who avoided modern like the plauge, i wish i didnt. Its too easy and there is so much dumb money in everything right now at some point you have to lean into it instead of avoiding it or youll miss out
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I think this is why Evolving Skies is at $400+. Lots of FOMO surrounds the product.
Evolving skies is probably mostly dumb money. But its also undoubtedly the best swsh set. If one set in a whole block is irrational, it seems far fetched to call the whole block irrational.
Besides evolving skies, the dumbest thing i saw was Brilliant boxes at 180 tcg and 145 pokemon center. That has since been trending towards correction, but still its dumb money wasting like 40$? Not really any cause to call it. Just noobs being noobs and it obviously wont last, but id be bappier holding these swsh boxes than most sun moon or xy honestly