Just search the item on ebay completed listings or fanatics sold.
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Isn’t that exactly what card ladder tracks when you searching their site. They give you last 3-months of sold on eBay and the auction sites.
The value that’s displayed on fanatics as card ladder value I am not sure how that’s actually calculated. But card ladder will graph the last solds. So easy to see trend / price.
Mike
I’m not sure if card ladder or any other charting sites are using terapeak or an actual API, or if they are just doing a page scrape for data? Without terapeak, you can’t tell what items actually sold for if the seller sent an offer.
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I share your opinion. There’s a Squirtle that’s been for sale at 80k from a well-known seller for over a year now, and it still hasn’t sold. So 150–200k for these ones… especially with a Gyarados just showing up on Heritage for the next auction 
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Fanatics Collect uses Card Ladder market value in their estimation of seller fees. If you are within Card Ladder’s estimate for the market value of the card, you get lower fees by 6% on Fanatics Collect BINs.
That 6% incentive is why sellers have been manipulating the Card Ladder estimates with fake sales, which I previously discuss here.
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depends on if u are a sports bro or not 
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Hi all,
I’m in the market for a Fan Club Magikarp (PSA 8, ideally). I am not well versed in Japanese cards and wonder:
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Is there still any benefit in trying to purchase things via Mercari/Yahoo? I made a few purchases which were cheaper about 6 years ago but now I feel that the prices are pretty much equal.
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Does anyone know what’s a reasonable ask for a PSA 8? Comps shows 5,9k in March and 5,5k USD in May. I would assume the prices won’t be drastically different now but I was proven wrong many times in a similar manner lol.
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I see some being graded ARS, that are much more than the comps above for the equivalent grade (that is, being optimistic with a cross-grade) and I am specifically avoiding CGC new label ones. The raw ones on ebay seem to be very expensive for something that’d have no shot at a 9. Is there something to take into account with grading raw Japanese promos, or something to note about ARS?
Any input appreciated.
Thanks!
Mercari/Yahoo have been pretty dry this year. I also feel like JP sellers value their own cards more than international sellers
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I lowkey get tired of seeing the sale post of that card. Maybe cuz I see it in a story but like, just put it up on eBay or something rather than reposting the same thing everyday.
I am ranting I guess lol
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It’s been awful. Everything good at like 10x its real price
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The recent Uptick in prices of all Japanese promos as well as everything else happening in Japan right now, as crazy as it seems, it is still deep in the shadow of 2023’s Japanese Market Bubble.
Average “PSA 10” purchase chart.
Average “Good conditioned” purchase chart.
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To be very honest, if you are in the market for a graded promo of the calibre of Fan Club Magikarp, you might as well look at much safer and reputable options like Fanatics or eBay. If you are based in the US or even EU it seems like a no brainier to use US located seller options. They are much safer and offer much more protection. There is just too much risk for high value cards being ordered from Mercari/ YJP, even more so for graded. Your situation is different if you are in Japan of course.
ARS is the premium grading service in Japan and a lot of people swear by the grading quality of it. I also have seen high grades ARS cards go for a hefty premium. If you want to know more about ARS grading you can check with @haytertcg . They have several videos I believe and also have made submissions for ARS grading.
Just be mindful when looking for other raw cards on Japanese sites, specially modern promos which have spiked a lot. Bait and switch to international users is very much possible. Not trying to scare you since I also use Mercari JP primarily for cheaper Japanese promos. I find that everything is expensive and I have personally decided to wait a while, unless it seems a great offer. Just do your due diligence as you would anywhere else and you should be good.
Cheers!
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Thanks for the input!
I think part of me wanting to buy promos like these from Japan is having the provenance. As unlikely as it is, sometimes a listing pops up with someone saying they redeemed the card themselves back in the day (now ignoring the fact that the seller could be making it up).
In any case, if I saw a PSA 8 for sale on eBay, I would probably buy in a heartbeat if closer to the comps (from e.g. pricecharting).
On a related note, are there some more personalised proxy and middlemen services? I.e. someone living in Japan who could source cards from card shops, and will then mail them to you for a % fee or something.
I used to use a person like this to buy and ship from US to EU a few years ago in another hobby (original game art).
PSA 10 Japanese 151 booster packs are being listed at upwards of £100, with (albeit scatty) sales data of upwards of £70. Box prices are around the £130 mark. What
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The price sounds crazy but when you realise that pack grading in the uk is only available via one middleman charging £32.50 + shipping per pack, it starts to make a bit more sense.
At these prices, that £70 sale will have profited about £12-15. Considering 9s are probably going to be somewhere between a £5-10 loss, if you were to buy a box and grade them all I have a feeling you’d have a pretty good chance at just wasting a ton of time and money.
I always get thrown off by pack sold prices, then remember how crazy expensive it is to actually grade them 
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I’ve never graded packs, so not sure how easy 10s are generally? That said, the 10-rate on JP 151 appears to be around 73% (as a ratio of total packs graded). The majority of listings are now well above £100, and assuming - although it’s a big assumption, granted - that PSA 10 packs will actually sell at or above that price in the near-ish future, that’s an incredibly easy churn-and-burn for someone who can be bothered to make the effort. For the sake of argument let’s say total cost is £40 to buy, grade and receive the pack back from PSA. A £100 sale yields an approximate profit of £40. Even if the 10 rate for packs in a given box were say 50%, 10 of those packs grading a 10 yields around £400 profit. If the remaining 10 grade sub-10, then let’s estimate a loss of say £15 per pack, at £150 total, if the person selling were willing to sell at a loss that is. £250 profit isn’t a bad outlook for relatively small effort.
That said, the sales data doesn’t seem to suggest a favourable frequency of sales, at least at the moment, and that final £250 could take 12 months to achieve once all product has been shifted in the current market. This would be for someone who’s willing to just sit on that product and enjoy even higher margins as prices/demand increase over time, and who doesn’t mind sitting on negative equity potentially for years until the tide changes. An interesting thought experiment nonetheless!
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I think some years ago the provenance was possible like that. However, the complete hobby now is very optimized and such listings will be almost impossible if not impossible to find. I think if someone does win some rare promo from a competition or tournament the price would be very high since they will be usually first to market to post such listings, and will inadvertently carry a premium.
I am personally not sure if there is a service where someone actually physically goes to the store. You probably need friends local to Japan who can do it for you. We have several forum users who have made posts about travelling to Japan and the whole idea of going to stores to find some deals or good cards is very tideous.
There are several middleman services present to get cards from the secondary market. You can try and find cards on those. Again, will advice on due diligence to vet out the sellers, so that you do not have a bad experience.
Cheers!
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Seems a few snap cards are popping up for sale now.
Im in the basket where i think the way the sales played out are suss but the price is where they should be at.
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There was a Festa Pika 2016 PSA 10 that I saw at Card Party that sold for 20K 
I talked with the people who sold it as well as the buyer of the card. He came by my booth with it.
This is a very hot card right now for obvious reasons…
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