I’m so stupid. When Scott referenced the emails/date as Feb 9th, I thought he was referring to the ‘sale’ a few weeks ago.
Apparently ive forgotten what day it is. Ignore me
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“Selling”, not disclosing they were unpaid, and then doubling the price making it look like the new buyer is trying to flip?
Maybe I’m being cynical but I don’t like this
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I agree. Here is a contrast from when someone hit Buy It Now on my PSA 9 Illustrator. Its more understandable if this is your first time dealing with a fake purchase, but if it already happened it feels pretty disingenuous to imply it’s real.
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thats pwcc bins in a nutshell 
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Too many naive and gullible people in the hobby that just believe anything that some person posting on the internet says
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Re: Japanese VS
To be fair, Japanese VS sat for years with virtually no movement. Even during the 2020-21 boom, those cards barely budged.
I’m not saying their price should have doubled overnight (but pretty much everything has the last six months or so), but I fully understand why they are increasing.
They may be set cards, but they aren’t readily available like Base Set, they are Japanese exclusives (aside from Tyranitar Half Deck, which has VERY rare English variants) and they have tremendous art from some of the most popular artists in the TCG.
I’m actually surprised VS didn’t increase sooner.
That being said, I do expect a correction once the market settles. I doubt those cards will ever return to their previous prices, though.
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Another one? How many of these trophy pikachus are going to appear? I remember when these were almost non existent, now they appear as often as set cards.
I’m gonna guess $167k.
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It’s a fair analysis and I agree in part. I wouldn’t have been surprised if the increase was linear and spread out across the whole set, since the bar was definitely low with many being 2-5$ cards. But some spiked a lot more than others, and that makes me curious.
I also think that artistically VS feels like a brief parenthesis and pretty weak as a whole (subjective opinion): while it’s funny to collect and it has some bangers, it’s nowhere near the level of other e-series sets imho.
I actually accepted a lot better the increase in the holos and even the Kusube ones, since I understand they’re a major source of appeal in the set, with many popular Pokemon like Dragonite, Gyarados or Charizard featured.
What still feels weird to me it’s really the explosion of some random dudes like Quagsire and the increasingly pervasive Yuka Morii tax (a new phenomenon apparently 
), while others are still very available like tanaka Furret, komiya Beedrill, or Arita Cloyster for example, all good artworks imho.
It’s such a weird market, cause cards behavior seems to be influenced by factors existing beyond their fundamentals: I don’t remember it being so hard to understand why a card spiked during covid, but now you have to constantly wonder if it’s because Bruno’s Ursaring went viral on Tiktok or Quagsire has suddenly become a new fan favorite.
It’s just food for thought tho, honestly I’ve seen way worse things during this boom
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You bring up a really interesting point with the Morii tax.
Unlike the 2020-21 boom, this boom features artist premiums. Something very new. I’ve seen it with Komiya and Morii in particular. Then random Pokemon like Kabuto, Wooper, etc. skyrocketing.
This is definitely the strangest market I’ve seen.
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It’s a very good analysis and you are correct, they stayed pretty stable for the longest time (with the exception of maybe the Karens Umbreon, which increased earlier). I think it’s important to keep in mind that in general, Japanese was not that much effected by the 2020/21 boom as English (or other Western languages) - this can also be seen by some prices of other Japanese vintage cards which increased a lot during the past year (compared to the previous boom).
Still, the extreme jump with some cards of really seemingly random Pokemon (don’t get me wrong, they are still Gen 1/2 Pokemon and certainly have a lot of fans) being 3x/4x/5x higher seems crazy to me.
And you are certainly correct, some artists are much more heavily affected by this (e.g. Morii, Komiya, Kusube).
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Strangest ? i would say healthiest ! it means people are really starting to collect for what the cards where intended for : the art and the collect them all. To me it seems that is the sign of a new step in the hobby’s maturation that people do not mindlessly chase for only charizard anymore.
Like this card:
it’s super expensive now. it’s just a common right, but fukuyama’s art makes it one of the best psyduck. People being able to recognize something is awesome means a healthy and maturing hobby to me. Premiums on certain less popular pokemons, on certain artist, on weird or unique art = super healthy. The hobby was certainly not more interesting when it consisted of only going for the chase of the set and or pikachu/charizard.
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You call that common card in a 10 selling for 1k a healthy market? lmao
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Yes ! That’s exactly what I am saying. I bought it at 200 thinking I’m just really dumb to pay that much for a common card. But the psyduck seems so happy on his swing, couldn’t help it…it really is the “collect what you like, it’s likely some other people in the world will think the same”
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I think the creatures deck Rockets Zapdos has reached the bottom.
Even raw copies sold for around 1.7 k on Mercari in the past year.
I almost bought one two years ago for ~ 3k. Back then I thought I missed out.
One thing to note is that these are kind of niche. And there were three Rockets Zapdos available within the last two months. The demand seems not to be enough to maintain the original prices especially if they hit the market so frequently.
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Seeing this ultra limited release zapdos be at 1k when the thread has just been talking about a common psyduck also being 1k is so funny
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Creatures deck cards are (comparatively) cheap across the board. Considering these cards have an approx print run of 300 it’s quite suprising really.
Especially on auction in PSA grades below 10, or any CGC grade. Seen some pristine 10s go criminally cheap on fanatics.
In this climate all it takes is a few accounts with a following showing interest to flip that on its head though!
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First of all, I agree with the statement that it is a sign of maturity of the market, that not the big names are automatically the chase cards and people are buying cards for their artwork.
Still, some prices don’t make sense (disclaimer, I will only talk about raw prices as I am not a slab collector and just go with current cardmarket listings - I know that these are not final sale prices (however Sold Listings on ebay are usually higher than on cardmarket)). Your Psyduck is a great example, let’s just stick to E2/The Town on no Map. These are the current listings on CM for it:
Similar situations for the two Woopers of the set:
Those are all Common set cards. Yes, E2 is not as Common as Base, Jungle, Fossil, the Neo sets or modern sets. But it is also not as rare as sets like VS - there are usually plenty of those cards out there. Yes, their artworks are great. But I would not say that those prices are the sign of a healthy market.
Let’s take a look at some other cards from the same set, which have as well some great art (obviously subjective):
Arcanine Holo, a super popular Pokémon, is cheaper than the Psyduck:
The non-Holo Rare version of this card is about the same as the Wooper (one is a Rare, one a Common)
You might argue: Okay but the Psyduck and Wooper are just super cute. I hear you. Let’s take a look at the Non-Holo Rare Espeon, another super popular Pokémon and Eeveelutions are by many considered to be some of the cutest Pokemon. Again, about the same price as the Wooper and a third of the Psyduck.
Or how about another cute (and popular) Common card, the Togepi. Just a couple of Euros. The same price the Woopers were a year ago.
How about taking a look at the artist: the Vulpix from E3 (Wind from the Sea) (yes, not the same set but the next one so I think it’s fine to assume that the print runs of those two were somewhat similar), as well illustrated by Fukuyama, also just a couple of Euros and a fraction of the price of the Wooper/Psyduck.
Yes, it’s great that people are not blindly chasing Charizards. But if the people are now blindly chasing Psyducks, Woopers, Kabutos or whatever, I would not really say that this is a sign of a healthy market where people are just going after the best illustrations.
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Agree with your analysis, the market is not fully rationnal, like most collectibles it has a lot of friction and inefficiencies. It is not in a fully matured state. What I was saying, some “irrationalities” we are seeing may be a step in the right direction, rather than the opposite.
Another factor that is unknown here is that there might be a discrepancy between the fundamental rarity of a single and the psa10 value. The psyduck is just a common card. At the time very few people were grading it. I don’t know how many people were careful enough to preserve them in a 10 condition. It might be that a lot of those vintage commons are actually quite scarce in a 10 condition? Or maybe there are thousands of them waiting in binders mint condition waiting to be graded. So there might be a scenario where raw value and psa10 value on common cards decouples.
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