Part 1 and 2 preserved in history
Part 1 Is the modern Japanese Pokemon card market in a speculative bubble?
March 20th 2023
Part 2 Is the modern Japanese Pokemon card market in a speculative bubble? Pt. 2
May 28th 2023
From @rabby250 :
Thoughts?
We all out here taking a big bubble bath
It was pretty evident and thankfully not being too interested in modern I avoided the trap. But it’s always fascinating to see this kind of phenomena from the outside,
Now that both vintage and modern had their moment, can we please just have a nice slow cruise from now on? Thanks lol
Buying opportunity soon? 
I wonder how many people that got burned in 2020-21 also made the same mistake this time.
Newer…Minter…Waifu…
I’m just happy quuador got the funds to buy a house
I think it’s very fair to say that the high-end PSA 10 modern Japanese market was in a speculative bubble. Although it’s hard to gather, I’d be interested to see any other data relating to this, personally I feel like this bubble affected a small number of cards that went bananas (waifus, special arts, etc) while most modern Japanese stayed relatively affordable.
Still lots of heavy investment in lotteries and real life gacha. I don’t think those are going away any time soon. Shops saw the easy money that could be gained from this so they are still going to try and pump cards and product. I’m guessing lots of mini bubbles per each product rather than one big market bubble.
For those who purchased cards affected by this bubble, please give us your thoughts!
I voted agree, and I got really lucky, selling some cards at the literal peak price. I’m sure prices will continue to rise over time after this reset though, especially since TPC seems to be committed to making it as hard as possible for foreign markets to get Japanese product directly.
As a disclaimer in advance obviously not 100% of all japanese modern saw this trend (the plot is very selective about which cards are included) but it’s clear that a large segment of japanese modern was caught up in this
Well, my lillies clefairy promo that I bought for 20 bucks I sold for 600, so that was nice.
Luckily I learnt from the alt art spike at the end of last year and didn’t FOMO buy anything.
Can we next make a graph on where people think Vintage is? Clearly the bubble has popped, where does it stand on that graph now?
An interesting lesson from this would be.
For how long where prices rising?
How long until they were at their peak?
And how long until the crashed again?
Vintage already did this around 2020/2021. So it’s beyond point 6 of PFMs chart with a general 5ish% or whatever annual growth like before the 2020 boom.
A bunch of cards popped in the bubble as they should but some bounced back to pretty much the same prices. Eevee heroes is back up a lot. Of course I’m looking at prices in Japan. Prices in the US probably lag so they still might not be up as much here but they definitely are there.
I think when people thing about the market in a bubble they jump to Moonbreon, Battle Lilly, Alolan Friends, etc and the other waifu cards but to me those are hype cards and useless to the discussion of the overall market. They tend to make the average look higher than it should. What’s more interesting to me is what is the median doing? I feel like a lot of Alt Art (SAR, SR, CSR) cards dropped and then bounced back. Is this sustainable? Idk. AR cards all seems to have dropped at least a bit from what I can see.
Alt Arts are popular for good reason. They are some of the most beautiful pokemon cards ever made and have a tougher pull rate. I think they could cool off more but I still think they will do well longterm. So far Scarlet and Violet hasn’t produced as many alt arts at the same level of Sword and Shield in my opinion. And all these tera pokemon with silly hats and the upcoming goofy paradox pokemon are not going to help either. So SwSh and Sun & Moon era Alt Arts may continue to be a lot of people’s chase. The only exception seems to be 151 which is pretty much universally a loved set and has some great Alt Arts in it as well.
For me i consider the loss on if i buy at the peak the same as the loss of profit i would’ve made if i sold anytime during the bubble. I had several waifu trainers in my collection that rose huge in value during the bubble(early july peak seems), I stupidly did not sell and just held thinking the 1000s$+ price tags would hold longer than they did. I had ebay offers for 3-4000$ on some jpn trainers, denied all, only for them to be now selling for 600-700$(what 2 months later? crazy). I view that as a loss even though I still am profitable by 150% if sold now.1000% to 150%.
I knew it was a bubble but didn’t think it would be so short lived.
Luckily I did not buy any during the pump, i only started buying the last few weeks.
