I think people are picking this card up because they expect demand for it to spike around the release of special delivery charizard. Also worth thinking about what special delivery charizard is going to be worth on day 1 if the pikachu is $200-$300. Will zard be $400+? I hope the pokemoncenter site doesnt crash.
Hereās my theory, and Iām 99% sure itās right
PSA 10 auction is a total scam. Shill bids. Itās a hypebeast shoe seller selling it. Heās got his hypebeast buddies bidding on it. Buyer wonāt pay, canceled transaction, etc.
What does that do? It drives the price of raw up like crazy. Everyone wants PSA10 special delivery pikachus. Now selling for $350 raw. Everyone wants to grade and flip for $10k. So now all his buddies are selling their raw special delivery pikachus for $300+ ea.
This could be possible but are people really this organised to drive up prices? Im sure its possible and has been happening for sometime but I also think people are understating the impact of even small youtubers who hype a card and the price surges.
No matter how much supply we think is out there, prices tend to surge in a short term period due to these hype influencers, the price then becomes set because people only look at the past few sales.
Theres tonnes of cards out there which were say 50-100 dollars that are now 5-20X the price where they only had literally 2-3 sales inbetween that dramatic rise. You can look at it and say 90% of all people holding a particular card paid 50-100 dollars vs the 10% who paid 500-1000 but because the price is now āsetā if you like, now every single card in that population has 5-20Xd in price, but does this really reflect the strength of the value of the card, does this accurately reflect the market cap etc.
As an example, Iām in a few UK collectors groups and over the past few weeks NOBODY was advertising WTB Crobat boxes.
PokeRand does a video and since then theres heaps of posts coming up with people looking.
YouTubers have a big effect, thats for dam sure.
People are definitely this organized now, without a doubt. but I agree - itās a combination of things and weāve seen it in the past. It could genuinely be interest! But there were several PSA options much cheaper when people placed those bids, so Iām really not sure I believe the $10k PSA 10 Special Delivery pikachu is legit. thatās just my suspicion though.
Was more referring to the raw card prices. I was shocked how quickly a sealed copy went from roughly $50 during the promotion to selling within a day for roughly $200 now. There is huge demand for these in Europe, a lot are willing to pay the premium and not import from US
There are, obviously they aim low cost cards (aka sub $500 cards). There is evidence of discord groups where they do buyouts for low cost cards, you can see examples with the team rocket cards in HIF, the greninja in HIF, delivery pikachu promo, etc. Cards that one day are $15, next day you can only find them for $80+.
I have seen this but for raw cards mostly since those are extremely easy to manipulate prices for. Another example are the FA trainers, most of which were barely touched by price increases, just last week after several vids/buyout groups you can find cards such as redās challenge which were sitting in the 15-25 range for years, now being priced for 90+.
This is why new people coming to the to hobby with genuine interested gotta be extra careful when paying for some cards.
Yeah, unfortunately I have heard of buyout groups manipulating the market in these ways. Pretty lame imo. I also notice many cards that are listed for exponentially more than the market value; something that new collectors should be aware of. Just because it is listed for 12K, doesnāt change the fact that the most recent sale was 3K. What is even more troubling to me is that this same hypothetical card sold for $500 earlier last year.
I know the whole bubble conversation has been done to death, but I really feel like these prices do not make sense. Gold Star Charizard for example, went from like 4K on average PSA 10 early last year, to like 40K out of nowhere. I know this is a Charizard card and the Charizard hype never dies, but that is absolutely insane to me. It seems like people just take their cards and throw them on eBay for like 10X what they are actually worth. The information is not hidden, you can go check sale histories on just about any card you could ever want back to like 2016 quite easily. Another example is Rayquaza C Holo from Supreme Victors PSA 10. This card was selling for like $100 last year, sales data from Pokemon Price is telling me this card is still selling around $200 with some random outliers that are double that, but eBay sellers are listing them for like $1200??
To touch on the whole āset priceā thing I saw someone mention as wellā¦ I agree. You saw prices spike on just about everything about halfway through last year, but there are many cards that donāt actually have the sale data to support these new prices. Itāll be like $200, $210, $180, $250, $3250, $3000; and then the new price is considered $3000 because a lot of people may not check back on where these prices have grown from. Not to mention, people who are selling the cards are like ādamn, I wonāt let this card go for anything less than (for example) $2800 because people are buying at this price!ā Which is understandable, itās just like damn. These prices spikes may hold for more limited product; like 1st Ed Base Boxes are not exactly plentiful in volume nowadays, so I cannot imagine this price will come down in any way that impacts the vast majority of collectors (though, it could potentially dip a small amount, but it would still continue rising, especially considering all the boxes that are being broken/ acquired by people who arenāt needing or intending to sell). However, I donāt know where the bulk of this hobby will end up, pricing wise.
I donāt think the scarcity, or rather lack thereof, supports some of these price jumps. I am genuinely interested in hearing some speculation from you guys. What do you think about this growth?
@needszeebs, Gold Star Charizard is nowhere close to $40k. Itās like $20k. Still 5x what it was, but quite a bit different than 10x.
And people list high-demand cards for high prices with the intention of fielding offers. Itās not an unethical practice at all.
As for what caused the price increases, I think itās fair to say that itās a mix of increased demand from new collectors, PSAās giant backlog constricting supply, and macroeconomic factors related to COVID (which have caused price increases in tons of alternative asset classes).
I said $40K because the information I checked on Pokemon Price shows a sale for $60K in October, followed by a $30K sale in November. Whether or not these were actually fulfilled is unbeknown to me, but that is where I pulled $40K from.
As for highly priced listings, I did not know that was why people did that! I had assumed that was done for items of higher value exclusively, such as Kangaskhan trophy because there is not always a lot of sales data to ascertain value. Whereas, something like Rayquaza C Holo has plenty of data to average a realistic price from. That being said, it was not my intention to imply that there is anything particularly wrong with doing that, I was just confused.
I would have to agree on the cause of the increases. Thereās no doubt in my mind that COVID has played a pivotal role in that. I wonder where it will settle!
This type of market manipulation has been happening in the Magic reserved list marketplace for the past 4 years. Itās bound to happen in any free market thatās on fire. Buyouts will typically lead to an initial spike in price which slowly decreases as more supply appears on the market. In Magic, buyouts are successful if there was already organic demand for a card, i.e. the card is a format staple or useful in an already established archetype. It will be interesting to see how the full art trainer buyouts pan out since I find it hard to believe the demand for them before the buyouts was entirely organic, and I imagine thereās probably a huge supply of these card that are not currently on the market.
well, if they did this on a few cards, with no intention of paying, then people are āresearchingā and finding data that are misleading. itās very possible if you think about it. a lot of human behavior is predicated on other human behaviorā¦
The FA trainer buyout is pretty interesting. Iām looking at a Mistyās Favor (Unified Minds) and itās actually selling on Ebay for up to $150 right now. Then I look at the FA Mistyās Determination from Evolutions and itās still sitting at around $12-$13. I know that there are probably WAY more Evolutions Mistyās floating around, but now Iām curious if itāll spillover. Personally, I like the artwork from Evolutions more even though it doesnāt fit in with the new Trainers layout. Overall Iād be a bit surprised if these prices held but crazier things have happened so who knows.
