What people constantly miss about set cards is they aren’t rare, and investing in collectibles is primarily based on rarity. Set cards are largely based on popularity. Why artwork and the rarest items sell for the highest price is because they are limited.
Hypothetically if you had the same buyer pool for all items, from $1 buyers to Jeff Bezos, it makes sense why a Picasso sells for 100m, because there is only 1. All those buyers from $1 - 1 Billion are competing for that one item. Those same buyers don’t need to pay 100m for something with 10,000 copies.
The ultimate reality with set cards; there is always another copy.
Bonus juicy real life example, when an Illustrator recently appeared, multiple people sold their best set cards (PSA 10 Charizard) for a chance at the Illustrator. They all lost. Because again, the supply is tremendously limited, and your buyer pool is more competitive.
I can see how you would infer I was saying that there are either “collectors” or “investors” and nothing in between, but that’s not what I was trying to say. The world is not black and white and of course there is more nuance than that. For sure you can buy what you like while optimizing potential return. But it’s not easy.
When you buy something as a pure collector, you buy something because you want to own it. When you buy something as a investor, you buy something because you want to sell it. At their core, the two are inherently opposing concepts. If you want to sit somewhere in the middle, it is very hard and it takes a ton of experience and self-awareness to both collect and invest simultaneously and effectively! You have to find the right balance between what you want and what has potential, what to buy, when to sell, if you should sell etc. and this balance will be different for everyone (which is where the experience and self-awareness comes in).
The issue when newer people enter this world of simultaneous collecting/investing is you get some strange results. You get people justifying all of their collection purchases as “investing”. You have people buying their favourite modern full art in PSA 10 because of course all PSA cards only go up in value (this is a real example). You have people hyperaware every time their favourite card sells slightly higher or slightly lower than normal. You get people such as the one in this thread that are more worried about whether their cards will hold value and lose sight of first and foremost buying what makes you happy as a priority.
So my advice to someone newer or coming back in to this sphere is to go back to the root of why they are here. Is your main intention to just build a collection? Are you purely here for profit? Sure you can do both but in general people start buying stuff for one of these reasons over the other. If you’re here moreso to make maximum profit, don’t invest in set cards. If you’re here mostly to build a collection, just start simple and set reasonable goals and buy what you like, don’t try to micro-optimize every purchase to have the best ROI. With experience and time, you can learn how to balance the investment and collecting aspects but for someone I perceive as being new to this intersection, I will always suggest to go back to the root cause for getting interested in this hobby, which usually means stripping away all this nuance and living in the black and white collecting vs investing world. The people who are the best at sitting between the collecting and investing mentality didn’t get there because someone told them what to buy, they got there because of years of experience and a huge level of self-awareness in what they are expecting from every purchase.
@pkmnflyingmaster, I promise pfm is not my alt account. Just because we have the same name, are half italian, have pet rabbits, and make the same points, we are totally different!
Don’t get my wrong, aquapolis is one of my favorite sets because of the artwork, but gold stars have an element of difficulty to pull. The other aspect that isn’t touched on as much is this idea of holding onto a card. To a lot of people, including myself, a gold star is a special card that is just harder to get someone to trade or sell. If we were to make an example that “X” gold star was worth $100. You might need to go over that $100 threshold to get that card from them. If you go look at pokemon card videos back in 2008-2010 era, everyone would flex their gold stars in a thumbnail whereas cards like hyper rares just get flipped through in a binder. That idea of binder clout in that era was defined with having a few gold stars and a complete double page of the legend half’s. At least for me, those binders always grabbed my interest.
“Sure you can make money with set cards. But these are mass produced, illiquid units and usually the returns are pretty small (hundreds) per card even with PSA 10. They are also probably the most susceptible to a recession when and should one hit.”
Disagree with you on this. Trophy cards are much less recession proof than set cards worth $100-$200 each. They are also far less liquid. My view anyway. Will have to wait for a recession to see
I couldn’t disagree more with the recession point. Who is affected during a recession, oil moguls and Swiss politicians who are buying 5-figure+ cards or 20-somethings who have hyper-extended their budget on PSA 10 Gym Challenge holos? Who will sell out of necessity and what will they sell? Probably people holding cards at the $1000 range so they can scrape together rent because they just lost their job. Oh? The card is worth $300 now? It’s okay, they still need to eat this week.
I would agree with liquidity. The important difference is you need to sell 1 trophy card vs 10-1000 set cards to see equivalent return.
The cards that will dive bomb in a recession are high quantity low value items.
The quantity for $10-200 cards is extremely high, thus a greater chance of saturation. Also the buyer pool is more diverse, ie kids or people who overextend and need to sell.
Where most trophy card owners can afford to hold. If not, there is much more interest in the rarest cards becoming available. No one is selling their best cards for a chance at base unlimited holos. They are and did for illustrators.
Lastly the liquidity argument is inaccurate. High end cards are moving just as fast as any graded wotc card. The ones that sit are simply less aggressively sold, because again, the owners can afford to wait.
One aspect where I’m having some trouble grasping is obtaining trophy cards. As a moderate collector who doesn’t have funds to blow on a 10k plus card, it feels like I’m out of options? Im having trouble finding “trophy” cards under that big pocket level. What about cards like 2010 Pichu illustrators (not the zoroark ones) that supposedly only 12 copies for each grade were released?
So as a moderate level collector, I’ve found that gold stars are that sweet spot for me. Or am I ultimately wasting my time with them since they are set cards? At the end of the day I collect what I like such as alto mare lati’s, unique Japanese art promos etc.
In theory, the whole reason we buy cards is because we like them, not because we are waiting to sell them later. If we are buying for the sole reason of it wanting to boost in price idk if that mentality is stable for the hobby. There needs to be genuine interest besides the fact it’s worth money. That’s why gold stars or FLEX cards are selling consistently and aren’t just trading hands every few months.
Also another quick thing I wanted your opinions on was the distinction of Japanese and English goldstars. Despite both being difficult to attain, there still is a massive gap between the two languages. As someone who prefers the original language and the aesthetics of the grey border over the English counter parts, I’ve decided to collect the Japanese ones.
Will we see some correction between the two languages or is English king in this particular case?
There is absolutely no time wasted over collecting set cards. Set cards are what made this hobby what it is today. People have the most incredible nostalgia over collecting set cards and that is part of the strong force behind the thriving of Pokemon TCG today. If anyone tells you they are not worth collecting don’t believe them. The set cards are the backbone of this entire hobby. They fall everything falls.
No one is trying to shit on set cards. I constantly buy 1st Edition base and plenty of other set cards. The difference is the expectation. Too many people are overly worried about their cards value. Just buy what you enjoy. That is literally what the biggest people in every hobby did. The only way you can truly learn is from experience. If you are constantly asking the basic question “what should I buy” you will never learn.
I didn’t mean to sound like a generic what should I buy question. The situation is that I have an aquapolis set that I built and like and someone is offering me a bunch of gold stars for it. I don’t exactly know what to do but I sorta figured it out.
@modestmudkip, Don’t worry the conversation evolved into something else! The tl;dr for you situation is really preference, as both options are pretty comparable.
