Auston, are your offers firm?
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Not sure how familiar you are with other cards from the same period, but you may have more luck finding something / someone willing to sell, if you expand your want list to include other rare cards at or near the SSB prices in PSA 10, eg 1998 Trophy Kangaskhan, 1999 Tropical Mega Battle No. 1 / 2 / 3.
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Not entirely - let me know what you’re thinking!
I like the Kangaskhan - but I see it all of the time, i feel its more attainable, i’ll likely get one. the TMB, i personally don’t like for whatever reason
You could probably get most of them with the right offer. The focus with those is anything above Psa 6-7 at this point is extremely difficult to find. The Kanga just being super dry atm. The Kanga buy thread is a good example.
Either way fee free to pm me if you develop interest for any other trophies. I am typically not selling, but know where many reside.
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when we talk illustrator, let’s stop using market valuation. it doesn’t mean anything. it’s like trying to give a street value for the mona lisa - it simply doesn’t exist. the louvre would never sell it unless you go to war with France and take it, like many historical items of significance were attained throughout history. otherwise, good luck. at this point, outside of pkonno, buying an illustrator is like trying to buy a piece of land from another country. no country would sell you land, for any “market” price.
but kudos for starting a thread. sorry for sabotaging your thread! we like to have community discourse here on this platform. 
edit: in some ways, this is how the 1st edition base Charizard in psa 10 has become. it’s gotten so dry that the last sales price is almost not relevant for price negotiations. this is hard to hear for people in the hunt for a card, but i would say almost all owners of this card would feel this way. the strong sentimental link to this card requires you assess/negotiate the sale on a case-by-case basis.
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Scott please don’t say previous sales “don’t mean anything” this is ludicrous, previous sales set a data point for what people were willing to pay for the card at that moment in time. If anything offers don’t “mean anything” since the sale was never confirmed as you said in your older videos that you don’t speak in offers. If you don’t want to use the zen market data point because it was on an obscure website thats fine, but the one sold in the U.S. in October 2019 is a very valid data point to use for what people were willing to pay for the card at that time. Now I’m sure its worth more then it was in October just like everything but please be realistic with that.
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Read the context of what I quoted.
Either way I don’t want to keep going in circles. I only commented in an attempt to illustrate how trophies are a separate and mostly private market. Its like whales in the ocean, majority of their activity is in the depths unseen. Sure they appear on the surface occasionally, but that isn’t an accurate way to judge their activity. Regardless, feel free to have your beliefs on market value!
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It seems like you’re coming from a perspective of wanting to determine a “market” price or “value” for the illustrator. May I ask why it matters so much to you? To be frank, if you’re actually interested in buying this card, that perspective is not only irrelevant, it’s actually counterproductive. If you aren’t actually in the market for the card, then there’s the disconnect and that explains why you and Scott are disagreeing with each other.
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yeah but are YOU in the market for this card??? /s
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Yeah exactly, if he needs spending money he would just sell his other assets. No reason to get rid of the holy grail of the hobby when you have the collection that he has unless you’re exiting the hobby
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I would venture a guess and say the Illustrator is the last card he’d sell if/when deciding to exit the hobby, but I can’t speak for him!
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nice burn
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If he won’t sell it, then why would he list it on eBay?
Same reason Gary list all of charizards on ebay for years knowing full well he would never sell them; eyeballs and clicks to the store. When you search pokemon and select “price + shipping: Highest” it will almost always show up near the very top and will immediately lead you to click and most likely click to see what other crazy items the seller has, and Scott always has great things available.
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It’s one of the most popular cards in the hobby. People see that listing and click to see who’s selling it and then figure he must own some other top tier stuff and buy from his shop. Basically it leads to a lot of additional traffic and sales(at least that’s what I figure)
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@pokecollectoramy @madden12ut But I thought that listing things on eBay for a price above the value you personally ascribe to it and don’t expect to sell it for was considered to be an incarnation of market manipulation?
Stop talking on this guys buy thread
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People mostly use the term to imply some inorganic or deceitful activity, but yes - in general, listing cards at prices the market clearly has not moved to can change people’s perception of prices and thus can “manipulate” / influence those prices, it’s just not as nefarious as it’s made out to be. A big chunk of price perception is what people see every day on eBay.
That whole idea just doesn’t apply to cards like the Illustrator at all because you don’t have any frequent sales you could influence, again repeating what was previously said about “market value” for such rare cards.
It’s just a public person saying “I have this card, take a look at my store, it’s gonna take a lot more than 300k to take it off of me, also: Take a look at my store.”
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The one listed is not my only copy.
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