What are your thoughts on early 1996-1999 Japanese vintage cards as far as long term value?
I have researched just about all there is and I feel like it’s still a very untapped and underappreciated sector. I can’t help but feel disgusted when I see something like a cgc 10 1997 card file electabuzz sell for $100. Even in 20 years, there is still just one initial era of cards…
Maybe I’m just blinded by the rabbit hole I’m in but want to hear others thoughts. Is a pop 7 grade 10 corocoro marill a legendary first print pikablu or is it just a meh card that no one really cares about and isn’t English 1st edition?
Love JP golden era but unless its a holo I’ve always considered it something that goes in a binder.
Vending, Coro Coro, ANA go in binder.
CD Promos, Quick Starters, GB and Masaki get graded.
I love these cards, but as a collector I would never pay a premium for a high grade coro coro. I respect that they can be though to grade, but I’ve been perfectly content with binder copies.
Theres definitely value to be had if you’re there to appreciate it. I went big (for me) into Japanese vintage a couple years ago bc I thought it was undervalued and fantastic cards.
I don’t know if I can still say theyre hugely undervalued after seeing some of the cards 10x in the past 12 months. And to be honest, I never expected making money on cards to kinda suck. It just comes with a lot of emotional baggage and stress for me.
Anyway, theres still great value to be had in lesser condition, or lesser known cards imo. I don’t know if that directly translates to future monetary gain, but I love the cards!
Coro Coro cards are just very niche. If you find the right buyer, they can sell for a premium, but they will probably be sitting in your store for a while.
Unless this is just your personal preference (which is totally cool), I think Vending is the exception here.
Vending Series is definitely more fleshed out than Coro Coros and ANA promos. I’ve been selling them pretty regularly. Lots of growing popularity there.
Yeah, I feel like 90% of what I am feeling is under rated is in fact the non-holos such as Itoh mewtwo and other corocoro promos.
Lily pad mew has become an exception so far. Wether or not people will gain respect for some of the lesser know cards has yet to be seen. Part being that there simply isn’t enough high quality sales even happening so who knows
Again, if the right buyer comes along, you can get a premium for some of them, especially considering a lot of them are REALLY hard to grade. But you just won’t find many people falling over themselves to buy Coro Coro promos.
This is like 30x in a few months
Honestly, vending is like…really awesome. Like maybe one of the most amazing set in the TCG. I go back and look at it, and it punches you harder every time. I’d say it still is not widely recognized in the grand scheme of things. I would never detract someone from going into vending series, independantly of any financial considerations, since it’s one the best thing pokemon TCG has ever made.
I actually did see vending Pikachu hit 1000 when that was a $100+ PSA 10 not very long ago at all. I think a lot people venture into vending first before anything more niche.
I think it just really depends on what cards you’re talking about in that category. I’ve noticed some decent price increases recently in trainers mag cards, gift set, ANA, vending etc. I think the prices are more than warranted for what the cards are and do believe in them long term. That being said, we are 30 years into this thing and there are plenty of more obscure cards that still don’t get a lot of love market wise
As for stuff like set cards, high grade holos are always something I would bet on. From what I’ve seen they are generally tied to their English counterparts but obviously supply can skew the ratios at times.
General note, a lot of people are looking for “value” during massives booms like we’re in now.
Booms bring in new people and eyes, which is great, but they won’t all stay interested. This can mess with supply/demand in the short term, and will likely lead to additional speculation. We’ve already got a lot of that going on right now imo.
I have no crystal ball or real input here, but Corocoro interest is already up, vending is up, old back in general is up significantly in the recent past, even non holos.
It could go up more, it could drop 50%+, no outcome will surprise me.
Make sure you are taking advantage of traditional investment opportunities and tax advantages accounts before Pokemon cards if they’re avaialble to you.
I was selling some cards to a vendor last year and I eventually started to ramble about vending cards and the difference between vending and gift set. I could see that his facial expressions were politely telling me to stop talking.
I personally agree with this.
People during booms, especially in the social media era, do seem to behave like a flock. Their basic reasoning is something like “wait, this card in PSA10 boomed → so those remotely associated with it, must now be undervalued!”. Rinse & repeat.
A classic buy buy buy moment which leads to a self fulfilling prophecy and a spillover towards the next shiny, comparatively “undervalued” thing.
This truly explosive mix of FOMO and chasing whatever opportunities the market is offering (GS, suddenly popular species, scarce PSA pop, nostalgia for Dark or owner’s Pokemon, then people realizing 1st edition were undervalued as well) makes everything difficult to judge. Some things will stick, others not so much.
My gut feeling is: only a fraction of buyers are genuinely interested in owning these cards for their personal enjoyment and collections. A couple huge sales and an explosion in price aren’t enough to free a card from its niche status imho.
But we’ll see if broccoli heads truly like vending and natta wake (or JP in general ) this much.
So where I’m coming from is very different. I’m not as much looking for dollar value as I am for the market to verify my ideals.
The concept is basically the combination of:
• Truly early/original cards (1996-1999)
• Low PSA/CGC populations. Typically 15 or less PSA 10’s with CGC typically having even less. In some cases exceptions can stretch to more like pop 30.
I understand that some Pokemon are just generally less desirable and the math is going to apply differently for them. However all in all, I’m still calling BS on cards like 1997 Fan Book Mewtwo selling for $180 as a CGC 8.5 when there are 0 CGC graded higher, 2 PSA 10s and 4 PSA 9s.
I’m looking at scarce artifacts that survived in good shape, not as much vending with pops of 200+
You’re not the first person to have questions like that, absolutely!
It has always been a recurrent theme here during the years (from 2016 to 2020 and so on), with countless threads asking why or if Japanese cards of some sort were undervalued.
I’d say probably many are/were undervalued to some extent, but it’s just that the hobby chose english as gold standard for collecting a long time ago (and for reasons).
People will go off that track mainly for popular Pokemon, god-like exclusive artworks, and maybe an appealing super limited release (aka trophies or similar).
This is a luxury that not every JP card has.
I hope this is the case as someone who has started collecting vending series, natta wake, and trainer magazines as my main three sets so far. I have noticed them going up since I’ve started.
While many of us collectors view scarcity as a plus (in that it increases desirability/collectability), it seems that many early Japanese cards are simply too rare to garner wider interest.
In my opinion, something like a Grand Party or early corocoro is certainly undervalued, and I think many folks on this forum would agree with that. However, the general population does not view value in the same way that collectors on this forum do (though that gap is closing).
For a card shop, for example, Grand Party might mean very little sitting on a shelf because the value of the card is not immediately apparent to the average buyer. Some of these cards fall into the category that smpratte and others have used here of “being too rare for their own good.” In other words, scarcity limits exposure. Without exposure, a robust market will not develop.
That said, there also seems to be a vague collecting pipeline of Modern English to Vintage to Japanese Vintage. I find many collectors who stay in the hobby for more than a year or two develop some level of curiosity for the older, more obscure (and historied) cards. With recent prices of natta and vending cards going up, maybe we are seeing some of the more casual/hype-train collectors dig into the crates and find some of these older treasures.
I would love to see Japanese vintage gain popularity, simply because it means that more people are learning the history of the hobby. But without a wider interest in learning and appreciating the history of the hobby, I do not think the market for vintage japanese will expand that much more.
Electabuzz (even vintage) doesn’t have the same character gravity as Pikachu/Charizard/Mewtwo/Gengar/Eevee-lutions. Character demand is such a big thing.
