This is a great point, something I was touching on but didn’t say exactly. Someone finding and going through an old binder may not lead to anything of significance, but for every person who finds extremely valuable Mint / Gem Mint cards sitting in their old binder this way there will be many more who won’t have anything of great value but rediscover their interest in Pokemon cards and re-enter the hobby.
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I think you’re overestimating the amount of old sealed product in existence. Or at least for certain sets (namely EX-series sets). I don’t doubt that there are some people who have 5-10+ of each sealed box. But I do doubt that there are more than, say, 500 sealed boxes of EX Deoxys left in existence. Any precise guess of the number in existence would be entirely baseless, but I think that this is a safe assumption. Think about the following: how many EX Deoxys booster boxes have hit the market this year? By ‘hit the market,’ I mean people/stores publicly listing the box for sale at a remotely reasonable price. The answer? Zero. This is not the sales volume – this is the volume of what’s just listed for sale. We can compare this to the market volume of high-demand items with known quantities. Take, for instance, the English Championship Arena. The number in existence is, by all accounts, less than 500 (perhaps significantly less). Yet, just this year, over a dozen copies have hit the market.
So I’m not saying that there are 50 or 100 EX Deoxys booster boxes left in existence – I think there are more than that. But I am saying that I would bet a significant sum of money on there being <500 in existence. The only way that I could be wrong is if most of the supply of is in the hands of a select few people, all of whom aren’t interested in selling at the current price point (or are entirely unaware of it).
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Cant the same be said for sports collecting? Every kid and his dog has a box of basketball and baseball cards in their attic.
yeah, where are those ex deoxys boxes?
Boxes have been a regarded as an investment since the dawn of the hobby and I am almost certain that there are at least 500 people in the world who have an unopened EX Deoxys box sat up in their attic from when they bought it back in 2005. They probably haven’t had anything to do with Pokémon for well over 10 years and likely have no idea what value they now have.
10 years ago Pokémon cards were nowhere near as valuable as they are today. PSA 10 1st Edition Charizard was a $700 card at the start of 2010 and the only cards which had broken the $1,000 barrier were a handful of trophies (I think Illustrator was around $8,000 - and back then people believed there were only between 6 and 12 in existence).
An EX Deoxys booster box would have very likely commanded a value only a small percentage higher 5 years after its original release; there would have been no profit to be made in opening them and no profit to be made in selling them, so a lot of people who were buying Pokémon back then would have just put them away and forgotten about them. I’m not talking about collectors either, I’m talking about parents who bought packs for their kids and decided to buy an extra box to put away as a future investment. Unless they actively check places like eBay for Pokémon sales they will have no idea whatsoever that their stashed boxes have any value.
I highly doubt that your average parents bought a box as an investment for their kids during the ex era. There might be the outliers but I can´t imagine that the amount “stashed” away from this specific scenario would matter at all. I´ve yet to see a flood of newly discovered wotc/ex boxes to hit the market.
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You won’t ever get a flood from people who have individual boxes. And no, I’m not talking about the average parents, I’m talking about 1% of them.
It really wouldn’t surprise me if a lot of parents from the time have boxes put away as a retirement fund of some sort who have no idea of their current value and are still 10-15 years away from the point where they’ll bother looking.
@octaane, I think both your argument and the general sentiment on e4 have their merits. I would guess the number of personal collections sitting in attics / untouched for decades / lost & forgotten / etc. is to the magnitude of tens to hundreds of thousands, if not more. But that’s just it… a collection that’s in some 35 year old’s retiree parents’ attic is very unlikely to surface and become available at any specific point in time. Many of those collections are lost or gone forever… tossed in the garbage during a move, one of 50 boxes in someone’s attic that will never be touched, not properly stored and in bad condition now. These cases are more likely for the most mass sold products like unlimited early wotc sets, and much less likely for something like a 1st ed sealed product…
I guess my point is that prices are driven by supply and demand. And while there tons of cards that have gone untouched for years, those don’t really factor into “supply” the same way that readily available or potentially available cards do, hence why a lot of vintage card collectors believe supply is pretty limited.
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First paragraph is so wrong it’s not funny XD
Wrong in what way? Back when I was a kid I knew several other kids whose parents had several sealed booster boxes that their kids weren’t allowed to go anywhere near. I grew up in a very poor area of the UK and the kids at my school were primarily living in council housing (houses funded by the government) - these weren’t parents with loads of money, they were parents who would have had to put a lot of their money into those boxes, but they still did.
This was back in the late 90s, so not the EX era, but I highly doubt anything changed in the mindset of the people who were doing that between those times. Sure Pokémon went down in popularity, but it’s not uncommon for parents to buy duplicates of things they’re buying for their kids to keep sealed as some future investment (this happens with Lego a lot, as an example).
I highly doubt in time they would have opened those boxes or sold them for a loss. Some may have eventually let their kids open them though, sure.
What part of what I said do you think is wrong? That I believe more than 500 boxes still exist? That more than 500 are likely in people’s attics and mostly forgotten about? Or that people who haven’t been interested in Pokémon since before 2010 are unaware of their value today?
That´s true, but then again it doesn´t even matter. When someone finds a single box and puts it up for around or slightly under market value it will be bought almost immediately. Why do you think that there are a lot of parents out there that bought pokemon boxes during the ex/wotc era as a retirement fund? Did you encounter some? I highly doubt that even 1% had the strategic foresight and actually saw the investment potential.
I’ll share my personal experience with forgotten, stashed away binders. I am still in touch with multiple friends from primary school, which was the period that all of my friends collected. Most of them still have their cards lying around somewhere. Those who where more serious about collecting at that time, have the more valuable collection (gold stars, rare WOTC cards etc). However, the’re also far less likely to sell it. When I tell them that they could have a card worth hundreds, they’re pleasantly suprised, but the nostalgic factor is far greater to them than the monetary value. It is a part of their childhood which money can’t replace. The only friends who are willing to sell rn, were the least invested from the start. Their collections are also the least valuable.
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The EX era was when Pokemon was at it’s all time low in terms of popularity. Nobody was buying these boxes for investment purposes, the TCG part of the hobby was nearly dead.
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Unless there was a point in time where these 1) weren’t mass-distributed globally to shops like Toys R Us and 2) weren’t heavily discounted at the end of the product cycle in order to clear stock, then I don’t believe it can be claimed that nobody was buying these for investment purposes.
I just don’t believe that only 15 years after a product was first released can it be said that fewer than 500 boxes remain unopened, even if the Pokémon TCG was at its lowest point.
can you name one person who purchased an ex deoxy’s box in 2005 for investment purposes? I’m not debating the number still in existence, just the number of people you’re suggesting purchased in 2005 for investment purposes.
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Just gonna point out that the deoxys box on ebay is mine. I been getting offers a lil over half of what im asking and i still wouldnt sell. Im not the only one with one of these boxes and for all we know someone pops up with a few cases of it. Not one person i know will sell their box. So if some mystery Person pops up with these boxes, does it even matter if they dont plan on selling em? Cuz in my eyes these items are only worth what someone is willing to pay and if there is no price point or enough supply to provide a price point, its a sellers market. Cases of ex boxes can pop up and if they are even slightly under whatever the last for, chances are they arent lasting long on ebay
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Question for you (nothing personal but I always love getting into the mindset of different collectors). What’s the end game? If the offers get to 75% of what you are asking, will you begin to take them seriously or will you just raise the price higher? At what point do you sell?
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I have a number in mind. It hits that then it is sold. I do that with all of my items. I also never worry about the value of something i sold after i sell it. ‘Shoulda coulda woulda’s’ define this hobby sometimes
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Of course, when buying old binder collections you can hit jackpots. That’s why we all do it. “I wish I could find my old cards” is literally the most common response I get when people hear I collect and sell Pokemon cards. Yes, there are absolutely plenty of undiscovered collections. But the number that are either trashed, or lost forever is greater than the current demand. And demand keeps rising. I’ll even argue that whenever a collection is rediscovered, or a binder opened for the first time in 10+ years, the majority of the time it just brings back a former collector. Because most collectors who took pack-to-sleeve care of their cards as a kid (important to note that most WOTC cards pulled come out in psa 9 condition, and most kids played with their cards), is just going to either renegage in the hobby, or not let them go easily (or cheap).
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