Hey guy had a question about values of graded cards, 2 questions actually! First is there ever a circumstance where there may a significant drop in the price of a graded card? And I mean something established as a real collectors item say base set 1st eds or something similar. And are there any cases of a card going up in price and then just hitting a ceiling and not gaining anymore after a certain amount of time? Or do they gradually increase with time relative to rarity and scarcity?
Yes. The market and value is never guaranteed. Will the PSA 10 1st edition Charizard keep going up, 15K to 20K to 30K? Will it eventually reach a ceiling? Not a single person knows. People a few years ago were looking at the 5-6K tag thinking that might be the ceiling or that the price was too much, never imagined it would climb to this value. It is an unregulated market for cardboard, nothing can be guaranteed, just speculated.
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Sometimes getting a card graded will actually hurt the value, it’s not happening a lot with Pokemon yet. Since it’s still relatively new, but a lot of vintage sports collectors will bypass the grade and just have PSA authenticate it, since a low grade hurts the value, but the authentication lets the buyer know it’s genuine.
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That’s interesting! so what’s the logic behind That? Is it something with the slab?
Lower graded cards cannot command the premium of higher graded cards. Take the staff Charizard for example. Ungraded copies are running between 400 and 600 dollars. That price range for ungraded copies is the same range for PSA 8s. So if you buy an ungraded copy for 600 hoping it will get a 9 and it gets an 8, you have just lost money on that deal.
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Oooooooooookay that makes sense!! I guess it’s just weird to me lol seems so unintuitive but makes sense the way you explain that. But how is it that the initial cost of the card get driven up so high so be as much as a psa 8 ? Is it because it’s a staff card ?
There’s examples of both of your questions happening. 1st edition base commons/uncommons PSA 10 used to go for $100+ each (I think this was in 2012), they dropped to about $20 (I think in 2015) and have been increasing in price now. There’s been examples of cards hitting a ceiling, depending upon your definition of ceiling. Base unlimited PSA cards haven’t had much if any price change in years.
To better answer your question it think it’s important to look at how the market works, which is a completely speculative answer, but there’s logical guesses:
In the PSA 10 1st ed base common/uncommon example we have a product that weren’t heavily on the market in 2011 and years prior. Mainly because people didn’t view complete sets as a common goal, it was mostly graded holo cards and a binder for the common-rare cards. When the market showed there was significant demand for the cards in PSA 10 there was a lot of buyers, a lot of people caught on and the market saturated, driving the price down and now it’s slowly raising agian. (Pretty basic economics)
With unlimited cards there’s just a ton of supply around and more people adding to the supply that equals the amount of people demanding it, so there’s just not much increase in price which leaves it at a semi ceiling. Eventually there could be more demand that will cause the prices to increase. Charizard is already going through this and I’m starting to see the same trend with Blastoise/Venusaur.
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Ungraded card prices sky rocket based on the prices for 9s and 10s. To continue the example. PSA 9 Staff Zards run about 900 to 1000 bucks, while the most recent 10 sold for over 5500. These prices allow sellers to sell ungraded cards high because the cards have the potential to be gold mines.
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Ok now this was I was hoping to hear, ya know I think I’m just still too green in the hobby I havnt been able to see the trends of different sets. when I left the hobby it was during base set 2 and when I returned it was during fates collide, and A LOT has happened in that time! And I have a lot of catching up to do, joetheman mentioned that no one can predict the market and I totally get what he is saying, and that’s how all investing is no one has the crystal ball but I believe patients and knowledge can do a lot for you. And that’s why I ask these sorts of questions I know maybe they may seem stupid but I’m just trying to learn what you guys know and pick up on the trends you guys have seen the hobby through!