Update now that Temporal Forces has released:
I went through and added portfolios starting at Sun & Moon as well as X & Y. I don’t think I have to tell anyone that these absolute blow recent returns out of the water…
Fake/wrong CAGR:
(20628.98/4000)^(1/11) = 16.1%
Fake/wrong CAGR:
(11052.99/2900)^(1/8) = 18.2%
These CAGR numbers are pretty far from correct and significantly underestimate performance, and still are absolutely crushing traditional investment such as S&P 500 (real CAGR 13.2% since Feb 2014 to today).
Here we are starting with Sword & Shield sets
And if we only consider starting with Scarlet & Violet
Currently, Pokedata only supports 4 portfolios, but in the future may support more. Personally, I consider “modern” Pokemon TCG to have begun in the Black & White era due to the inclusion of full art cards.
Pre-Temporal Forces Status
Sparked from this recent thread: Sentiment toward vintage Japanese cards: 🐮 or 🐻?
I was reminded of Warren Buffett’s challenge to hedge funds in 2008, S&P 500 vs hand picked portfolio of top performing hedge funds. He took the side that the simple bet of low fee (index) S&P 500 would outperform the very best, expert selection of hedge funds at the end of a 10 year period. Read more: Buffett's Bet with the Hedge Funds: And the Winner Is …
They bet $1M, Warren Buffett won. I don’t have $1M, but I would still like to make a similar bet. I think that a “dumb” portfolio of modern, sealed booster boxes will outperform a hand-selected portfolio of any combination vintage + modern sealed + singles.
PokeData.io has introduced their Gold feature, which enables automatic tracking of multiple (4) portfolios, which can each have their own public link.
The first benchmark is 1 of each booster box starting with Sword & Shield: PokeDATA - Track your Pokemon portfolio!
Current principal: 16 boxes purchased at $100 each “on release”
Lazy, incorrect CAGR:
(2623.95/1600)**(1/4)-1 = 13.2%
Some may consider that unfair, since certain Sword & Shield sets have already produced great returns after relatively short time. In that case, consider the second benchmark, 1 of each booster box starting with Scarlet & Violet: PokeDATA - Track your Pokemon portfolio!
Current principal: 4 boxes purchased at $100 each “on release”
Lazy, incorrect CAGR:
(373.86/400)**(1/1)-1 = -6.5%
My personal account has room to host 2 more portfolios, but I am not fully decided if those should contain “E4 Modern (SM+) Sealed” and “E4 Modern (XY+) Sealed,” or host some community agreed upon alternative hand picked selection. My original goal was to really compare to a portfolio of vintage singles, but I am far from an expert in that regard and don’t have any sort of consensus regarding what would be acceptable there.
Original Post
EDIT: The challenge has been broadened - any combination of any language singles + sealed vs “modern booster boxes bought at $100/box.” Since this thread started partially through Scarlet & Violet era, there will be at least 2 versions to consider: 1 starting with Sword & Shield Base, and one starting with Scarlet & Violet Base. Currently waiting on PokeData.io to allow multiple portfolios, and then will use that feature to track prices automatically.
Sparked from this recent thread: Sentiment toward vintage Japanese cards: 🐮 or 🐻?
I was reminded of Warren Buffett’s challenge to hedge funds in 2008, S&P 500 vs hand picked portfolio of top performing hedge funds. He took the side that the simple bet of low fee (index) S&P 500 would outperform the very best, expert selection of hedge funds at the end of a 10 year period. Read more: Buffett's Bet with the Hedge Funds: And the Winner Is …
They bet $1M, Warren Buffett won. I don’t have $1M, but I would still like to make a similar bet. I think that a portfolio of modern, sealed booster boxes will outperform a portfolio of vintage singles (raw, graded, up to you all) over the next several years.
I will start the portfolio with 1 booster box from each set in Sword & Shield onward, purchased at today’s prices. New sets will be added as they are released, with prices record as release price or $100, whichever is cheaper (customer isn’t going to spend more than they have to, and most booster boxes should be available $80-140 for multiple years on TCGPlayer alone, better deals elsewhere). One nice thing about this approach is that because it is purely buy & hold, it can be indexed and considered in fractional quantities, so that you can compare its performance to any price point vintage single collection you want. I am not an expert on vintage cards, so I leave it up to the E4 community to submit ideas for the vintage single portfolios.
When I figure out how to make prettier tables and such, this thread’s formatting will improve. Here’s a picture for now:
If there’s a site we can use to create + track portfolios automatically, then this thread can just maintain links to them and that would be nice. In the future with Pokedata Gold subscription I suppose, we will be able to use their site to track multiple portfolios: PokeDATA - Manage your Pokemon collection!
