Yes! That box was so unnecessarily big. I was originally going to keep a couple sealed but I decided against it because of
way too much space wasted
no shrink wrap = glued flaps can pop open over time
Regarding the second point: I have had this happen to a few different modern sealed products that I was holding in my collection. Without any shrink wrap, the cardboard flaps can lose their seal and pop open. Then you no longer have a sealed product…
Because of that I completely stopped collecting non-shrink-wrapped products. I only buy them to open.
Some Rainbow Hyper Rares are actually tastefully done. There are many examples of poor application of the rainbow and putting them all side-by-side can make them all feel bland, however there are definitely specific cards that work quite well.
My unpopular opinion of the moment is that autographed memorabilia is a very finite market and is not the future high end of the hobby that some people expect it to be.
Art cards and sketches on the other hand — now that’s something special — if it can be verified. Just signatures though, not so much.
I don’t think anyone likes the actual taste of seltzers but they’re a great low calorie alternatives.
Soda fell out of popularity in the early 2000’s so seltzers like La Croix became in vogue.
After the whole IPA/craft beer craze people started realizing those things are so caloric so it was a perfect time for hard seltzers to rise in popularity. also health conscious foods & beverages are in vogue so its really helped with the popularity of seltzers.
but yeah, its pretty wild every alcohol brand has a spiked seltzer now. but i drink them frequently due to their low calorie content.
I doubt this is that unpopular if you’re younger than 60: Cognac tastes like fermented sewer water and I have no idea how people can stomach it. Makes most Whiskeys taste like cotton candy by comparison. It’s amazing how taste buds can be so utterly different.
Excluding Sugimori, 100% agree. Autographs are still young in pokemon. If artists continue to do signings there will definitely be a price ceiling. Hence why I excluded Sugimori. Which there might be other artists like him that don’t sign, but he is just maxed out in every way.
Also the card being signed matters, and will matter even more with added supply. Pre-covid, there were plenty of arita signatures available. Similar to the overall market, the ones that did well were the rarer cards.
Something I wonder about is how provenance will influence the longterm market.
I think right now we take for granted most signatures we see on cards are authentic. We also have multiple third party services that offer authentications for signatures. I think the idea of fake signatures permeating the market is still a little foreign right now, but it’s something other hobbies have dealt with by requiring ironclad, ice cold provenance.
In movie memorabilia for example, people are extremely skeptical of signatures. You have to be. People pretending to know celebrities, or having family members who knew celebrities, and forging autographs on all sorts of things has been a Hollywood grift for decades. Fake Hollywood stuff is so prevalent that collectors approach every signature under the assumption it is fake.
So if you have something signed, they say prove it. You could have a picture of your grandmother shaking hands with Cary Grant at a New Year’s Eve party. You could be using this to try to support the authenticity of a cocktail napkin saying “Happy New Year! Love, Cary Grant.” People wouldn’t have it. They’d say all that photo proves is that your grandmother met Cary Grant. It doesn’t prove he signed that napkin and that doesn’t mean that’s his signature. Bust, no sale.
For Pokémon, you have artists who sign material at conventions and events, creating a natural supply of signatures with a known source. We have services like PSA willing to put their name on authentication, giving those signatures credence. I don’t know if we’ll ever reach a point where there’s enough dubious signatures to force people to question all the ink they see. But there is still a part of me that sees signatures and my natural immediate instinct is to say “prove it.”
If you do collect signatures, documenting and supporting your collection with proof of provenance might do you well. Someday some YouTuber is probably going to get busted for having a huge collection of fake signatures and we’ll all have to deal with that and you’ll be glad you have your documentation.
Of course, the ideal value of a signature is that it’s tied to a personal experience for you as a collector. In cases like that, you know it’s real because it’s your memory and your experience. You don’t have to convince anyone.
Agree 100%. Maybe I’m just being paranoid but there’s no way you can convince me it’s authentic unless I had it signed personally or someone I know/trust had it signed. I don’t see how PSA can truly authenticate a card quickly signed with a Sharpie.
Now, granted, I’ve almost purchased a few cards signed by some of the lesser-known artists on cards I like, but I feel a little safer doing that because it seems sort of niche enough that I doubt someone would go through the trouble to fake it. But an Arita signature on a base first edition card sold by some random dude on ebay? Yeahhhh I dunno. Even if it’s PSA graded/authenticated.
