This may have already been stated earlier in this thread, but I wish sets were still organized with the holos at the beginning of a set instead of by type. It makes binders look nicer too in my opinion.
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@pokecollectoramy, I don’t know which other thread you are referring to, but I agree that there is a certain bias towards Pokemon market positivity/naivity present on this board. I mean, I can’t blame those who think that we are just at the beginning of a golden age for Pokemon, because the last year has been insane. I’m hoping for a serious long term growth period as well, but that might be wishful thinking because going by any other market, a crash in the future is almost certain. You won’t get far in warning people about this though. My guess is, we just have to let it happen. Who knows, maybe Pokemon really is that one outlier that defies any other collectible because it’s the biggest franchise in the world. And if it isn’t an outlier and the crash will be coming, then the only thing to convince idealists that Pokemon is not an outlier is the crash itself unfolding.
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Strong possibility this has been posted already in this thread, but Virbank City and Virbank City PokeMart are collectively a total cesspool and have been fucking horrible for the hobby. The shift away from forum communities (PokeGym, HeyTrainer, etc.) toward Facebook groups and paywalled article sites absolutely murdered my interest in competitive Pokemon and, for a long time, collecting.
Maintaining/browsing trade threads on the PokeGym was just a total blast. Buy/sell threads on Virbank get buried 90% of the time unless you’re unloading shit at 50% under market to vulture flippers. Shit sucks.
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Oh man. I saw your username and had an instant confusing negative reaction.
Then I remembered we did a trade on PokeGym where you sent me a pop series Celebi ex when I had expected Unseen Forces Celebi ex and I was super pissed. Resented you for years on the forum.
I was even going to write a snarky comment, despite it having been over a decade ago, but figured I should check the record first.
Well damn. While I had stated no promos, you did clearly specify the Celebi ex was from pop series. I must have not known about pop series and thought it was a tin promo Celebi. Regardless it was never written as Unseen Forces. I can’t believe I was resentful enough to check this shit years later only to discover I’ve been wrong this whole time. Sorry.
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TBH I’m impressed you remembered and held a grudge that long regardless of the validity of it. I’m glad we’ve set the record straight 10 years later, though, and hope you don’t hate me anymore! 
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Very much agree about Virbank. And it happens to be a specifically Pokemon thing, too – the Facebook MTG buying/selling groups I’m a part of are pretty healthy and normal. There’s a much lower incidence of scamming, way fewer uninformed people commenting, and just a much higher concentration of serious buyers/sellers. On Virbank, buy posts almost never have prices attached to them and sales posts for raw cards are almost never specific about condition. People are just so hopelessly clueless on Virbank.
I really do not understand why MTG gets all the good buying/selling platforms. I don’t understand why there’s not a Pokemon equivalent to Cardsphere. The only serious avenues for selling Pokemon cards are eBay and buylisting. I’ve realized that Pokemon buyers just aren’t serious enough on average for Facebook and Instagram to be viable platforms for selling. eBay works because it is a highly structured platform. Pokemon needs a structured platform like Cardsphere. I’ve had only good experiences buying/selling through this forum so far, but this forum’s function is not as a marketplace. It’s just bizarre that MTG has a bazillion viable platforms for selling/buying and Pokemon has like two lol.
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pM fOr pRiCeS
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Who would be the person/entity to start doing person-to-person Pokemon trades in a better formatted version than FB groups or forum posts?
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It would have to be started from the ground-up unless you were able to convince an MTG trading site (i.e., Cardsphere or Deckbox) to adopt Pokemon. There’s nothing proprietary about how those sites function, though. For those who don’t know, Cardsphere and Deckbox are the two major MTG trading websites. Across the two, I’ve sent thousands (if not tens of thousands) of cards and have literally never had a negative experience. The whole process is super streamlined – for reference, here’s how they each work:
Cardsphere – the site has a real-time database of the values of all cards. You add cards to you wantlist (along with specifications such as language, condition, foil/non-foil, etc.). You set a percentage for each card on your wantlist (usually from 1-100% but you can also set it above 100%). That percentage determines what price you’re offering for that card. The price is the percentage of the site’s database price. So if a card has a database price of $5 and I set my offer to 80%, then I’m offering $4 for the card. This price is also modified by the condition of the card being sent to you (but people can only send you cards in the condition(s) specified). You can deposit funds into your account, which can also be instantly withdrawn to PayPal for a very small fee (like 1% IIRC). The way you receive cards is that people send you cards that are on your wantlist. The funds enter escrow and are only released to the sender after you confirm receipt. You can also, of course, send cards to other people, which is a way to build up funds. It’s a really great website to send off tons of cheaper cards for way above buylist prices and/or to save on eBay fees and tax. And the receiver gets to pay less than retail price and also saves on tax. I very easily and quickly built up my MTG sets using the website.
Deckbox - this one is much simpler. The site has a database of all cards, and you set your inventory and tradelist. People can view your tradelist and start a trade with you. There’s a chat feature and you negotiate the details of the trade with the person, if there’s a trade to be had. This site uses a feedback system like eBay and generally the person with lower feedback sends first (or both trade partners send simultaneously). This is also a great website but requires you to interact and negotiate with people whereas Cardsphere is basically like a personal buylist with no interaction (unless there’s a condition dispute, in which case a moderator serves as an arbiter).
Anyway, these are just two ways that such a site could be formatted. A Pokemon version, of course, wouldn’t necessarily have to conform to either of these templates. Personally, I think that a Pokemon version of Cardsphere could be hugely successful. It works super well for completionist collectors and there are way more of those in Pokemon than in Magic. I think a more open-ended site like Deckbox could also be successful. I think there’s a large unfulfilled demand for a trading website like these for the Pokemon TCG. I mean, this is a trading card game that has no suitable online trading platforms. It makes no sense to me.
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@zorloth I think it’s because of the history of pokémon collecting. ‘Serious’ pokémon collectors started to grade their cards because they couldn’t agree with what the more casual collectors and players saw as mint. This group of ‘serious’ collectors used to be too small to justify a dedicated trading platform. (edit. afaik it used to be less of a problem in magic for various reasons)
As far as I can tell by your description cardsphere and deckbox also cater more to those aforementioned casual collectors and players. Just like other sites like cardmarket, trollandtoad etc.
Imo we’re at a point where a dedicated trading platform for graded cards starts to make sense. I don’t know how it is for sports cards which have been around way longer. Do they have something like that already? What about stockx? Maybe pwcc will start their own platform?
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Trading via a system like Deckbox used to be quite popular on Pokémon forums, mainly PokeGym. You had a reputation score based on number of trades, and whoever had lower feedback sent first, or if you knew each other would send at the same time. I don’t think I ever bothered with tracking lol. Everything was just in an envelope with regular stamps because 99% of trades were <$50 with no expectation of sending to PSA and making money.
As Pokémon has grown this is no longer realistic. People have their own personal condition standards and now grade en masse to reduce risk when they buy or trade. There’s also far more money on the line. I remember being scammed only once (which really is incredible and a testament to Pokémon collectors), and it was about $30 worth of cards that the person never sent their end for, but at the time it was a huge amount of money to me and devastating. When $30 has grown to $300 to $3000 over the past decade it gets risky to be so trusting. However I still enjoy and actually prefer trading. Especially when if I sell the money will go to cards anyway.
I think the safest bet is ownership transfers via PWCC vault, which also eliminates the need for in-person meeting. While it’s sad not having physical cards on hand, it does alleviate stress over potential damage, and I’m optimistic that once there are A) a wider pool of cards available in PWCC, B) less supply on eBay as years pass, and C) collectors looking to swap to complete sets, “virtual” trading will become more popular.
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Out of everything Ive done and enjoyed since getting back into the hobby 2 years ago, the only thing I haven’t been able to do/enjoy is trading. It’s far more satisfying than buying imo but just cannot find any way of doing it in person 
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Any set that contains over 150 cards is too big. What’s the point in having like 20 secret rares? There should be no more than like 4. What’s next? A Secret Secret Mega VMAX Shining Gold Star Charizard? It’s too much man.
I don’t like having the same card repeating itself in a single set e.g. Blastoise / Mega Blastoise / Secret Blastoise / Secret Mega Blastoise.
There should be no more than two duplicates in a set and there should be some variety. This is another reason I like WOTC sets (though tbh I’m not a fan of including a non-holo and holo of the same card in the same set). I don’t mind duplicates that are really different (e.g. surfing Pikachu / Pikachu playing football etc).
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Same. It all seems like just an additional way of getting money. Not mad that they want to profit obviously, but I wouldn’t personally be stoked to hunt for a Secret Rare Gold Shiny Vmax Charizard rather than just a Secret Rare Vmax Charizard.
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While I agree with you, there are certainly reasons for having duplicates in a set. For example a very playable GX needs to be affordable for the tcg players while at the same time needs to be rare enough to be a chase card for collectors or players who want more bling in their deck. So it makes sense to include a regular gx variant and a secret rare one.
In this case I’d prefer the western sets to be the same as the japanese ones with simultaneous releases. That would certainly be a good start.
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Both Cardsphere and Deckbox have very specific condition guidelines that both users must follow. If a dispute occurs, a moderator resolves it based on those guidelines. I don’t see why this wouldn’t work for Pokémon. There’s more money on the line, but that doesn’t matter. I’ve done countless $2k-$5k+ MTG trades and have never had a single issue. People who want to commit mail fraud have an easier time on eBay or Amazon. It’s a lot more effort to scam someone via trade. There’s almost no scamming on these websites. I regularly sent out $200+ cards in PWEs to established users. And a feedback system makes scamming even less likely. I don’t think an online trading platform for Pokémon is unrealistic at all.
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I consider myself a ‘serious’ raw Pokémon card collector. Deckbox and Cardsphere cater to casual and serious collectors. But very few MTG people give a shit about graded cards. You’re 100% correct that serious Pokémon collectors have generally moved into collecting graded cards (including myself recently, although I still do both). Still, I think that most Pokémon collectors still want raw cards. And I think that a trading platform for raw cards would have plenty of interest. If anything, casual collectors like to trade more than serious collectors. I would much rather send off my raw vintage set cards to other collectors who want them than to Troll and Toad who in turn sells to those collectors at a 500% markup. It cuts out the middle-man.
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Have you tried cardmarket then? It’s probably the closest to what you’re looking for. I used it a lot when I started collecting again.
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I’ve used it (as a buyer) for MTG, but I’m in the U.S. so I had to use a middleman service. It was worth it, though, for certain really rare foreign foils. The U.S. equivalent is TCGPlayer, which is a great option once you know what vendors to order from. But I’m talking about a platform for trading – Cardmarket/TCGPlayer and trading platforms serve separate niches for MTG collectors.
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1st edition is over rated. It is like buying something really expensive just for the brand logo or name, it’s exactly the same as unlimited but it has a 1st edition stamp.
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