We all know that sealed box prices are much higher than the cards inside and even weak sets eventually get a decent appreciation in value.
So if it’s not tied to the value of cards inside or strength of the set, what is the rationale behind one set’s price vs. other weak sets?
Is it simply how much supply was created of the particular set?
For instance, what is the difference between ultra prism and forbidden light?
Mixture of things but the simple answer is supply demand. Theres also a ton of people interested in “crappy” sets (for multiple reasons), so its not like the demand comes from nowhere.
When all official msrp routes are depleted, people have to resort to buying elsewhere where sellers arent forced to sell at a set price. Sometimes set go up sometimes set go down
The value of the set cards can mean next to nothing for sealed prices, but it could also mean everything. Varies a lot. Even then, its still only one metric
Wow thanks Sport! This is the first time I’ve ever seen such a theory.
Now if there are a handful of weak sets out there with no desirable cards in them, what exactly is driving the “demand” difference between one set and another?
Print run and age, a lot of people don’t like steam siege but the print run was large enough that packs now are still relativity low compared to other sets released around the same time.
Emerging powers is getting pretty old now, there aren’t many chase cards BUT it was a subset and had a much smaller print run making it a lot rarer then steam seige, then there’s the x factor of sealed not everyone likes to open packs and especially semi-vintage packs without any good monetary pulls like Emerging powers. That’s why this set is higher then people think it should be
So essentially supply and demand, if you really wanted to you could add age to the scale but realistically it all breaks down to supply and demand, sometimes there can be a random factor but for the most part break it down into supply and demand
and never underestimate the power of sealed collections. Whether its a strong set or not. People collecting a booster box, ETB, booster pack, will want 1 of everything anyway. Also the knowledge and visibility. For example, why are truly rare cards less valuable than pikachu with gray felt hat? Visibility and knowlege! But for sealed this might not be as much of a factor. The current market is kind of a roller coaster too. Not sure when/why things happen.
The intermittent supply issues since 2020 has resulted in people just buying anything and everything with a booster pack inside it
No idea if this is really correct, but in my mind it would be these factors:
I’ve been keeping this behind closed doors for quite a while, but I am willing to share the mathematical equation that can be used to predict future values of sealed product.
EΨ (x) is the expected value of the sealed box
-ħ is defined as the number of times the set has been featured in an Instagram reel in the past month. This only works with followers assumed to be greater than 1000, any lower than that and you approach the boundary conditions and things get wonky. Don’t listen to some Planck guy who claims it’s a number, he’s just upset I published here first.
m is defined as the credit limit available on Whatnot at any one time. Apply the Laplacian operator and it’s pretty straightforward.
The differential here is evaluating the probability that a case of the sealed set in question exists in someone’s closet at any time. If we don’t know if the case is there, we at least know how fast it’s moving.
VΨ(x) represents the potential stonkability of the set over time. You can pull the constants needed to calculate this in any PSA or CGC magazine. They don’t make it easy to find, but you need to puzzle piece together pages 4, 19, and 32.5 of any issue. It’s not a coincidence that it works every time.
Hope this helps.
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Schrödinger’s box prices
For a serious answer, it really just is supply and demand.
Supply is not merely how much was produced (but that is important). The supply is always going down because people open boxes for fun or for profit selling individual packs. Demand is from some people wanting to just collect the product and probably many more looking to eventually sell it for a return. The rest is just a balance of these two forces.
Probably the best driver for the price of bad sets is speculation. If people want to invest in “old product”, the worst sets with the lowest price are the most accessible. I saw this happen with like Base set 2 for example. There was a time it was significantly underpriced and simply because better sets in the same general era were going for more money, people also put money into the most accessible WOTC set and inevitably the price went up just as all boxes do.
