Shiny moonbreon. Everyone forgets they haven’t even made a single shiny alt art. “This is the best set/card EVER made”. This seems to be said once every 3 months. They’ll say the same thing when they make the moonbreon shiny.
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To be clear, I wasn’t saying Moonbreon won’t be surpassed in terms of appeal - I don’t think you even need to resort to a shiny moonbreon to do that.
I just don’t think coming out with a new, shinier Umbreon + moon combo will make Moonbreon irrelevant. Moonbreon will still be the first alt art moon + Umbreon combo,
@zorloth You know after all these years of being in the hobby we try to think we know what we’re doing from experience. Data. Trends. Etc. But at the end of the day none of us really know much of anything.
These markets are so random they almost don’t make sense. You want low pop amazing art cards. Let’s say Neo or E Series etc. Well a ton of those drop in value too. Last year I personally lost like 10-15k in value if not more spread across a few hundred cards.
$50 less here. $200 less here. Etc it adds up. Then the lovely selling fees. Modern same type of stuff happens but usually not as bad. Usually a PSA 10 is worth double raw value. But you have to watch out for some sets.
Like I personally learned there isn’t much of a premium on any crown Zenith PSA 10s.
Then we’re going into Scarlet Violet which seems incredibly unstable.
I learned a lot about the booster box markets. You can make money off those but after shipping and selling fees even when you wait for them to go from $100 to let’s say $140 there still isn’t much actual profit.
At this point I’ve done almost every angle. My main focus for years was collecting only with never selling. Then when I seen the huge drops I had to stop the bleeding it kept getting worse. I’d put $500 a check into collecting but my overall collection value would drop or stay the same because other cards would drop.
Grading cards can be profitable but when you get a ton of 9s it kind of screws the 10 profit anyways.
Long story short shits difficult you gotta just enjoy the ride and learn as you go what works for you
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The Greatest card ever!
The holy grail of pokemon!
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I’m talking about relative value, not absolute value. I agree that it’s impossible to assess whether something is valued correctly in absolute terms. But I think that one can have reasonable basis to believe that an item is over or undervalued relative to another item.
For instance, I said the same thing back in late 2020 when unlimited Base boxes were $35k ea and early EX boxes were $7k-$8k ea. Fast forward almost 3 years, and now the gap has narrowed to a vanishing point. There was no way to know what the boxes should’ve been worth in absolute terms, but there was extremely good reason to believe that Unlimited Base boxes should not have been selling for 5x as much as early EX boxes. And unsurprisingly, time bore that out.
I’m working with the same principle here. To me (and I could obviously be wrong – this is all IMO), it’s immeasurably insane that PSA 10 og moonbreon is only worth 3x as much as PSA 10 new moonbreon. I have no clue what these cards will be worth in 5 years, but I feel like there’s very good reason to believe that the gap will widen significantly. But only time will tell 
.
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Ya you never know. The Neo Discovery Umbreon you’re talking about is definitely a sweet card as well. Honestly sometimes all the price swings makes me debate just stopping collecting all together.
Collecting is something for fun. We don’t always buy these things just to try to gain money. But even simply having your cards retain their current values is good. But when you start taking big losses the fun kind of goes away.
Granted you didn’t actually take a loss until you sell. But let’s say a 1k card drops to $600 it will probably take a very long time to recover.
I’m sure some of you guys if not many of you have experienced this with plenty of cards.
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Also another side note is buyers and sellers generally don’t help each other much. When I put a listing up at bare minimum price I’d be willing to sell for without offers listed. But I still get messages with low ball offers. Some of these offers are less then raw plus grading fees on PSA 10s. Then whenever they go to sell down the line they might run into the same scenario.
People want collectors to take a huge loss just so they can get a sweet deal on their purchase way below market value. And at the same time if I try to get one of their listings dirt cheap they would take it as a insult as I do
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I feel you. Get low-ballers often too. I don’t waste time on them. Just block.
Sometimes I break down the numbers to see if they will understand and be reasonable. Some just try to point to lowest possible auction that might have got cancelled for all we know.
Or take advantage saying o this cards on its way down
For example Someone wanted a Crown Zenith Entei PSA 10 for $35 shipped. I explained it was $25-$30 ungraded when I sent it in. $16 grading. $5 shipping to buyer. And eBay fees. Profit margin on some of these is literally like $20 or so if I sell at the full $65.
Not every low ball is crown zenith that was a example. People ask for alt arts at raw cost for PSA 10s too
I was wondering why you were selling off all of your vintage holos (Neo, Expedition, Aquapolis, Skyridge) and transitioning to modern. Thanks for answering that question!
I’m really sorry that you lost that much money, but I hope that you are finding enjoyment in your new area within the hobby.
I’m glad you shared this as most only share their gains. The thing people don’t want to hear is the set card flip game is about demand. People splitting hairs over modern alt arts being “rarer” than base charizard are missing the point. No one is buying either card because of its rarity. The name of the game is demand, and the turbulent trends you shared are a great reminder of that reality.
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Ya it doesn’t honestly matter the market or era. Both are difficult to navigate. The gains are good when they come but the losses are painful. Like I mentioned my main focus up until the past six months was buying only for my collection. I made top choices on cards but no matter what you pick everything changes so much over time. Sometimes it’s on a positive end. Sometimes negative.
Selling fees and shipping is something people generally don’t factor in. If your card is up let’s say 15 percent you still can’t break even if you sold let alone profit. Now if your card is down 15 percent than you have selling fees that’s a huge loss. And those are small numbers imagine losing 50 percent on a card before fees!
And again take away selling like it doesn’t exist but it still feels like crap knowing you lost good chunks in value. And when you do get one of those big booms like a few years back you feel like a champion but it doesn’t last forever
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don’t give sunfaders any ideas!
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I’m not sure how I feel about modern cards being grails.
The only thing that is a big argument for me is the pop reports being so high
Inb4 “shiny umbreon moon faded error” 
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I miss the hell out of those cards! And they will truly always be my favorites. I’ve always found stuff I love from every era. My goal is to hopefully eventually grind enough actual profit to buy back a good portion of my old collection for free. I still have my reels on Instagram but it makes me upset to watch them.
But again that might be a pipe dream. Nothing lasts forever. I don’t see a point in grading anything crown zenith or scarlet violet onwards which will kind of stop that goal. Or make me come up with a new strategy.
If I’m able to get most of my collection back with profits over years it won’t feel bad if they happen to drop in value again after buying them. But truth is I worked very hard at my job and overspent to even put everything together. Which made the losses that much more painful. I also lost my job a few months back and broke up with my ex so I’m busy rebounding
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Oh my gosh, that’s awful. 
I hope that you are taking care of yourself and will find gainful employment soon.
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It’s scary how true this is for so many “”collectors”” (YouTube influencers) in the hobby.
Sometimes I get concerned with how little I care about modern. It just has no appeal to me as a collector or speculator. The art is cool but it’s just so mass produced and digitally designed today. Umbreon case in point - this card is “rare” with 20,000 copies. No thank you. That pop is only going to rise and rise and rise. I don’t feel joy from having it in my collection knowing a bazillion others have the exact same thing (many of them lazy YouTube flippers who don’t give one *** about the card itself) and there’s a bazillion unopened packs in peoples closets waiting to be added to the pool. At least with high pop vintage, there is value in owning something 20+ years old that feels more like a real piece of art. When I got back into the hobby, I got some champions path and pulled the two chase charizards quickly. It felt cool for a day but I sold it immediately. I realized I was only buying packs to just rip open carelessly to find the chase to make a few hundred. It got old so fast and thank God I found E4 and Smpratte’s Patreon or I would’ve said forget this. I like money but flipping is such a joyless activity, I just leave the money on the table over and over. It’s all compounded by the YouTube flipper scene. If those are the people into those cards, it’s such a turn off to me, that even if it was the greatest hand drawn art ever, I wouldn’t touch it with a 30 Ft pole. None of them actually enjoy the product, it’s literally a reselling game. That worries me long term.
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