I had this conversation with @zorloth yesterday and it had me thinking what other people believe. We were talking about how the market swings and how our goals have changed/progressed since we have similar goals regarding English sealed and singles (I know very little to be able to comment on non English).
Our conversation mainly was in regards to how cheap singles are right now, graded and raw. But also how sealed box prices have grown/remained steady (excluding sets like genesis, base and sets that received extra media attention to inflate them).
Imo many people view sealed as safer than most singles when it comes to holding value. There’s obviously tons of sealed out there but that’s to be expected in a huge franchise like this. It is sorta baffling to me to see how little sealed product was “dumped” at peak. It means people simply don’t have it (many decently rare sets saw 2 or less public sales in 3 years), or people really believe in this IP. It’s also my understanding that Pokemon was never an investment vehicle to be taken seriously until lately. This could explain the seemingly small amount of sealed that shows up relative to the size of this property as people probably just opened stuff for fun rather than thought about future value.
Pokemon is different than any other tcg in where your “gotta catch them all” mentality has us grading non holo commons and selling them for hundreds in some cases. It’s hard to understand this market in many ways.
In my opinion the discrepancy between sealed product and it’s expected value has never been larger. But I don’t think that’s a bad thing or an abnormal thing either. To me it makes perfect sense that the real value in a tcg comes from big chase cards in high grades and sealed product. Pokemon is so unique and there are collectors for everything it becomes hard to define a “normal” market. Maybe normal for Pokemon is that everything old and Holo has value, maybe not. Maybe Pokemon fans paying top dollar for non holos will last forever, maybe it was a passing fad. To me singles are certainly undervalued rn, while sealed is more or less valued appropriately. I’d normally come to the conclusion that sealed is overvalued rn, but as someone who hunts it daily and can’t really find anything decent it makes me think otherwise. (Note I mainly hunt ex era sealed stuff, I know early WOTC is everywhere, but it has been relatively steady too so it kinda proves the same point)
I’m curious as to what others think. Idk if my thoughts came across clearly here lol. Been doing a lot of thinking about the market lately
Its very hard to create fomo with scarce sealed boxes because the majority is not able to track the price increases.
99% of my knowlegde is in base set.
What i found interesting is that lower grade 1st edition base holos have about the same roi as the 9 / 10 grades.
I also found out that every single base 1st edition holo in any grade has outperformed sealed product in the past 5 years.
Yes even a psa 6 1st edition Poliwrath.
Probably mostly because of accessibility and affordability and a bit of fraud with resealed product.
But with the massive increase in streamers and box rippers this all might change over the coming years.
I sold most of my English WOTC boxes at the peak, but kept my early Japanese boxes.
It feels really weird to see the singles, even high graded Charizards) to be dirt cheap, but the box prices remaining stable or even increasing in value.
So I can only agree to what you observe with the ex era to be true for early Japanese cards and boxes too.
If this is the new normal or due for a correction, I can’t tell.
The answer is streamers. The easiest content to replicate are opening videos. Basically as long as they are around, they are permanently removing sealed product. While typing this I see the financial opportunity in buying up boxes, but its just so boring.
Smart to sell WOTC off in the peak. I was buying back then lol. Did you have sets like base-genesis where the peak was pretty abrupt? Seems that discovery-skyridge didn’t get much retracement like pre genesis did
I personally really like boxes. Idk why but the idea of owning something that’s supposed to have been opened and gone is cool. It helps me keep them sealed too since I genuinely like the sealed item more than even if I got all 10s on all chase cards.
I do think streamers are making a serious indent in the market. The big box sellers tell me that 80% or more of their box sales go straight to rippers. That is a serious number. But to think that mass produced boxes are being wiped out by a few dozen YouTubers seems odd to me. Not denying that it is happening but imo there really should be more of this stuff surfacing. It just isnt
I sadly sold my Genesis for €600 and Revelation for €3000, both 1st edition, years before that. Probably bought most of my Japanese boxes with that money, so I can’t complain. Still crazy to look back sometimes. Different world now…
I don’t own any sealed vintage boxes, but do get the appeal. There is something that makes my smooth brain happy owning something where the population can only decrease instead of increase, like a graded card. Total population of cards cards out of print is of course fixed, primarily referring to conditional rarity type things, like a psa 10 gold star.
The risks of having a reseal I don’t know about for years, as well as the perceived difficult of eventually selling a sealed box has always been a deterrent, though. For that reason, I kinda like the PWCC opened and verified boxes. Idk if they sell for less than a “true” sealed box, but the peace of mind would be worth something to me.
I agree the risk is there and it’s a serious one. Especially if you’re getting a good deal from someone who isn’t a full time.box seller. You gotta either pay up (and still have small risk) or take the deal and have a higher risk. I’ve done both and there’s no real good way to navigate it.
As for if the pwcc boxes sell for less, I don’t think they do. Like I said a good 80% of the box market is rippers. They don’t care what it looks like
To provide some further specificity to what @wisewailmer is talking about here, consider EX Dragon:
Over the past 1-1.5 years, EX Dragon singles have almost universally declined. This is unsurprising given the sudden increase in the price of cards that happened in 2020/21.
The surprising thing to me is the value of the sealed product. Over the past 1-1.5 years, EX Dragon booster boxes have increased in value (despite the aforementioned decrease in the singles value). From what I’ve been told, EX Dragon boxes are now trading for >$15k, and selling almost exclusively to people intending to open the boxes.
There are a handful of considerations for me:
First, who the fuck is buying into EX Dragon breaks at $550/pack? For reference, you could buy 3x PSA/CGC 9 Dragonite exs for that price. Yes, you read that correctly: you can buy three of the chase ex from the set in mint condition for the price of one unweighed pack. I’ve seen some crazy discrepancies before, but never one of this magnitude.
I get it, there’s a large gap between the value of old singles and the value of old sealed. The thing is: people are opening these boxes. They’re not being bought by box collectors. If they were, then the discrepancy would make a lot more sense.
Back when an EX Dragon box had an EV of >$4k and a sealed box value of $10k, I strongly felt that the box was a better deal. Now, the EV is like $2k and the box value is like $16k, I can’t even imagine buying the box. It’s not quite enough to compel me to sell my box, but $16k is just beyond absurd compared to the EV.
Does this mean the cards are undervalued? Not necessarily. But I will say this (as someone who owns both a lot of sealed product and singles from this era): I feel a lot more comfortable buying the singles at the current prices than the sealed product. I see a lot of value in EX sealed product, but these prices (especially given the product is being opened rather than kept sealed) are beyond insane.
To give a bit of further perspective: back in late 2019 (or very early 2020), I paid ~$120 for a PSA 9 EX Dragon Dragonite ex and $60 for a sealed EX Dragon booster pack (from TCA Gaming). Now, the Dragonite ex is worth ~$180 and the pack is worth…more than that?
Anyway, just some disorganized thoughts. All I know is I’m much less eager to buy the final EX box I need (Ruby, for probably like $12k) than buy the cards I need. I just don’t see how the current EX box prices are sustainable if breakers are the primary market.
I think the only way box prices are sustainable is when the breakers eventually leave, they leave nothing left. Just the bones of the endangered species they ripped open.
It’s possible that this is the case. But it’s also possible that it isn’t. I think ex in general has the room to grow from simple buyer pool aging into it,but many older WOTC collectors are already deep into ex despite not growing up with it at all
Also I know we mostly talked early ex. But gold star set evs are way way out of wack. The one chase card in the set changes everything
Another thing is when the market swings back to favoring singles, it only incentivizes more breaks. So in theory when the prices of sealed would drop would be now
While I 100% agree with your practical analysis, and am in that camp myself, I think the product being opened is only part of the equation. Basically when a streamer opens a dragon box, its like this weeks episode, rather than the literal product itself if that makes sense.
I have heard from a streamer friend that when they open a “rarer” box it does lead to better viewership even if the expected value of it isn’t there
Basically what I wonder is if this opening of the alligator mouth (as Rudy calls it) in ev/box price discrepancy is normal in aging tcgs or if Pokemon is acting a bit differently right now
Dude we’ve talked about this before. Stop reminding me there was a rose colored time where I passed on a confirmed shadowless box for $600 because I found the $200 something difference to unlimited to be too great when all I wanted to do was save up to open a few boxes.
Idk if any tcg has gotten to that point yet. But Pokemon is still mass produced so I also don’t know if we will get to a point where there is say 100 boxes of a specific set in existence. We could easily get to a point where there are more collectors who want it sealed than boxes exist I think if Pokemon keeps growing and boxes keep being opened.
But these box breaks of vintage are somewhat unique to Pokemon I think. Not an expert on other tcgs but I can’t think of any other tcgs that have weekly vintage breaks that sell out. And these are still happening when the singles market is down and the economy is also down
That would make perfect sense if streamers were monetizing the content itself. But they aren’t. They’re selling the packs for a profit, which they’re only able to do because people are (somehow) willing to pay the insane and utterly irrational prices they’re charging.
Yes that is still part of the parasocial experience. Its like when people pay for a concert. I can listen to the music at home for free, but part of the price is the experience. While its not exactly my cup of tea, I think that is whats happening with streamers. Its a mix of experience, entertainment and potentially the chance to get a hit, which adds to the experinece!
