Haha I’m saying!!
Don’t get it twisted: a PSA 10 1st Edition Base Set Charizard still had insane value in 2019. The growth of the hobby didn’t just happen overnight. There was plenty of increase before 2020 even began.
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For sure but I wouldnt have known
I got my PSA 10 1st edition Dark Charizard holo for $360 in 2018. It wasn’t even that long ago that cards were waayyy less.
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I have been back in it since like 2012, I recall seeing 1st Ed zards, TONS of em on eBay for 300$ ungraded and NM. I bought one for that price. It got a 7 and I eventually sold it for 800$. Alongside that, all singles were phenomenally cheaper. I bought a handful of the SL series of Shinies, call of legends, for 1$ each at my local shop.
Not to mention all of the classic sets that I was able to get cheaply because I was the only one purchasing old school cards. Definitely product was easy to come by on store shelves as well. No problems there.
I guess prices rising is a double edged sword. While my collection value has increased substantially, I’ve had to deal with completing collections that I was putting off till later…that has proven to be prohibitively expensive. But I’ve been putting my foot down and doing it for the rarer cards.
Overall, both times have their ups and downs. New product is certainly really cool right now. I think Pokémon has found their mojo with recent full arts and secret Rares and stuff. Back in the day, the classics were much cheaper but new stuff, I personally felt was meh.
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I just got a headache reading that price
Psa 7 for $800
I’m paying thousands for beat up ones
No way around it, I know thats the way it goes in this world of tcg but its hard to hear sometimes haha
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Dark charizard you mean right lol
Compared to the past say 10 years of pokemon it has changed A LOT. prices of cards have increased 10 fold. 2007-2012 I’d say were the easy prime days of finding WotC cards. I remember base set,jungle, and fossil boxes were like $100 or less for months. You can walk into stores no problem finding cards like nothing, buy up the entire store and they would still restock in days.Single cards were stupid cheap, Neo shiny cards were like 20-100, crystal cards were like 300 or less, gold stars were easy to track and bid on,and heck even finding japanese base set cards were easy too.
now its changed, I barely see any pokemon card in stores now which hasnt happened in so long. I see people that dont even care for pokemon get into the hobby just to try and flip for a quick buck, so many resellers I just see now on their phone trying to see whats good for flipping and it makes me laugh hard. I’ve seen many new players into the game start collecting japanese cards more than ever and many people are discovering lots of the older promos. Now even twitch streamers that do games are getting into Pokemon. Lots of new collectors are starting to get back into the game and even some crappy sets in the past 5 years now have started to increase
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Yeah u won the lottery on that
Has to be
Whoops. Haha yes.
What happens when the hype settles and people lose intrest? Have we seen that before?
Honestly I have barely noticed a change, I have been having a blast since day one. Stuff changes and I just adjust my goals, demand and price changes don’t dictate how I feel about the hobby. There is always great value cards and awesome stuff to collect.
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Much the same as a lot of other people here, my experience with the hobby was pretty chilled in the bygone days and everything was based mainly on fun, not money.
I was collecting from 1999 up until BW sets hit, then only picked up a few packs here and there up until XY Breakpoint, when I got back into it fully.
Mid 2000’s was probably the most interesting time I remember for buying cards. After Expedition, it became physically tough finding anything for sale anywhere other than my local geek shop, where packs were an extortionate £5 each for Skyridge, Aquapolis & Ruby/Sapphire. By around Ex Team Aqua/Magma, it was possible to actually find packs in regular retail stores for £2.50 again, thankfully.
Online was a different story though. Stuff was plentiful, conditions were usually decent and graded cards were hard to find (especially here in the UK), but there wasn’t a great deal of competition most of the time when something did pop up. I won a BGS graded Grand Party for £7.50 on eBay once around 2004/5. Crazy looking back.
Neo Destiny Shinings were between £10-£30, Gold Stars were topping out around £50 and most Japanese cards struggled to reach much higher than £10. Vintage WoTC was dirt cheap too - I remember thinking a base set Charizard going for £20 was obscene…those were the days!
It sucked that there was noone to share the hobby with at the time (YuGiOh was the “in” thing), but collecting was still fun because there was no obsessing over “WILL THIS GET A 9 OR A 10?!?” on every card, and you could take your time to casually buy what you wanted for the cost of a child’s allowance/pocket money.
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@chewy, “What happens when the hype settles and people lose intrest? Have we seen that before?”
there is always an ebb and flow to the market. I sold a bunch of gold stars during the last “downturn” in line 2016 or something. Wasn’t much of a downturn, just a settling. I mistook it as a downturn due to lack of knowledge at the time. Prices settled for a little while and stayed relatively even. People will always be coming and going.
However, I think efour’s growth is case and point of the main hobbyist group growing and staying large. The inflow and outflow is form more casual individuals. But the hardcore group is staying strong and increasing it seems. I expect that group to stay strong and continue to grow with each popularity surge.
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Most people’s purchases were made without the expectation of large future growth (or any growth) until around 2014ish. Until then you could also find mint quality binder sets on eBay because grading outside of base 1st Ed was unusual.
Once cards get to a certain price your mindset shifts. Even if you never intend to resell a card, there is a big difference in spending $15 on a binder card vs spending $250. The increase in market / stock talk is inevitable with rising prices. When you’re talking paying $50 for a full set, it’s not the end of the world if it takes a year to sell when you relist on eBay for $50. When that set becomes $5,000, unless you are very wealthy, the rational thought process is you’d prefer not to be flushing money down the drain. Hence price speculation and investment threads.
And to reiterate – when people reminisce about cheap prices, it’s worth noting that those prices were the market prices. So there was no reason to think of them as cheap. In fact I was often salty about prices that would be considered a joke today. I remember thinking $115 for an EX Team Rocket Returns pack art set was ludicrous and passing on it since I had just got Expedition for $100.
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Chansey and pidgey thanks for those examples!!! Very helpful thank you…now I wanna ask what keeps you going year after year? Alot of U guys are so well informed its evident the hobby is able to keep your attention year after year.
What do you do ? What does long term collecting entail?
As someone who’s newer, this really hit me for some reason. I find that when I add cards I want to my watchlists, they normally are gone within a few days, if that. I think the “relaxing” part you mentioned is gone today, but exists in different forms. For example, a large portion of my friend group has gotten back into collecting, and it’s really nice to just sit in a call and share our collections and new purchases. This wasn’t something I could do a year or even 6 months ago.
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Back in 1998, I was able to buy no-rarity C/UCs for 20 yen each, and no-rarity holos for 50 yen each. Good times!
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For sure, what keeps me coming back is simply enjoyment. If you saw my thread the other day about showing me your massive collections of a single card that you love. That about sums it up. Every once in a while I look through my binder and just get that feeling. That feeling of “damn, I’ve done this much?! I have all these cards that are so freaking cool!” Accompanied by a surge of some emotion, likely excitement and joy.
Admittedly now the goal completion aspect has a little more weight due to the prices of some of these cards. Nonetheless though, I get the same feeling no matter the price point. The same feeling I got when I bought my Mint Neo Genesis set for 220$. The same feeling got when my Lugia came back a ten but was still worth nothing compared to now. The same feeling I got when I was going through common and uncommon cards with a friend to find art for the artist competition the other day. Just love of the hobby and love of the art. That’s about it for me. And that as well comes in ebbs and flows for me at least as I said earlier. Sometimes it wakes for Pokémon, but it’s more or less like home base for me. It’s strong place where I’m always comfortable jumping right back in and enjoying the process of collecting.
in comparison, Yugioh is something I love and enjoy collecting, but until recently the prices were almost entirely dictated on viability in the meta. That made it confusing and even more difficult and knowledge based. Therefore it was tough to “just jump right back in”.
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