Other countries economies are important as their dollar strengthens against the USD with a strong economy, making it cheaper to purchase goods from America. Greater demand = stronger prices.
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If and IF it does retrace which I don’t see it personally. I will be buying some base unlimited sealed packs because I really love base set as its how I got started back in the day.
I think modern stuff can be very dangerous usually with reprints but I did buy a case a darkness ablaze because I think set is absolutely great it has everything you’d want from a modern set. I also pre-ordered about 4 or 5 elite trainers from Champions Path because elite trainer boxes from holiday sets usually go away faster than others (not to mention charizardV full art is very nice).
I’d love to pickup some wotc sealed soon so if there is a retrace thats what im grabbing asap. I think WOTC stuff has been undervalued for years and this influx of collectors just proves that.
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Every pikachu trophy card, then inmediatelly flip them for 30% more
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@r2d287, I’d be staying the course personally. I think the market is already stabilizing (I gave an example of PSA graded base set blastoises in the PWCC thread), so the “retrace” or “dip” you have in mind could be very different from what you imagine it to be.
Although, I’m just a collector. If I sold pokemon cards for a living, I’d have to give this much more thought.
Also, modern pokemon stuff only represents a fraction of what I own. Like others have explained, modern is probably going to tank first (if at all), in a more dramatic fashion, followed by the rest of the older stuff. People, including me, tend to underestimate supply of mass produced cards. It is a similar issue in MTG.
One of the best quotes I’ve seen on this site, regardless of how sour it is lol
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Lol I didn’t mean to offend you. Again, I’m making an observation. If I’m wrong, that’s fine. I figured it would make good conversation, at the very least a dream list of stuff you’d want to buy. Once again, I’m buying cards. I’m not calling the top, and waiting for a plummet. Bought several in the last two weeks. Got another 5 I’ll pull the trigger on. But I’m also working a dream list, maybe I’ll get it.
Also. My argument really revolves around the overall economy and what a downturn would entail for cards in general. If we don’t see a downturn, economically. Nothing really changes. If we do, then my guess is stuff like this comes down, in the same way that stocks would.
When I look at Covid, and the fact that so many sectors of the economy are in the red right now, it makes me wonder.
Yeah I get that^ that thread is actually why I made this one. Again, it was really meant to be more of a what if type thread. Like if I had a second chance I would by X card(s). It turned into a market discussion. But that’s why I kindve mentioned what I would buy a lot of, If given that opportunity.
tl;dr for everyone else → covid hitting was supposed to be this scenario, but while everything went red, collectibles went up. And when everything went green, collectibles continued to go up. And when everything that went green began to retrace, well collectibles continued to go up up up and up some more lol. Usually when sell offs happen, commodities and precious metals like gold and silver strengthen… did anyone see those prices mid-March? They were just as red… the weirdest thing. Then when lowered interest rates were announced to help stop the bleeding, the bleeding continued, through all of this collectibles kept going up. Now that commodities and their relationship to markets and cycles (let’s say so called recession or eminent one) are starting to correct themselves → gold and silver are on an insaneeee run, well you know what!!! Collectibles still going up up and more up! Lol.
Your cardboard is safe.
[here a nice long reply to this since you indicated you were interested and enjoy these types of discussions]
Not sure what the 2007-09 dot come bust is (that documented bubble in history is usually associated to the end of the 90s early 00’s – which for the most part was supposed to happen again this time around with all the massive amounts of investment poured into tech startups, but which hasn’t happened. The investors and lenders just applied the lessons learned from that era and it seems to have panned out quite well) but if you’re referring to the recession of 08, that was the housing market crisis (the main catalyst) combined with decades and decades of shady and buried corporate dealings lol.
“Sooo when that happens, what do people do? They sell stocks, collectibles, etc to weather it.”
It did happen. Covid happened, it was supposed to happen, but it didn’t. People did indeed sell their stocks, to buy what? Collectibles 
and collectibles are much harder to sell than stocks (the liquidity aspect), yes, but you know what’s even harder? For a collector to actually desire and PART with their collectibles. People would rather “figure it out” if they were strapped for cash than sell their collectibles vs. clicking a few buttons and liquidating some stocks, taking the tax hit, etc. In an age where everything seemed to be moving entirely digital and virtual, people are longing for the tangibility of things again. Silver is currently on the biggest bull run since that post recession/mid starting to get out of it period… and what’s even more strange? It’s not that silver is going up in price, or the increased demand for it, it’s the increased demand for it in the form of cold hard bullion among the entry and mid level investors or new entrants to the market. Less people want a paper or certificate or to login to an account to see their silver at work, they want it in front of them, in their secured storage facilities, etc. Smaller investors or less experienced ones are opting to bear the risk of storing, the fees involved for the transport, all that, just to own their silver in physical form. If you live in North America and have friends at a bank or tellers at branches that offer bullion orders, ask them if there’s been an oddly higher request and demand for the product in that form…
Are people selling off assets like wildfires? Yes, 1000%. But they’re selling off things they never truly ever accepted or purchases they never really agreed with. Examples being housing. There is absolutely no reason that a retired couple, whose children are married or just not living at home anymore need a 5000 sq ft home in a wildly popular suburb of whatever city they’re from when the actual utilization of space is like less than 20%. You’re using 1000 sq ft of space, yet you need to pay for utilities for the full 5000 sq ft, you need to spend 5x the amount of time cleaning, you have 5x the amount of potential repairs that can arise, etc. It’s been a decision that is just long overdue that’s it. A retired couple that’s healthy and well off will fare much better in a nice modern-built condominium that has tenants and landlords of a similar profile. I’m not suggesting nursing homes and stuff, you get the gist. So, it only makes sense for them to sell off their HIGHLY PRIZED AND SOUGHT after asset to downsize and begin to live an actual retirement, less clutter, less obligations, more freedom, easier mobility and access, closer communities, etc. And on the trade side? You just allowed a newly married hard working couple with their professional backgrounds and careers the opportunity to move into a space they can call home and begin their journey of building a family. Single-dwelling home inventory is extremely low and scarce in highly sought after neighbourhoods of major cities.
I really don’t think “collectibles” or Pokemon cards are going to be a catalyst or even collateral damage of any of the bigger outcomes that are to come. There’s much much bigger problems that are brewing right now. Such as low forms and entry level positions of employment. Good luck to you all in your hiring endeavours. Nobody’s coming to flip your burgers for minimum wage or stock up your shelves. You felt it before covid, and you’re feeling it more than ever right now. Younger generations are just becoming smarter, the markets are becoming smarter, capitalistic mentality and culture is becoming more widely attainable by all.
If anything, in my opinion based on what I’ve observed, people have just realized with these subsidies cheques just HOW LITTLE they actually need to survive and how much more appreciative they are about maintaining healthy work-life balances, the synergies that exist with your mood, your energy, your well being when you have more time to focus on yourself, your family, your friends, your self-learning, and all that stuff. How much happier you are knowing you are trusted by your superiors and your bosses to be able to perform well and stay on the ball from the comfort of your home. How impactful the gratitude you receive daily from them serves to maintain and balance your confidence. So the only thing that is happening and that is a major cause for concern for the economy as a whole and society isn’t that “people don’t want to work” “people are lazy”, no… people don’t want to work for YOU and for crumbs, people want to work for THEMSELVES or with others not for others. They’ve realized how little they actually need to survive and consequently they realize how attainable that amount is (while working much harder, with longer hours and more risk and responsibility) by being an entrepreneur and using the tools and their surroundings that are readily available to them to create INCOME, not “passive income” like all these people and gurus try to claim, not a “side business”, a BUSINESS. To put it in perspective, even if this doesn’t qualify as running your own business, it qualifies as working on your own time and I know more individuals today during this covid era that are signed up on platforms like TaskRabbit and Amazon FLEX producing average amounts of income and when it came time to go back to work, they said no. They prefer the concept of working on their own time, when and how they want… they accept that the amount of effort they are willing to put is 100% correlated to the amount of $ they will earn, with no attachments. This is the much bigger and MACRO aspect of the economic crisis that is looming.
The virus just helped accelerate and light the fire to those who were overdue to retire, who are now learning to appreciate and question the time they have left with themselves and their loved ones. *ding ding* pick up the phone and start calling older and aging / due to retire business owners, you can even take over someone’s entire company today with 0$ investment, all you need is some passion and drive and to make a convincing argument. You can skip 5-15 years of foundational business building with one phone call, mark my words.
And on the other end, it pushed super average individuals with low-levels and forms of knowledge to figure sh*t out. To figure out how to find and use the tools and the resources they have available to them, what they actually want and need in life, and especially how they can earn and make enough income to maintain this balance.
I’m on my phone, I meant housing crisis and dot com bust. The last two downturns I remember. Good read though
You make a good point on the employment aspect. I’ve seen this firsthand. I recruit for large technology companies and I’m working jobs that have a 200k OTE for people that have 5yrs experience. Things are rocking, but there is def a shortage of skilled labor type positions and entry level. My guess is we start to see a lot more automation and reduction in those types of positions anyway.
Automation was the scare right after the recession, companies amped up their R&D and started looking into options. A couple scare articles came out and went viral that McDonald’s was going to replace employees blabla… well you know what McDonald’s is 1/1 companies in my opinion who knows how to do things. They predicted 10+ years ago that the problem they were going to have wasn’t going to be the fact that they wouldn’t be able to afford labour or the direction of minimum wage like everyone who read these articles thought… I remember how everyone was saying they wanted to replace “our jobs with robots” so they can make more money… hmm no lol more like they completely predicted they wouldn’t be able to hire employees anymore and unskilled entry level labour such as that required to fill positions at a fast food joint anymore because the newer and younger generations weren’t going to accept the wages required for them to operate.
And then all of a sudden all these articles and new information blabla went quiet… as if these companies “shelved” this idea or project… probably not. They probably vigorously tested it and continue to to be well prepared for the day it happens. Low and behold fast forward in 2018, then 2019 and now 2020… and you are finding a TON of fast food joints that are in malls and their food courts, or corner strip mall plazas, etc. that are shutting down… and for the strangest reasons of them all… not because of a lack of business or demand, but for lack of finding people to run the shops. There’s dozens of subway stores that closed in 2019 because of this if not more… and it’s just going to get worst and now this virus is really going to test and challenge those who were already feeling the pressure.
And to the question of what I will buy, “when things correct itself”, it’s probably just some sealed boxes/cases more on the modern side of things and a few Japanese things that I feel might be a bit overpriced only because of the current supply chain and logistical issue of things because they are still quite accessible in Japan themselves. Oh and also maybe a Nintendo Switch Animal Crossing bundle at a reasonable price haha
Don’t sweat rudeness dude, virtually every thread turns into market discussion at the moment.
I think you made good points and have seen strange things in other markets too simply due to supply/demand.
Gyms are shut, people still want to lift, stores have been bought out of economic weight plates. People are buying/selling rusty old folthy plates for more than you can get them new. Thats only ONE example. Strange times indeed.
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Speculating is fun & we all do it, but when all’s said and done it’s futile, just buy what you love. Talking about Pokemon in the same terms as financial markets is unhealthy & I’ve been guilty of it myself. I had a big rant about it on here the other month. Collect Pokemon, invest in a multi-asset stock portfolio.
People love to talk about economic cycles and charts and trends and flippity-floos, but even seasoned financial wizards always seem to forget that past performance does not guarantee future results. PTCG will probably never reflect the classic cyclical behaviour of stocks, bonds, or other financial vehicles because it’s a totally different class of asset, driven by different market forces. A common philosophy between stocks and PTCG that does ring true however is that if you wait and try to time the market to buy something you want, you may end up getting burned. If you buy what you love to collect then it won’t matter what the prices do.
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Sure, but there are quite a few sectors that are up as well. For (a very small) example, my wife is an accountant manager at an international chicken finger restaurant business that was doing gangbusters before the pandemic hit.
However, they are doing EVEN Better than that now; in fact, business has increased to a level above what they were anticipating without the pandemic.
This is just a small subset obviously, but the fact is that the vast majority of the massive number job losses you see on the news are (so far) hitting very specific jobs, most of which did not exactly have a bunch of disposable income to begin with.
Although I hope prices will go down again, I doubt they will. I’ve been collecting Pokémon cards for five years now, and although I’ve seen some individual cards going down, the overall market and 99% of all products as a whole has been going up, up, up, and will continue to go up. No doubt about that.
Just take the PSA-10 1st ed. Base Set Charizard as prime example: when I returned collecting they were selling for 20-30k USD, which was already extremely high in comparison to the 5-7.5k some people remembered from a decade prior. After a year they were selling for 35-40k USD, then 40-45k, etc. etc. The last one sold a few weeks ago for 75k USD. It wouldn’t surprise me if we’ll see a 100k sale before the end of 2021.
Sure, the pandemic caused a lot of collectors to return. They cleaned their attic or helped cleaning their parent’s house and came across their old collection, or they were simply bored because their school or office was closed. Based on the amount of new posts here on the Efour forum and new members, we can already confirm a lot more new collectors are added to the Pokémon community. And the more people there are, the higher prices will rise due to limited supply for the demand, especially for older cards and sealed products.
But, getting back to the original topic and look at it from the other side: what would need to happen for prices to go substantially down again?
The supply should outweigh the demand. It’s as simply as that. All markets and prices are based on supply and demand. Currently there are a lot of new collectors with roughly the same supply, so prices went up because of that. For prices to go down, there are only a few options:
- Either collectors should stop again. If this were to happen, there are less collectors buying at the same time, and those collectors that stopped will also sell parts of their collection to supply the market. Collectors that stop and sell of their stuff therefore have two positive affects (if we want it to go down) on the market at once.
- Certain products flood the market unexpected. Improbable and extremely unlikely to decrease the overall market, but might affect certain products; but even if something like this occurs, it’s usually pretty short-term. Take the BGS black label 10 SV49 Shining Charizard for example. The first one sold for 10k USD, because black labels were a pretty rare occurrence for Pokémon cards. Then more and more came in and prices dropped to 1-2k. Yet now, despite the pop of 150+, they’re back up to 8-10k again…
- The economy in general collapses. Loads of people losing jobs, inflation, people losing houses due to natural disasters or war, etc. Things that are secondary necessities of life, like collectibles, will in that case be sold to be able to life. When this pandemic started, we thought that was about to happen due to people losing jobs, but instead the opposite happened due to people who re-found their love for Pokémon after seeing their old collections.
From these three options, 3 already kinda happened due to the pandemic, yet the prices were going up regardless (even more rapidly than before!..). Option 2 is only short-term and only affects a few products at a time instead of the entire market. Option 1 is the most likely option for a decreasing market, so let’s look into that a bit deeper.
A lot of us on the forum are returning collectors. Some very recently (this year), but others from a few years back (I myself started collecting again mid-2015 for example). Yet, although some have stopped collecting again over the years, almost everyone collects for at least 2-3 years before deciding to stop or put a pause on their collection again (if they stop at all - it’s also just a rough estimation). Because of this, it’s likely the same applies to all the new collectors now that were bored during the pandemic. So even if this collector-boom will burst again, it won’t be anytime soon for sure.
In addition, which might be the most important reason: almost no one would sell products at a loss. A lot of products are being bought now for record prices. But even if those buyers decide to sell their products again, the sell price should be roughly the same to at least break even, or even higher. This is one of the main reasons why we most likely won’t see a huge decrease in prices. Sure, if there is a lot of supply people will compete with each other for the lowest price. But even then, a lot of people would prefer to not sell at all (or at a later time) than to go much lower than their own purchase price. A small loss in comparison to their buy price, ok. But a huge loss? Very unlikely and also pretty stupid from a seller’s standpoint.
Although I wish the prices would go down again, there are too many factors that either stabilize or increase the market in comparison to lowering it, so it’s very unlikely to go down. I (unfortunately) have no doubt in my mind that prices will continue to rise for years or even decades to come. My only hope is that it won’t continue to rise in such a rapid fashion as these last few months, since it’s hard to keep up sometimes… 
TL;DR: the market won’t go down, it will continue to go up. The only question is how fast it will continue to rise in the future. (And yes, it’s indeed going up way too fast these past few months imho.)
Greetz,
Quuador
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Really interesting points and conversation. As someone who is recently back into collecting, the current prices are my “normal”. I’m trying to be patient in my collecting goals but know that my focus (Base, Jungle, Fossil, HF), are not likely to retrace as much as I’d like.
For me, I am just trying to keep my eyes peeled on any good deals for singles, packs etc. and trying to enjoy the process as I go.
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I plan to keep buying all of the same cards whether prices go up or down. BUT if there was a massive dip in certain items, I would probably go on a massive buying spree of those items like PSA 10 first edition base, gold stars, key set cards even though I have nearly everything I need for my collection… and that’s why prices for things like that won’t be taking a massive dip. It’s a fantasy
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