Dude. I literally assembled a PSA 9 JP holo set of Neo Genesis. Overpaid for almost every card. Now I have to sell for a loss unless I Diamond hand it for who knows how long.
Donāt get me wrong, I love Neo and Gen 2 is my favorite era but it just feels pretty bad buying at the peak. Whatever
Same bro
Not a particular card itself but sometimes the whole process of ordering from Japanese secondary market. Whenever the card arrives in a condition way worse than advertised or itās clearly not the same card, I always think that I should know better by now on how to buy from the Japanese market.
In the goal of looking for good deals, I have the tendency to sometimes gloss over some clear red flags by the sellers because the card listed is very cheap.
Cheers!
Poncho Pikachu 208/XY-P and Pretend Team Skull Pikachu 013/SM-P.
Recently bought them in a cardshop in Tokyo and didnāt even care to price check as I was so excited at the prospect of owning them at that very moment.
Sent them for grading, they both came back a PSA 10, and they would both have been cheaper if bought already graded.
Wouldnāt say I regret buying them āper seā as these now have a personal story attached to them that they wouldnāt if I had just outright bought them from ebay, but I regret being so unable to control my excitement that I didnāt even check if they were fairly priced.
When I started collecting again in 2020 I bought a bunch of ex era holos and reverse holos in MP condition. I picked them up because you donāt see them often in an LCS. The novelty of owning them outweighed the condition for me at the time. I was flipping through my binder one day and realized how dissatisfied I was with their poor conditions. I eventually traded them into the shop I bought them from to fund an alternate art aerodactyl. I learned that while I love the ex era holos, I want to hold them in my collection in NM condition (a work in progress).
What kind of red flags?
These are criteria based on my personal experiences so it may not apply across the board.
Low seller feedback. Very basic check but sometimes the price seems too tempting that you want to roll the dice and gloss over the low ratings.
No pictures of the back or enough pictures. Very recently I won 2 cards on YJP auctions, but when they got home, the back was completely scratched and had a lot of whitening and edge wear. I did check the seller before bidding and I recognized them because I have purchased from them before, but the auction had no photos of the back. I should know by now that it is a gamble regardless of the seller. Most diligent sellers provide pictures from all angles.
Particular card that remains unsold for a long time (Mercari JP). This is a tricky one to explain but there are instances where the seller has a lot of recent sales, but if you go deeper on their page of listings, you can find some cards for cheap which have remained unsold. It has happened now on a couple of instances that when I have purchased the card, it feels like not the same card or due to the long time span between the advertisement and the sale, the card condition has deteriorated. These are all raw cards, so it is dependent on storage and handling etc.
I almost always send a message to the seller via my middle-man services for any significant purchase to try and negotiate the pricing for a better deal. I donāt do this if the card is cheap in the first place. So I lose another way to vet the seller which I have access to otherwise.
I say these are my top red flags. I think overall I do have a lot of patience, but good price + wanting to finish the set + not willing to pay ridiculous prices for modern stuff creates a perfect storm where I tend to ignore the most basic checks which I usually carry out.
Cheers!
My biggest regret still stands as one of my earliest purchases. Bought a PSA 7 Unlimited Dark Blastoise holo right at the peak of the 2020 hype. I think it ended up being the 2nd highest price ever for that card, and still ranks as one of my most expensive purchases. Of course the price now is like 3x+ less than what I paid.
How much was it?
$208
Not too bad I feel like
Still I think the 3rd most expensive single card I have ever bought. Iām quite cheap, so its a lot to drop at once.
Bought 6 Hidden fates Charizard tins and a few Champions Path Dubwool V boxes at retail to see if it could peak some sort of interest. It didnāt, and the tins are so flimsy I canāt use them for anything.
As a kid I bought a raw Fossil Cloyster from an LGS for the price of 1,5 Fossil boosters to appease Comic Book Guy who was annoyed with me taking so much time to look through the store binder.
As a kid I bought fake Jungle packs from a toy store. I had already had my fill of Jungle so I was unsure whether to buy them or not and they were pretty expensive. Thought they looked weird but hey, itās an official chain store right? By the time I opened them and found Gym Heroes stickers inside the shop had closed and I never got back there to get a refund.
Bought a Gym Challenge 1st ed box when I should have bought something else. Not at all a waste of money like the three above but very out of character.
I speculated on a PSA 9 German 1st edition Base Set Raichu during the boom. Mind you I donāt even like German cards, nor had I ever owned any before, but I bought it from overseas for a good price, thinking I would be able to sell it locally over time. However, with the card taking months to arrive, and after getting hit with nearly 60% import fees, I ended up paying a lot more than what the card was/is worth, as prices had come down quite a bit by the time I received the card. So Iāll probably never be able to break even on it, let alone make a profit. But dang it I refuse to sell that card at a loss.
Oh, and Shining Fates ETBs. Those dropped like 40% after I bought them, and will probably never recover.