I see a recent jpn uptrend in modern FA trainers are easily hitting the thousand dollar range in a PSA 10… What makes the Waifu cards so wanted, specifically in japanese? I’m new to the japanese market so would love to learn what makes these FA trainers so special especially comparing to english which are fractions of the jpn price
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From what I’ve read, some sets that have these certain cards were printed less, and also some of the cards were only printed in Japanese compared to English or another language. In addition, they’re just popular characters usually and people like the artwork.
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T&A
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-takes notes
I see thank you, did not know they were short printed
Should take short printing with lots of salt.
People in English still believe ‘alt arts’ are rarer than full arts.
Some even believe each card has a different pull rate.
Theres no way people actually believe that right?
What happened to posting once a month on the forum
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Japanese full art trainer cards are Secret Rares whereas in English a full art trainer is just an “okay” pull. I don’t feel like diving into the psychology of waifu collectors beyond that lol
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sorry idk what that means
Oh i did not know they were considered scr and english is just fa, thought they were very similar in pull rate. And yeah I wonder what the psychology of that is
In Japan each set gets about a month to 2 months before the next one is released, so that probably plays a role in sets not being printed as much. Why do large prints if you have a new set coming out in a few weeks ya know. English just prints the set until it stops breathing.
Additionally, the way they do secret rares in Japanese is different than English, so you may get 1 secret a box while english you can luck out with multiple (and FA trainers and FA pokemon V arent even considered secrets)
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Cos the hobby is filled with borderline pedos
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imo: waifus represent this idea of idols, which is a lot more popular in Japan than anywhere else. However, recently this sensation of idols and the simpers has begun to transcend nationality and begun to make a rise here in the states. In addition, Anime’s popularity has been growing and has even begun to become mainstream drawing more attention to waifus hence the increase in price.
in other words supply and demand. Demand is up and Supply is not enough.
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Honestly, there’s an effect in this hobby where when something starts becoming expensive, there are a lot of people that jump on the bandwagon for a lot of different reasons and there is this positive feedback loop where things become popular because they become expensive because they become popular 
. Definitely not the only factor but it explains a lot of why they all became expensive seemingly out of nowhere.
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It started with Sun & Moon’s SM1M (base) Lillie, a popular character at a time when Japanese sets did not guarantee an SR per box. It further piled on with a High Class Pack (GX Battle Boost) chase card illustrated by an artist with a heavy cult following (Naoki Saito), and again with the Extra Battle Day winner prize card (also Naoki Saito). Lillie set several benchmarks for how expensive a modern Pokémon Supporter can really get, rippling to other popular female characters and/or cards by the same artist. People who have deep pockets collecting Weiss tcg, which covers popular anime characters on a much grander scale, also cross over to Pokémon for this. JP resellers already determined these will be the chase cards for JP sets going forward and marked them up as high as possible from the point of release, and unfortunately with the low availability (not supply) of set boxes in Japan people are buying into them. Scarlet & Violet’s Miriam is a glimpse of how large and accelerated that snowball is today
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They number in legion.
Reddit and YouTube are full of sheep taking influencers and dumb pull rate graphics as gospel and then they regurgitate it everywhere.
I used to play Pokemon Go and people used to believe nonsense like being the last one to press the ‘OK’ button would increase your catch rate in a raid.
I also blame twice baked Jake. He released a video during covid saying full art supporters were underrated.
Then overnight they blew up. Video link Let's Talk About Full Art Trainer Cards - YouTube
As someone who’s been collecting these since 2016 they’re no rarer than any other SR in any given set and a lot of these price spikes are to do with stores in Japan having insanely high buying prices and then flipping them.
Okjluv & opossum bud have done several videos on this in great detail recently.
Also waifu(s) are extremely popular in Japan across all tcgs (looking at you Weiss in particular) so when a popular character comes out it’s instantly one of the most expensive cards in the set.
Eg from violet ex the Miriam SAR came out of the gate at 500+ and the SR is still well above 200. The other female cards from the set are sub 30. And in scarlet Ex the Penny SAR is around 100 and the SR 50-60 and everything else sub 30
A lot of people don’t understand it, doesn’t make it less appealing for those that do like to collect it. There’s an audience for everything.
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