Did something happen? Does this have anything to do with the gold star auction? It’s even higher than the mewtube chase card! >.<
Stimulus checks and unemployment payments.
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I can’t understand the reasoning for the shining legends price spikes. Both Ray and the shining mew are insanely inflated at the moment. I know prices across the board have risen, but these cards are not hard to grade at all and had very little demand prior to May. I sold two Rays for $80 apiece in April.
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It’s probably because of false equivalency, something I keep seeing in the hobby. It all originates from a super valuable card, in this case PSA 10 Gold Star Rayquaza. This card is so valuable for various factors (relatively low pop, most likely very few new 10s coming in the future, self-declared king of Gold Stars, hype). However, many collectors associate the card itself and many other aspects of the card with that value (which is flawed thinking), and in their mind the more a card is similar to English Ray Star PSA 10, the more similar it should be in value, even though that’s not necessarily true. First they will overpay for PSA 9s of the card (despite 9s having a relatively big card pool) because if the 10 is worth so much, surely the 9 can’t come far behind, right? Then they will associate the Japanese Ray Star with a higher value than other Japanese Gold Stars. Then they will make the wrong association that it’s the species and the status as shining itself that should command a premium, hence the Shining Legends Rayquaza rises in value.
This happens all the time. Typhlosion 17 PSA 10 rises in value drastically because its population is low due to difficult grading, and shortly after the PSA 9 rises in value, although the numbers don’t warrant it. A third example is Gold Star Torchic. The English PSA 10 commands a premium because it has the lowest pop of any English PSA 10 Gold Star, and the Japanese PSA 10 Gold Star Torchic also increased in value as a consequence although the situation for the Japanese variant is completely different and the Japanese cardpool for the PSA 10 isn’t nearly as limited.
People aren’t rational when they buy these cards for so much money. Instead they attribute the card’s worth to the wrong factors.
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This makes no sense, you could attribute this to any card in the hobby that isn’t the original “super valuable card.” There are lots of factors at play besides just false equivalency which I don’t even think is a serious factor. By your standards all other Charizard cards are somehow a false equivalency to 1st ed PSA 10 Base, all Rayquazas are a false equivalency to gold star PSA 10, the list goes on. Are all Charizard cards and all Rayquaza cards besides the “OG” PSA 10s overhyped and non-rational buys? Of course not.
The rise in 9 prices are literally a direct reaction to the rise in 10 prices and people being priced out. The demand is organic, and the price rises are real. PSA 9 prices are still significantly lower and in most cases just rise in tandem with the 10 prices. Want a mint condition gold star Ray or T17? Don’t have 15-20k for each? Start buying 9s (and a lot of people have).
No Pokemon card has an inherent worth. It’s all social constructions and value attributions that are achieved as a group process. In these cases, a simple answer is probably the best. Why is Shining Rayquaza jumping in price? Is it because tons of people had their sights set on a gold star Ray PSA 10 but just now with the recent price rises can’t afford it, so they jump ship to other items? A few maybe. But maybe it’s just because Shiny Rayquaza is badass, and people like having a card of it. Its rise is mirrored among other Shining Legends and shiny Rayquaza cards as well. Not saying the prices won’t retrace in the future, modern especially I think is the most vulnerable, but attributing it to some extensive “false-equivalency” process just doesn’t explain it.
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Tbh I’ve always thought those cards (ray and mew) were way underrated. I don’t know anything about the print volume or their difficulty to grade but they are cool freakin cards. I bought a bunch of them over the past year or so, when they were down to about $8 a card.
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People aren’t giving enough credit/acknowledgement of low wage Pokemon collectors that got laid off and are making more money sitting at home on unemployment than they were before the pandemic.
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That’s a huge spike… and the most recent PSA 10 sold for 250… I paid $58 each for my PSA 10 Mew + Rayquaza back in January 
.
No idea why the price spiked, but at the moment, but I know for a fact I’ll be spending my next few paychecks on Shining Legends product trying to pull Mew/Rayquaza cards and flip them.
Rising tide lifts all boats? It’s a huge spike compared to before for sure but it’s also still within a very reasonable range of spending. It’s mainly Mew and Rayquaza, maybe the others will spike too but it’s understandable for those two to spike earlier. Plus, looking at the Mew, it spiked and calmed down a bit, Rayquaza could do that too. Plus, $100-200 isn’t a ton of money for a card so I don’t think it’s crazy to see a fair bit of fluctuation on a card that’s fairly common and quite desirable. There’s a lot more eyes on the hobby right now so it’s in line with what we’re seeing elsewhere as well.
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We can agree to disagree, I certainly do think that false equivalency is a major factor in the hobby. I also wouldn’t choose Charizard for any comparison because no matter the scenario, Charizard will always behave differently from other cards because of its iconic status.
At this point in time, there are so many people who just want to make a quick buck. They see the prices rising and want a piece of the cake, so they offer their cards for completely exaggerated prices that have nothing to do with organic demand. Example 4: Japanese Crystal Ho-Oh PSA 10. The price so far was way behind the English version (~$400-500), but now that the English version has gained in value significantly (3k+), certain people are trying to sell their Japanese copy for over $4000, which is completely irrational. False equivalency. Just because the English version got sold for 3k, doesn’t mean the Japanese version is suddenly at 4k just because it’s the same card. Admittedly, this is a particuarly clumsy example of trying to make money, but from a psychological standpoint I can see why these seller attempt this. It’s very understandable that someone who wasn’t ready to pay a certain price for a PSA 9 will be willing to do so after seeing the PSA 10 spike by 300% regardless whether the value of the PSA 10 of the card was only attributed to the number of PSA 10 copies available and nothing else, as is the case for T17 (again false equivalence, coupled with FOMO on any Typhlosion 17 of decent quality and a general flaw in thinking which I call bargain misconception - mistaking even way too expensive articles as bargain when seen in relation to a more expensive version of the article).
Insidious people will also use these psychological flaws to their own advantage by manipulating the market. They will buy some PSA 9s of a card, then set up a sale of a PSA 10 for an insane price (using an accomplice or secondary account), ‘buy’ the PSA 10 themselves for that insane price and subseqently offer their PSA 9 copies for 300% of the price they bought it for (which the people who saw the PSA 10 sell for that insane price are now more likely to buy). Even better, the seller would sell the first PSA 9 for 300%, the second PSA 9 for 350% and the third PSA 10 for 400% of the price they bought it for, cause hey, that sure looks organic, doesn’t it? The last piece of the puzzle is selling the PSA 10 one year later when the artificial hype that the seller caused has inflated the card to even more insane levels. There are variants of such schemes that are even less obvious, for example doing this with certain subsets of cards e.g. all Gold Stars instead of just one card in different PSA grades. For example, once a PSA 10 Rayquaza Gold Star sells for 20k, most other Gold Stars will increase in value - not because the pop report warrants it but because people saw the Ray sell for 20k and now want to make more money, so the seller who sold the Rayquaza for 20k just might happen to have other Gold Stars he will sell shortly after the prices increased in general. It’s all market manipulation 101.
I’m not saying that the entire market consists of these shenanigans. But I can only advise people to not look at this hobby through rose-tinted glasses, in which everyone is acting fair and we are all driven by the love for the cards only. We have reached a point where people make tens of thousands selling Pokemon cards. Do you really think that these people aren’t asking themselves how to maximize their profit? Especially if they are doing it for their living? I’m not trying to shame anyone, it’s just natural to try to make the most of what you have. But not every card that has risen in value is indeed more valuable. Very often, the price increase is caused by market manipulation on the seller’s side and a false understanding of numbers and value attributes on the buyer’s side.
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Do you mean it recently rose in price? Or do you mean it has been high since it’s release?
If the second, I think I found the one to blame, haha. 
@RayquazaTCG Apparently the wallpaper in your appartement is worth a small fortune now. 
Greetz,
Quuador
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Btw, there are eight shining Rayquaza artworks available; EX Deoxys 107/107 Rayquaza GS; Shining Legends 56/73; Yellow A Alternative Card 177a/168; Call of Legends SL10; Dragons Exalted 128/124; XY69 promo; 144/BW-P promo; 232/XY-P promo). Did all of them rose in price recently, and also in all languages, or only the English Shining Legends version?
Greetz,
Quuador
Wow! I’d like to hear an explanation on that one 
Look at his username. He simply likes the artwork I guess. I personally prefer unique cards only, but I know a lot of people who prefer entire 9 or 18-slot binder pages being the exact same card. To each their own. 
Note that the pictures are from January 2018 btw. I doubt his obsession with the card has anything to do with the recent price rise, unless he’s still buying each and every one he can find and has been for the past 2.5 years…
Greetz,
Quuador
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This is just conspiratorial. It’s no different than the instagram hypebeasts saying that smpratte videos are singlehandedly driving the market. I don’t disagree that in a few very rare cases this could be happening, but there’s no way that this is having a real effect on the market.
I see no reason to draw any conclusions from a seller’s asking price. I can put up any one of my cards for $1m right now, doesn’t mean it’s worth that nor does it mean that there’s some complex process going on in the background where I connect past sales of similar cards and then come up with a “market value” which is then accurate.
Look, if you want to believe the market right now is just artificial hype and everything is going to crash, then by all means do so. But that ignores the realities of what’s going on right now, just like those who attribute the rise to stimulus checks or unemployment.
@fourthstartcg , I don’t think that everything is going to crash, never said that. In fact I think the opposite is going to happen. I just think that the market won’t just keep on growing because people have suddenly found their love for the card game and are spending everything on cards because of nostalgia, the market will keep on growing because some people have found out how to make tons of money by increasing prices and hype simultaneously with methods that are sometimes perfectly fine and at other times straight up market manipulation, and I also think that some people who are being led to buy cards for those drastic sudden prices are being played.
I know that this is not a pleasant opinion on this board, and I know that we all would rather believe that Pokemon as a hobby is special. That the community only consists of people acting in good faith and that every price you see (no matter how high it is, no matter how fast it climbed, no matter how sudden it came to be) is organic and clean. But once a hobby comes to the point where you are dealing with items worth 1k or more on a regular basis, you can bet that people who are able to do those deals will try to make 10k out of those 1k, eventually via market manipulation. It happens in sports, it happens for comic books, it happens for any other collectible really. And I want to make this very, very clear. Pokemon. Is. Not. Different. In fact, it’s especially prone to it right now, because it’s a very new market. Not yet established but speculative, and most collectors for this hobby are young and inexperienced, but just old enough to spend serious money on it.
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S P E C U L A T I O N
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I think the Shining Mew (Shining Legends Card) is alot better aesthetically than the Rayquaza in this set. But has any of the other shining cards increased as well? How about the test tube Mewtwo?
Shining Legends as a whole has jumped a lot, Shining Mews are a couple hundred now and the sealed products have been disappearing quickly. Test tube Mewtwo I think is over 300 in 10 right now.
To answer @quuador’s question as well, shiny Rayquaza arts have been jumping in price across the board. PSA 10 Ancient Origins M Rayquaza EX has jumped from around $100-125 in May to close to 300 now. Lowest (and only) available is 350 OBO. The PSA 9 secret rare from Dragons Exalted has jumped from around 100 to a last confirmed sale of $275 with the cheapest available being 400. Even more recent cards like the Hidden Fates PSA 10 shiny GX have nearly doubled from $60 to around $110, while the ungraded cards are now about $7, which is also a double from the lowest point.
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Other cards haven’t risen as much as the rayquaza. That’s why I posed the question. Only the shining mew. The mewtube was already up there as the secret rare and has risen accordingly but mewtube at least looks more organic growth than anything. Rayquaza must’ve jumped up at least 500%