I see it as Tesla vs Ford in some ways.
Newer companies (and analogously newer cards) have higher growth potential. Vintage Pokémon cards and Ford carry a sense of history, nostalgia, and established value.
Fresh experiences & innovation. Tesla disrupts the automotive industry while modern Pokémon cards offer new sets, gameplay mechanics, and artwork styles. Novelty is an important aspect in everyone’s life and it’s something we innately chase.
idk im happy with vintage. modern feels like speedrunning-- racing around like crazy, half the time i dont even know what’s happening lol
There is juat way more speculative buying/selling of modern than vintage right now. Go back about 3 years and the reverse was true. And it always leads to the same result.
I feel like a lot of modern collecting is a pump & dump culture to make a quick buck.
Why would the demand for a solgaleo card with lillie on it increase so much within a week that the price goes up tenfold? Or why would the value of a 2-3k collection box increase to 10k within a few days?
I also can’t get it into my head that a psa 10 gx battle boost lillie is comparable in price to a championship league, Or that a psa 10 mario pikachu should be in the same price range as an art academy pikachu.
Are there really so many potential customers in that price range who have fallen in love with the modern cards within a few days and prefer them to the rare old cards ?
Or are currently high “sales” artificially created, which attract a few people who also buy at that price, and then the whole thing collapses?
I read in german collector groups how people deliberately buy up marketplaces, prices at auctions are driven up with zero feedback bidders … everything is full of red flags, but everywhere it is said: “the artworks are so beautiful and they are just popular”.
But maybe I’m just salty because I’ve decided several times not to join the trend.
I could see some of that.
Id argue that there is more upward mobility in modern cards, especially when the trend is the floor = sub $100 and ceiling = $1k plus.
Im sure the potential gains are more attractive than long term slow gains vintage offers. All the vintage cards are solidified in price… my delta species cards havent inched in price since 2020, meanwhile tag team is doing backflips into money
I don’t mind vintage being stagnant for another couple of years so I can complete my goals 
Yeah I’d mirror what others have said, particularly around speculative purchasing. In the stonking community there seems to be a general sentiment that vintage is already fully optimised and the “big money” has already been made, as well as general unwillingness to understand fundamentals and what’s already there. So of course people look to what they feel could be new opportunities in modern releases.
That said, I think it would be remiss to put modern performance solely down to speculative investing. From a hobbyist perspective the modern TCG offers a huge amount of fantastic art and variety. The Sword and Shield era alone offered phenomenal collectability - amazing rares, character rares, full arts, alternate full arts, V’s, VMax’s, 25th anniversary special releases, Japanese exclusive promos. The increase in stonkers pushing prices is undeniable, but take that away and I’d wager we’d still be left with a much larger collector base versus pre-2020.
I know the feeling. Like I tried explaining my best low pop Wotc cards just sat there either not gaining or losing value. Some gained a little but nothing to write home about. For some reason the fundamentals and pop report numbers become irrelevant.
With all due respect, I think you’re viewing this incorrectly. You bought cards with good fundamentals after they spiked in price. And then sold those same cards after they dropped in price. They didn’t decline because fundamentals ceased to matter – they declined because that’s what happens after things spike. It’s better to buy things with good fundamentals after they’ve dipped significantly in price (even if it looks like they might continue declining/flatlining). That’s why I’ve been buying into WotC (the same sort of cards you were selling, in fact) at the current prices. The bottom could be lower, sure – but it’s a much better time to be buying WotC right now than in it was in late 2020. And it’s a much worse time to be selling WotC right now than it was in late 2020.
Anyway, no judgment – you should do whatever makes you happy 
. Just giving my opinion. I just think that it was pretty bad decision, frankly, to sell off the amazing cards you had (and you had some really fantastic stuff) after it declined significantly in price in order to buy something with much worse fundamentals that is currently riding the upward portion of a price wave – that is, unless you’re just wanting to flip rather than collect (in which case perhaps your decisions made sense!).
Agreed with @zorloth and @smokemon here.
All cards are affected by larger market trends, whether they have good or poor fundamentals. The fundamentals adage is referring to long-term stability. Vintage cards are not necessarily pandemic-proof, recession-proof, etc., but they tend to have less variance than modern cards. This lower variability is attractive to a lot of collectors who look for stability in their collectibles.
Of course, where there is more variability, there is the potential for quick money to be made. So @mcorey777, I can see why you are drawn to modern cards and their financial prospect, but I think it’s a bit unfair to criticize vintage cards when you bought at a heightened time and sold when things cooled off.
I say just collect what you like, not what other people like.
My hot take is that pop report numbers are always irrelevant. Unless we are dealing with single digits it just does not influence the decision making of most collectors.
I believe this to my core.
Broke: Older, Minter, Rarer, Better
Woke: Newer, Crappier, Commoner, Worser
There was a guy I know who pulled a 1-of-1 sports card many years back at my local shop. He sent the card off to BGS for grading and it came back an 8.5 to his dismay, so he cracked it, sent it to BGS again. Came back 9, so he did it again and got a 8. He kept repeating this, not because he really wanted a 10, but at this point, it was just comical to see how inconsistent grading is. He got to like 6 pop reports for a card that is a 1-of-1 in the world, but with all varying grades. Especially for a card they should have a track record of in their system by now.
At the end of the day, grading is just paying money for someone’s opinion.
Who knows, soon it may be paying money for an AI’s opinion.
The pendulum is swinging in modern’s favor now. But some day, may be tomorrow or 5 years, vintage will heat up and when it starts climbing people will flock to it in hordes. I think vintage is gonna continue flat for a while and then explode like a rocket ship.
When that happens we’ll look back on any doubts people have on vintage as a transitory thing that happened when modern took its next big step with alt arts.
I think people are overwhelmingly bearish on vintage.
I agree with this. Whatever the market trend is, do the opposite. There are some ridiculous deals in vintage right now and I love it.
It’s nice to see that a lot of us think the same way. Everyone knows to buy low and sell high, but unfortunately many of us tend to do the opposite. I have some of the popular pikachu cards like the 2016 festa card and would not pay current market value for it. If a card is hot and talked about, it’s usually too late to buy it in my opinion. Buy something that is not discussed. I was able to complete my shadowless set at a reasonable piece because no one wants those cards now.
