One hundred percent.
I grade a mixture of cards to sell, and whenever I list them on eBay, the modern cards instantly get inundated with offers and straight up purchases whereas vintage cards tend to sit until the right buyer comes along.
I have specifically noticed that Chinese buyers gravitate toward things like SM-P Pikachu promos. Those tend to go quick.
Shadowless is weird, especially for non-holos. Whether they are graded or raw, I have noticed that Shadowless non-holos tend to move very, very slowly. This is something that has been rather consistent for years. It could be entirely anecdotal on my part, but thatâs what I have experienced.
Itâs at the point where unlimited base is dirt cheap and 1stved base is no longer a mortgage. So why bother with the middle ground. 1st Ed base is just king imo I love it
Havenât kept up with eseries much since Iâm pretty much done with my collection of them but I think even theyâre down a bit
As PokĂ©mon gets more popular we will need to redefine what is considered low pop. The poncho pikachus have a psa 10 pop around 1000. Thereâs probably 100k+ people that want that card so the price is high.
I have noticed itâs not the rarest cards that do well. Itâs cards with Uber level popularity with some level of rarity like the poncho and Mario pikachus that are hot currently.
Even when 1st Edition Base was through the roof, Shadowless was still slow. But that was likely because Shadowless was also considerably more expensive at that time.
Shadowless will probably always sit in this weird spot barring exceptions like the starters.
Itâs also weird because the term shadowless is used a lot but Iâm not sure everyone really understands what it means. Mostly talking about LGS sellers claiming everything is shadowless. Though tbh idk how 99% of LGS stay in business
To me unlimited is not even an option I would consider. The cards look different and washed out. If you compare a shadowless or 1st Ed to unlimited, the difference is night and day
I think shadowless is currently and has always been underrated. Itâ too cheap compared to 1st Ed. Who knows if it will ever correct.
Yeah Shadowless is really a colloquial term. You can even find some graded Shadowless cards that donât even have âShadowlessâ on the label.
At this point, Iâm pretty sure basically everyone who has been involved in the hobby for some time knows what Shadowless is, but yeah; I can definitely see how it can be confusing to newer collectors who are just looking for a 1st Edition stamp.
Especially with cards like Venusaur where the color scheme is entirely different.
I agree that Shadowless looks leagues better than Unlimited. I also agree that itâs a bit underrated, but I also feel like we have been saying that for years. I feel like if it were going to see a major correction, we would have seen something by now.
The only significant correction we really saw was in late 2020, and that wasnât even a correction as much as it was just a spike across the board. Now things have pretty much settled. Prices obviously arenât at pre-pandemic levels, but theyâre still not where they âshouldâ be for cards that have so much history and are so difficult to find in raw mint condition. Even the non-holos are painfully hard to grade.
Vintage is in a weird spot right now. The majority of PSA 9 japanese base holos are selling for around $40âŠ
What we can see right now mirrors recurring waves in the stock market: People buy into trends they hope will generate quick ROIâs. In that regard, modern moves more like ultra growth stocks and vintage moves more like value stocks . The problem is that the money going after quick ROIâs is also quick to change directions and may âinvestâ in something else tomorrow. We see this again and again in the stock market.
The important thing is that the money currently chasing alt arts will likely chase every new cool alt in the future; hence, older and current alt arts will compete with future alt arts, consequently leaving less funds for each single alt. In a few years from now, we will likely have a dozen moonbreons the current has to compete with (assuming funds allocated for such cards is constant). I do not really see the same level of competition for vintage as it cannot be as easily reproduced as new alts.
As for the argument that new cards are beautiful: I think this is a rather romanticized minor reason (to explain current prices). Similar to why people pay big money for some NFTâs; BAYC is not expensive because of the art.
Just my two cents.
Majority of alternate arts are really affordable are they not ? The big stonk cards seem to be the cartoon girls in short skirts, which is a trend I really do not want to learn about tbh
Well, admittedly, i actually do like modern art a lot 
when i say crazy, im moreso referring to the speculation, highly volatile prices, and general frenzy lol.
Typically when i talk about modern, im talking about JP also, i realize i didnt specify lol. I think there is great things to be had from every era of Pokemon. I find all the noise in modern really pushes me away, though. I think chinese buyers are probably influencing Japanese price movements, not to mention, increased international demand/ speculation. The JP market has always been smaller than English, and now like 50x the amount of people are wanting Japanese cards. Maybe some Japanese businesses are capitalizing on that and increasing prices, but if people are buying it then 
it is what it is.
Definitely think vintage is a great option right now. Very affordable, available; feels slow and steady. Ive been saying it too, shadowless holos are incredibly underrated! Outside the big three, psa 8 shadowless holos are flirting with $100. Its insanity. The rest of wotc is pretty decent, and japanese vintage is just silly good value rn.
lmao
Not Pokémon but magic 30 retro power cards are selling for more than ABU power which is wild to me as well
There are actual reasons for that aside from speculation, though. The print run for M30 power was way, way lower than it was for Unlimited (and maybe even Beta) power. Thatâs not to say that I wouldnât vastly prefer to buy ABU power over M30 power at the current prices, but the current relative prices do make some amount of sense, tbh.
Itâs a much different story with modern Pokemon, where the cards are also vastly more common than vintage (outside of Unlimited early WotC). Unlike with M30, some of the current modern Pokemon prices relative to vintage Pokemon are genuinely bewildering to me lol
It is beyond insanity when you take into consideration that Shadowless holos are nearly impossible to find in raw NM condition, and when you do find them, they typically go for more than a PSA 8 copy. But this has been a thing with Shadowless for years now so Iâm not sure if itâs ever going to truly correct.
Fixed it for you @Charizard1020.
Yeah this is the thing for me, too, but I think it could actually end up hurting modern. There are so many new alt arts coming out that it makes you wonder if some of these will just end up being forgotten about. I think certain cards like Moonbreon will probably always be in demand, but five years from now, is everyone going to truly remember the million and one other alt arts that have come through?
It seems like now, there is always a new chase card whereas with vintage, things have always been much more pronounced. That probably has a lot to do with the fact that sets were much smaller back then and we didnât have 876 different rarities.
Some are already being forgotten about or had little interest since the beginning⊠There are plenty of set alt arts under $20 on TCGplayer.