i dont keep track of modern, but most cards in my collection have gone up exponentially the past year and a half. some of these cards have increased over 400+% within this time span. my psa 10 neo 3 entei is now worth more than my psa 4 japanese gold star latios. market manipulation? increase in collectors or investors? PSA backup?
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More eyes, more collectors, more people with greater discretionary income entering, superb modern releases drawing more people back in who might have collected in the past, a change in the way the TCG is perceived by establishment investors, businesses and the wider public, 30 years of the IP is just another road marker cementing its legitimacy as the most successful media franchise of all time.
That said, the problem with attention and money is that it can effect change in markets in undesirable and unpredictable ways. It’s easy to make general assertions as to why any one thing is happening, (manipulation, meme-power, poke-hedge-funds, FOMO, social media, etc) but in truth the market is so large it can often be impossible to dissect precisely why certain cards are doing what they’re doing.
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Hire prices in modern with a lack of access to product have people looking elsewhere. And more people in the game.
There was a pretty heavy focus on modern sets for a while after the vintage hype faded after 2020/2021. All the modern fans were talking it down quite a bit as well. But, it turns out a lot of the S&V sets weren’t quite as strong as the SWSH era was and so naturally vintage started to look more undervalued and money started flowing more in that direction. In addition, you’ve had some big sales like the Illustrator which has created some hype & interest in vintage again.
I bought a ton of vintage in 2022/2023 and wish I bought more of course. I still see some opportunity out there, but at this point I’m waiting for another pullback or consolidation phase before making some bigger purchases.
I have a feeling with the way crypto and other speculative assets have been hit lately it wouldn’t surprise me if collectibles slow up again. But I’ve been pretty happy with the growth & stability all things considered. Definitely have been worse places to put your money than Pokemon and other hobbies.
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There are some silly people who are willing to pay anything for low pop graded 10s and are willing to do so despite the seemingly idiotic price trajectories of these cards. What is notable this time around is that the craziness has extended beyond wotc (where it has mostly been isolated to in the past) to later eras, most notably ex era.
So basically this is like 2020/2021, version 2.0.
3.0 if you count 2025, though I dont recall if the craziness was crazy then for vintage.
I forsee a BIG drop for a lot of these cards, especially the ones people are seemingly blindly convincing themselves they care about (ex era).
As far as why now? idk
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i firmly believe if ppl are willing to spend 10k, 15k, 20k, 50k on specific cards, those cards are not gonna ever go back to 2k, 5k. the only stuff that has a chance of crashing is stuff that is not scarce.
People sell high-end cards for 50% losses frequently. It’s a pretty remarkable misnomer that people just don’t ever sell stuff for a loss. Happened constantly after stuff pulled back from the 2020 boom.
Didn’t even take me a minute to find a couple examples with a single card:
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I think its modern hype with crypto gains
Pokemon is the new memecoin
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Time will tell i guess
As much as people may be pouring money into vintage for the “wrong” reasons, I really feel that there is an underlying genuine interest. Yes there is speculation and a lot of money moving from modern to vintage (future reprint scares). I’ve been keeping my eye on a few cards I want to purchase and have seen them 2-5x in the past couple months (mostly high grade vintage Japanese). There is little to no chance that this growth is sustainable and I would bet on some sort of retrace. That being said, a new price floor has been set.
I was at a show a few weeks back and brought some graded cards to sell. The small vendors and the ones that seemed new to the game absolutely loved looking through what I brought. Nothing crazy or expensive, some wotc black star promos in 10s, some Japanese rocket in 10s etc etc. Even if they weren’t looking to buy, it brought smiles to faces. I can’t help but think that there is real interest in vintage and that it’s been sleeping due to a lack of exposure to the modern collectors.
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I am thinking more so for extremely popular cards in the highest grade, like Skyridge Umbreon PSA 10, Gold star 10s, it’s never gonna go below, say, 20k since there will be enough people who would want it at 20k and can afford it.
Could be wrong though
Still, a drop from 50k to 20k is absolutely massive. Even if it’s less of a drop percentage wise than say a 1k card dropping to 200 it’s going to sting a lot more for the people proudly flaunting that they purchased a set card at an all time high.
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I think as someone who had been outside looking in for a bit. The prices are just a natural progression. Vintage will most of the time be a better buy than modern. Like any collectible prices will continue to increase and collectors will either have to adjust or move on to collecting something else. It’s kind of a bummer but that’s what happened to every other collectible hobby
Its pretty simple. I got priced out modern, which is the stupidest thing. TPCi are absolutely biffing it and continuing to screw up now for over a year. I used to open packs, buy booster boxes and I’m not paying $500+ for multiple cards in the brand new sets that are in rotation and in print(supposedly). So its just logical. I could spend $500 on the latest chase card that I suspect at some point might get print nuked into a less awful, but still probably not worth it price range, or just buy some very old chase cards and wait until things get under control. But the more time passes, the more I don’t think its a fluke that its so hard to find new sets for MSRP or less anywhere, and thus the secondhand market for singles is just a hot mess for modern singles.
This is an extremely concerning and shortsighted belief that I am finding all too common as of late.
There are collectibles with a much more storied history than your average WOTC vintage card that have seen value drops of more than what many people on Earth will earn in their lifetimes.
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I understand that but Pokémon is not just any other collectible. It’s huge. Putting it next to sports, coins and comics. Trust me I want prices to drop but I’ve been waiting for that to happen for six years and I’m still waiting
I think it is because I started to collect vintage japanese promos and everyone is out to get me.