I suspect at one point ex era might even become more popular and expensive than early wotc. Pokemon is not as simple and linear as, the older the more value or low print run high value
Ain’t that super cool ?
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yes it depends on a lot of things and categories. i also love the ex team rocket come back and for example lugia artwork from unseen forces. there is also a lot of exclusive promos vintage and modern in pokemon lots of branches to expand too. though i have less connection to ex era im probably not going further then after team rocket returns
respect my opinio that is great do you also respect this card listed for this much ?
and yes i have it it was 99.74$ with shipping on dec 2025 if a card like this is worth 16k then im sorry the hobby is going to the sewers
Well, it says “gold” in the title!
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wish instead of heart i could put laughing emoji
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I am one of the many reasons.
About 10 years ago Pokemon Go came out. All the rage. Even my boss at work played it. I had collected Pokemon back in 1999 and 2000 when they first came out. I’m in the PNW and Wizards of the Coast was a fixture up here. But I had lost interest in the cards not too long after the Neo era and eventually lost interest in the Gameboy games.
Years later, here I am playing Pokemon Go. I played casually for a few years. Had a ton of fun. It convinced me to dig out my old cards again. I just look at them a time or two, but Pokemon as re-entered my life and I am now an adult with money to spend.
Fast forward a few more years and my buddy is getting back into collecting. I rip some packs with him, but mostly what I want to do is complete the sets I didn’t as a kid. I buy binder copies of Base through Neo era over a year or so. Then, I travel to Tokyo for business and catch a Pokemon Center opening. I get a cool Pikachu card. Neat! Japanese cards are pretty cool! And cheaper than English! I begin to buy vintage Japanese.
Another year or two goes on. I have lots of neat raw cards now. Now, I want some graded vintage hits. PSA 9s and 10s it is. Kinda expensive, not terrible though. I begin to accumulate a nice collection.
My story is one of thousands if not millions just like it. This exact story, or one approximating it, will continue to happen as children who collected Pokemon become adults with discretionary spending.
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Picking 1, 10 or even a 100 cards that have seen weird price jumps does not make it so that the hobby is to the sewers. It´s a lot bigger than that.
I could show you many more cards that have gone up in price in a way I think is very much in sync with what you would expect from a hobby that has gotten this big.
Agreed.
but we are humans and humans remember mostly the “bad” and not the “good” coz the good is already good i guess. lots of illusionary sellers like this in ebay these days
Yeah, that tends to be the case, although we also eliminate bad things as a survival instinct. But in a market like this there will always be some odd transactions/listings.
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id love to be a fly on their wall once to understand whats going on with them thinking its gonna sell
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The biggest thing to remember with vintage climbing to record prices—and those cards you had on your radar but didn’t pull the trigger in time—is that you simply can’t have everything. Does it suck that most people will never own trophies, Gold Stars, Pika rings, or Gengars due to the new tax? Absolutely. I don’t even own every Gengar card; some are just too out of reach now, and I accept it for what it is.
We’ll never be able to accurately point out exactly why prices are moving like this, but quite frankly, I don’t care. The market doesn’t care about your feelings. Prices will increase or decrease, and I just make the decision whether or not I’m willing to pay. The sooner you’re able to accept you can’t have it all, the happier you will be.
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ironically the lower-mid tier trophies are some of the cheapest cards currently relative to value if they arent a psa 10 
literally this card wouldve been more expensive in 2021-2024
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Welcome to the fourum!
This supplements the other takes in the thread. To summarize for latecomers:
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COVID hits, little is known about the virus, and stringent measures are put in place to keep people in place. With little to do, the additional money is put into recapturing childhoods through nostalgic blasts of acquiring relics from the past (i.e. shiny cardboard).
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Content creators - among those yearning for nostalgia - buy packs from their childhood and rip them on camera. With the opportunity to have the community fund the box purchases through “booster breaks”, the first hype cycle since the (comparably) muted tailwind of Pokemon Go arrives.
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Notable scam artist and massive piece of shit (my words, I’m editorializing) Logan Paul jumps on board and the hype cycle reaches insane peaks. A 1st edition bulbasaur allegedly sells for $30k.
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Millennials who grew up with Pokemon see this resurgence in the hobby. With money to spend, they buy cards that they had/were never able to get as a kid to get in on the good feels (and they (may) see it is a way to potentially make money by riding the wave).
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The rise of social media up until and through this wave, leads to an increase in signaling behavior. Crypto (/NFTs for a time), houses, cars, watches, sneakers, bags, CCGs, precious metals, etc. see boosts in value due to their ability to be shown off online as status symbols. More cool stuff = more impressions = more money.
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The 25th anniversary culminates in another spike in speculative behavior, after which the market cools a tiny bit in anticipation of the upcoming 30th anniversary (the waifu card craze and Japanese buy list shenanigans happen around this time).
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Major publications speculate that the rise in the prices of CCG cards, watches, sneakers, and other Veblen goods are due in part to the fact that the average age of a first time homebuyer has exceeded 40 (US). Perhaps the capital they would’ve have spent on homes is going towards these “alternative investment vehicles”. Mainstream coverage ramps up with aforementioned piece of human garbage (I swear he didn’t personally wrong me) Logan Paul appearing on CNBC - something I never could have predicted in 2015.
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As the K-shaped recovery in the economy continues, outspoken rich folks like Kevin O’Leary (aka Mr. Wonderful of CNBC’s shark tank) talk about how they’re investing in sports cards the way that the rich have traditionally invested in art. (Paraphrasing) “They’re 1 of 1 pieces that command high prices. I’m never selling my Jordan/Kobe logo man card.” They preach diversification and this is, after all, one of the hottest asset classes on the planet because content can be spun up via a guy on the red carpet at the Oscars wearing a sports card in a tiffany-crafted-custom-chain around his neck (and other such ways)…so why not add it to their portfolios?
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Meanwhile, longtime collectors feel helpless as fatter wallets place bets on a hot market and their collection goals appear increasingly out of reach as limited supply and swelling demand start to price them out. So, they make threads on the greatest fourum on the planet trying to understand where it all went wrong (we are currently right here).
…but that’s just a summary of what I’ve read / seen here and elsewhere.
Edited to add this photo for emphasis
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Kevin O’Leary is a good actor !
I was surprised to see him in Marty Supreme, since I only knew him from the ridiculous neckless sports card thing and investment channels.
Thought he played his part very well
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If you want an interesting data point that really highlights how much vintage (and the market overall) has pumped since around this time last year, here’s something.
I only store/buy/sell cards through Fanatics, my entire collection is there so I get a rough market value through card ladder (not super accurate but a decent ballpark). In the past 8 months I’ve sold 7 figures in cards through fanatics, yet despite that my total collection value is actually up by high six figures from what it was before I sold a single card. This is excluding anything I’ve added to the vault during the time I began selling.
That, imo, is pretty crazy.
Edit:@smpratte you might like that data point Scott.
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Wow, thanks for the insights and congrats on the sale! From your POV what do you expect from the english/japanese vintage market in the next 12 months? do you think sentiment will cool off and prices will “return to the mean”?
Just my opinion, not financial advice, but I think the current market conditions are not a new normal, there are a lot of factors going into massive price increases across the board. I think things will cool off and there will be an overall retrace, some things will take a much bigger hit than others.
This is normal in any market, nothing goes up indefinitely forever, over 30 years sure you can say it’s only gone up but but zoom in to 5 year blocks for any major market and it’s always a wave, up/down/up/down.
As for when will it cool off, no idea, I never try and predict a top but I’d say there’s at least 12 more months, the 30th set needs to drop and hype for that to die down first imo.
It’s also hard to generalize “what do you expect from the english/japanese vintage market in the next 12 months” because there are a lot of niches, but overall I expect them to continue to trend up.
In regards to this I guess I’ve put my money where my mouth is, I’ve put over $100k into Japanese old back holo PSA 9s and 10s over the past six months because I think they’re undervalued. It seems criminal that the majority of 9s including base set you could buy under $100 and most 10s were under $500. The scrutiny these cards come under if you buy raw and try to grade them is crazy these days, yet you can/could buy them at less than raw price even including grading cost. Stupid.
Buying these cards I’ve definitely noticed them trending upwards, on paper I’m up over $50k since I started acquiring them. Even though they are trending up I don’t think they will suffer much in a market pullback, as imo they are/were already dirt cheap and undervalued. Like I think worst case I break even and I’m out opportunity cost on what I put in over that time.
Anyway I’m rambling a bit, time to end this post.
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do you think there’s any segment currently undervalued in the jp vintage market? because i can’t find anything fairly valued for what it is.
i recently made an offer 10% higher than last sold for 3 PSA 9 cards (quite rare cards but not insanely rare) and the seller told me he has received offers almost double of mine (i offered 5k).
After this i decided to just wait, keeping cash on hand.
thanks for the insightful ramble btw
HGSS reverse foils (the less popular mons)
XY/BW SR full arts (the less popular mons)
ADV/PCG/DPT holos (the less popular mons)
imagine buying sports bros over pokemangs
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