It will be interesting to see what happens to cards from that time period. If these were dead times for Pokemon, the population of who will “come back to the hobby” would be small. But, with some of these pops being so low (especially Lv.X’s, SLs, etc.), I don’t think you can go wrong with buying at current prices. I worry more about the stashing away of modern boxes that everyone seems to be doing these days.
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I think by then it’s possible a lot of the hype people of the hobby would already have died down so there may be not as much people as you think betting on it. We’re talking 2026? It’s not too far away but I don’t know how long these guys can hold out - they dont strike me as the patient type. I don’t think the 30th will be too special in terms of price rises. Certainly nothing like PK Go or 2020
I don’t know if this should be its own thread, but despite the memes of Pocket, it technically fits as something they’ve not done before.
Pokebeach put out an article: https://www.pokebeach.com/2024/02/how-pokemon-tcg-pocket-will-usher-in-a-massive-new-era-for-the-pokemon-tcg
Not sure if I agree, but then I don’t really know whether the YGO app helped their physical sales numbers or grew the physical playerbase. Also not sure if it would be public data but I’m wondering what the actual link is between those spending that money on Duel Links that are engaging in casual play vs those collecting.
As I know, Pokemon is by far the most collector skewed and nothing else comes close, so maybe those apps referenced are being driven by players instead of collectors. TCG Live also is not monetized compared to the real client for YGO which is also making more money than Duel Links.
I like this. I’m sick of everyone bending over and spreading their buttcheeks for PSA/CGC/Beckett hyper-focused on grades that create a false sense of scarcity. Maybe if everything is getting a 10 people will finally give a shit about actual rarity and distribution, especially with Pokemon seemingly printing everything to demand recently. Would be an amazing uptick in the right direction if that happened within the next 5 years seeing limited print/distribution cards stand on their own even if they’re 8’s and 9s instead of everything depending so much on being a GEM MINT TENOMGOMGGARGGLEDROOL!!!
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Regionals for competitive TCG has been at its biggest attendance since… well, ever? I’m not sure this is accurate.
I cannot stress enough how much that POKEMON IS NOT AN INVESTMENT, ITS A BABY GAME FOR BABIES, AND A FUN GAME/COLLECTABLE FOR ENJOYERS OF FUN. And i dont get why people dont understand that. Cards should be able to not get gem mint 10 and still be worth smth, but since less and less people are playing, even tho demand is increasing, the amount of cards actually being played rather than immediately shipped is decreasing alot. To where soon, everyone will have a gem mint 10 smth. and i bet you youll be able to find gem mint 10s of current gen cards for 10 bucks on ebay in a couple of years due to how much people are grading, and how safely they keep their cards.
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We were talking about 2005-2015. The dead years for tcg
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My nostalgia ends at gen 4 because that’s where I grew a little out of the cards and More towards the ds games, but I’ve worked at a summer camp the years following.
Kids loved their Pokémon cards. I don’t know if there will be enough demand to build a large enough market Years down the line, but there will be some time where their discretionary income is high enough to want some of their childhood again. PSA 10 or played.
Not as much fun though. Lol
It’s been a year and I just wanted to point out with respect to my post above that we are in the middle of a boom with perhaps unprecedented levels of attention and activity. Maybewe can attribute some of it to the success of Pocket.
And yet it’s the 29th anniversary.
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The question comes up quite often and the answer is simple. If they do, I’m buying cards I like for less.
See ya’ll in like 2080 or something.I definitely agree it’s partly to do with pocket. I think some people are underestimating the amount of people that pocket brought into the tcg. It’s not a huge amount, but I think it’s had a fair impact. I don’t know anyone irl who is a Pokemon fan but I know plenty of people who kinda like Pokemon but it’s more that they think the designs are cute/cool or they have good memories of the games or cards as kids. It’s those people that pocket really attracted somehow. Almost everyone I know who kinda liked Pokemon from a distance began playing pocket and enjoyed it. One girl I know even bought a set of eeveelutions after playing pocket and I’d never heard her mention Pokemon tcg before this. (This was before prismatic btw)
It’s definitely nowhere near close to the impact of Pokemon go, but I think it’s convinced Pokemon fans and Pokemon enjoyers to dip their toes into the real tcg
For context, I’m 22 so most of these people I know who have dipped their toes into the tcg are in their early 20s so must of them are just now getting disposable income (which is also be a big factor).
Though in reality, I think the main reason for the boom is those darn umbreons. Moonbreon and the traumatic delusions umbreon (Sunbreon ? Is there a term for this one?)
Those unmbreon cards absolutely started popping off, I began seeing non-pokemon people talk about the moonbreon and the insane prices of pieces of cardboard a few months ago. Then with the reveal of the prismatic Umbreon I think investor bros realised how lucrative the new card would be. I think it’s the perfect recipe to reel all the investor bros back in that left after the Logan Paul boom died down
In conclusion, in my opinion, investor bros are attracted to the tcg by the umbreon madness, and Pokemon enjoyers were lured into the tcg by Pokemon pocket.
I think pocket has lost steam now though, I know my partner and I have basically stopped playing it, every few days one of us will yell “packs!!” and we play for 5 minutes. The general mood is that it’s almost like a chore at this point, but it’s still kinda fun in very brief bursts
- Introduce Pocket
- Restrict supply of regular TCG
- Claim Pocket is to cause for sudden increased interest
- Blame mom and pop shops for draining distributors non existentant inventory
Does it work to prop up Pocket? Or does is backfire spectaturaly and cause people to leave all together …
Maybe we’ll know in another year
Cool beans, is there a way to look at e4 popularity in a given week/month I’m curious about the prototypes and this
Also in the first graph you posted a year ago who’s that little dot?
Me!
Also there was a big spike when the news broke about the prototypes, and then it returned to a bit above average:
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I’m not going to do a massive analysis and I didn’t read much of the above replies but I have a feeling…
If we subtract the interest driven from the 2016 and 2020 booms for the the current bubble, then this one seems to be driven by set anticipation and the 30th anniversary.
Adults who were children during a past boom have attachment to the cards and will drive prices up but I strongly believe that many of the people in this boom don’t have an attachments to pokemon cards. Children who were around during the drop in popularity during the mid 2000’s and early 2010’s aren’t trustworthy adult collectors are and in it for money. This is why we have a definable boom in the first place and not a gradual uptick.
Prices would naturally drop once we overlap the unpopular period but the investors are drowning out the real signal.
I think if the pokemon company tries to do something about scalpers they could set off a de-investment causing prices to drop. I expect them to do something before the year is over.
I don’t think game popularity and card popularity are interchangeable or else the TCG would have still been popular in 2007.
The debate over whether this is a “bubble” is almost as old as the Hahbee™ itself at this point, and the truth is, it isn’t one. To call it a bubble suggests that at some point it’s all going to pop, i.e. that the majority of people causing the price increases will all make a simultaneous and rapid exit causing a price collapse, which they won’t. People thought the same about how the post-2020 COVID landscape would look, but it didn’t play out that way.
Even with all the high-brow market analytics and predictions, all we saw was that most products became regularly available at retail prices again for a year or two, and prices of most single cards retraced somewhat. Things just simply cooled-off and returned to normal; the line on the graph returned to the average. Each new cycle of interest also brings with it a new, higher minimum threshold of people involved in both collecting the cards and treating the TCG solely as a financial asset. The more people involved in the TCG, the more stable its foundations. It’s part of a natural process of maturation for what is still a young franchise.
While to some extent history does repeat itself (take the high-demand sealed product situation, or uplifted value of out-of-print promos), to a much greater extent the market rarely behaves exactly as people predict. The truth is, there’s a large and varied cocktail of global factors that influence how the TCG market behaves. You can’t point to single events in isolation to explain past trends, and it’s especially impossible to make predictions for the future with any kind of accuracy. And, with a TCG that’s now full of educated adults who are hyper-aware of global socio-economics, and the discretionary income that accompanies them, prices and interest are susceptible to change at much quicker rates than what we’ve seen in the past.
The TL;DR is, making these sorts of predictions is fun, but really just a pretty fruitless exercise.
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Here’s what I think will happen;
Journey Together is a pretty mediocre set, but with the hype it is not bad enough to slow things down so up untill Rising Rivals hype keeps building.
Then Rising Rivals hits and is a very good set (it seems to be). Hype will continue through summer because of this. Then, we get two ‘‘late-gen’’ sets. They will both be pretty good I think because they usually are, and the Legend Arceus Kalos game will release. I think if it will be anything but bad (and it will probably be at least decent) the hype trend will continue.
Next year will be something of a guess, but, it’s the 30th anniversary and that means that Pokémon will try to make Pokémon shine. It will draw attention to the hobby and the Legend game will still be hot, so I don’t see it slowing the first months of 2026. If it doesn’t slow down, that will probably mean that people don’t see a reason to sell.
The second half of 2026 is where it is very possible that a few mediocre sets could trigger waining interest and, as a result, a collapse when a lot of ‘in it for the money’ people start to sell. Not all though because people that actually know something about Pokémon know that a drop like that is often followed by the next uptake. And, given the fact that gen 10 will probably release some months after that it could pick right up. To be honest, the only modern products that I really see struggling in 2026 are the IR’s, because they are growing in numbers every day and don’t seem to have real demand. I don’t see a real downfall in Pokémon popularity untill early 2027 and possible mid 2027. That, in my opinion, is when we will see if modern really has this much demand or if it is indeed overprinted.
There won’t be any late gen sets for Scarlet & Violet
Journey Together > Destined Rivals > BW special set, then straight to Mega Brave/Mega Symphony to kick off the M (Mega) era for PLZA
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