I’ve been checking up on rayquaza prices, and some of them have jumped to a obscene price that has really never been seen. For example:
Rayquaza Amazing Rare went from 5 bucks to 17 in 6 months.
Rayquazas TG20 went from 8 to 20 within 3 months
Rayquaza ex (shiny) was 30 bucks 6 months ago. It is now over 100 bucks
Rayquaza SL10 went from 300 to 468 within a few months
M Rayquaza Shiny went from 300 6 months ago to 700 bucks.
These prices are ridiculous, and while this market is crazy, I can’t see this being natural movement as most cards have doubled if not tripled in price.
Will these prices ever go down, and if so, when?
Yes, Rayquaza cards will go down within a few months
Yes, Rayquaza cards will go down within a year or 2
No, Rayquaza cards will stay where they’re at currently
My personal view is that these will likely be the new prices. We might see some kind of 10-25% retrace, but history tells us that in most booms we never get back to the “pre-boom” pricing.
While markets are unpredictable and nobody can be certain where cards will go, I would note that the mentality expressed in your post might be a little shortsighted. You note that the prices are “obscene” and “ridiculous,” and can’t be “natural” because the cards have doubled to tripled in value. However, we know from history that this is how Pokemon cards move. In 2016, PSA 10 Base 1st Charizard went from 5k for a 10 to 40k for a 10. That was an 8x value increase. If PSA 10 Base 1st Charizard went to 40k now, people would say the Pokemon hobby was dead.
Just because cards go up a lot in a short period of time doesn’t mean the movement isn’t natural or sustainable. It doesn’t mean they’ll stay at these prices forever, but we have been shown time and time again that price memory from the past is going to harm you.
Get into heavy machine operation. Huge money there, doesn’t require college. You will be 19 making 60k a year when your old high school friends are drowning in college debt on their way to finding a 50k job that didn’t require a degree in the first place.
I believe all cards will generally have a small retracement after their growth booms. But that’s not to say wait it out, you lose value by waiting in this market.
They didn’t all grow at the same rate and Rayquaza is proving to be more popular than many had expected. As a species in general I can’t say I expect much retracement in popularity going forward because it’s one of the best Pokemon ever. Even genwunners have no problem including Ray on Mt Rushmore
In general I don’t think you should wait, better to sell into the hype and use the money to buy cards you want. Everything is hyped, it isn’t slowing down much at all. It’s general advice and doesn’t work for everything but I have regretted waiting things out during this period. We couldn’t ask for a better selling market, make it work for you.
I generally agree. Though we also have examples from the last boom of cards that retraced significantly and still haven’t returned to their 2020 peaks. Not niche cards either. Base 1st Charizard comes to mind. I bought a PSA 7 in 2021 on the way down — it had already retraced quite a bit when I bought mine. But it kept dropping, and only now is it finally back up to what I paid.
Rayquaza is obviously a different Pokemon and the market for its vintage cards is different too (more scarcity). But a retrace is always possible and as we saw last time if a retrace does occur it could take years to get back up to current prices.
That’s the only thing stopping me from FOMOing into cards like that. Because it’s not fun being in the negative on a card for several years, even as primarily a collector.
This one’s tricky in my opinion. I don’t recall us seeing a boom quite as big as this before.
Does that mean the eventual retracement will be even harsher, or could it mean that increased interest in Pokémon will stick around after the boom, helping prices hold steady? Hard to say.
That said, I generally agree, I wouldn’t expect prices to ever drop back to pre-boom levels. But I do expect a retrace across a lot of cards at some point, not just the Rayquazas you mentioned.
Personally, I haven’t let this outlook affect my current buying decisions. As @wisewailmer pointed out, it’s a great selling market right now. A lot of people, myself included, have been selling off cards we’re not attached to in order to pick up ones we couldn’t afford in the past, even if those have also seen big price jumps during this boom.
Most Rayquaza cards that don’t have the trifecta of grade difficulty, desired rarity and desired illustrations will retrace. However like other hyper popular Pokémon, they establish higher floors and are only getting older
I sit somewhere in the middle of both of these opinions. I sat the first half of 2025 out but have started picking up cards again recently as it’s clear we’re in a “new normal” and likely won’t see 2023 prices again for a very long time (if ever). Waiting means missing out on a lot of great cards that I want to own, especially when I have the funds from selling some of my collection. One of the positives of this boom is being able to get more money when selling your cards, so it kind of counteracts the heightened prices when buying.
With that said, I do expect to see some retracement in the future, so I’m avoiding any huge purchases (or cards that have rapidly increased like ex era reverse holos) during this time. Having a card retrace by a few hundred dollars is fine for me (especially if it’s something that doesn’t appear too often), but several thousands is going to make me lose sleep at night.
While I agree that a new higher floor is likely, buying at near ATH prices isn’t a particularly smart strategy imho, even if you just unloaded modern stonk.
Unless you expect them to do another 2-3x or a never ending boom, you have nothing to gain in fomoing (especially set cards).
At worst, they’ll stay the same and you have more time to decide if these chase cards are worth spending such money, or not. But if a retrace happens, even for a 15-30%, it’s not bad at all. For expensive cards it means saving hundreds.
The retrace was already there. The M Rayquaza Shiny, for example, went up to 8K, and then back down to 6. From here, it will probably go up to 9/10K at some point, and then possibly retracing back to 7.5.
rayquaza went super up up up and its not going down unless everything else goes down. i seen people say umbreon/gengar/rayquaza replaces charizard and cite the 10x price increases, but the reason for these big jumps in price is because they were undervalued.
Would agree with this sentiment. Charizard has historically had huge premiums over other Pokemon. Most of this is from gen1 and the gen1 collectors with Charizard being the chase but as we go deeper into the hobby with peoples first experience of the chase pokemon being your Rayquazas, Umbreons, they will naturally pull higher demand and shift away from Charizard though the base will largely always remain.
I would also look at Pokemon that still exist in print runs today and Charizard doesnt stand out as significant of a chase then it does today compared to WOTC/Nintendo era.
Of course though Charizard is still a significant Pokemon in the hobby, just that other pokemon have gained traction over time.
