My collection is for my enjoyment, NOT my financial betterment. I’m hoping prices drop sooner, so I don’t have to worry about the money in the binder.
You can have that level of wealth—particularly if you built it in a lifetime from the ground up—and still retain/mantain sound economic thinking. In fact this degree of discipline and adherence to economic principles is what tends to lead to financial success in the first place. It’s why so many wealthy people tend to penny pinch well after they have no other personal need to continue doing so. Stupid prices are still stupid whether they are personally cost prohibitive or a complete non issue. There are people on this very forum who can personally attest to that.
For me, even though the collection was/is for enjoyment, when the opportunity of significant financial betterment arrived I took it.
I had no interest of selling the cards I was collecting personally until they had risen to the point where my enjoyment was being outweighed by the sheer value. I think what pushed me over the line to sell was the belief that I’d be able to buy them back in future too.
Depends if you need the money or not or what your goals are in life.
I’m trying to treat cards like a stock market investment (wise or not is yet to be determined).
With investing, not trading, in stocks you dont really sell even if it’s very high.
Even if it corrects a bit, it’s likely going to go much higher over time anyway.
Look at pokemon OGs who held through various cycles, they are MUCH better off today than they were.
Ultimately it just depends on your personal circumstances / goals and if they are PC items that are hard to recover again.
For modern or certain items that I dont care about, I would use as a financial tool.
For example, I have many ETBs I bought at MSRP that are now $300-500. I would absolutely sell these as there are thousands in the market. They also have zero meaning to me.
For my vintage PC, I’m likely just keeping them.
Frankly I have recently been offered sizable sums for my collection, and I’ve turned them all down. I also dont want to deal with the faff/risk of shipping…for me this is a big turn off.
Look at pokemon OGs who held through various cycles, they are MUCH better off today than they were.
Agreed, but actually I find most pokemon OGs collections not very impressive (compared to what they could have been given the early bird effect) It seems like the majority of them have slowly departed with their grails. Or not accumulated more than simply what they wanted to collect. This is different than bitcoin/cryptos for example.
To be clear, yes of course some have kept exceptional items, but since it was impossible to predict how big pokemon cards would be today, almost no one it seems curated collections worth 50m+ when it could have been in fact easy in terms of organization
It was risky NOT to sell at previous highs indeed - same as this one - but fundamentals havent changed - actually they are stronger over time as more people get more disposable incomeand want to buy back memories.
Vintage are now a flex tool, and arguably artwork.
I use the analogy of Marvel comics - most gold/silver age comics hit crazy prices after that generation who had them when they were young turned 60-70yrs old. We have a long way to go with vintage pokemon.
I was 7 when pokemon came out, im now 33.
Not selling is a good strategy in many cases. Most traders lose money. I saw this video recently on people who lost access to their crypto wallets and asked this hacker to get it back. Many are better off now because they couldnt sell - and prices went up more haha.
Unless you have another use for the money, personal goals or financial, I would think twice before selling PC or hard to get back items - but that’s just me.
There was a reddit thread this morning that mirrors the discussions we had on e4. The replies were surprisingly more sound than the debate we had here 
https://www.reddit.com/r/PokeInvesting/s/M9N1nmHFoW
Anyway to quote this one guy (not @ArcticLapras ^^)
A few things for you to consider:
When you say very few people care about Pokemon cards, you are missing a broader trend line: at any given time a BUNCH of 6 to 12 year olds were in love with Pokemon. For the first 17 years of it’s 27 years of existence basically no adults cared in any real way about Pokemon cards. This distinction is important because your belief that the total number of participants in the hobby has ballooned exponentially based solely on a money grab misunderstands the total number of people who have cared about Pokemon cards at any point during the last 27 years and have come back to enjoy as adults (this is a large amount of the adults who have (re)entered the hobby.)
Being worth multiples more in 1 year, yeah, that’s a relatively new development, but the appreciation of hard to find Pokemon cards is not a new development. And anyway, the point is less that they gain value and the point is, these cards have historically held their value well. Tell me how many other hobbies you can interact with and sell your collection for any amount of money down the road.
I will cede to you the point of engaging in a healthy manner, but not for the reason you think: For every video you see of a handful of people fighting over Pokemon cards there are tens of thousands of restocks that quietly pass on with zero violence. For every shitty vendor/seller out there there are a dozen good ones. For every person literally going into debt and spinning the wheel, there are multiples of people who are just casually collecting and buying a few boxes/packs to open and moving about their lives. There’s probably a higher percentage of degen behavior in Pokemon than many hobbies because there is money to be made. That being said, America for sure, but much of the “developed” world is becoming a place of excess. So “Healthy” is not something we do in general: see car debt, see restaurant takeout, see unused subscriptions, see sports gambling, etc. The engagement with Pokemon should be contextualized within a society of excess not somehow demonized because the same behaviors that exist society wide are appearing in Pokemon.
And, yes, I can fathom my investment losing value. Multiple times I’ve seen thousands of dollars evaporate from my portfolio with companies that declare bankruptcy and continue operating in the aftermath. I’ve feared the same happening multiple times in Pokemon. I “value” my investment at about 65% of market expressly for this reason. In my personal decision making I keep thinking about how things are going to take a turn for the worse, and I keep being proven wrong.
There is a reason the SEC requires the disclaimer “past performance is not indicative of future results”. I appreciate that you are looking backward in your trend analysis, but at the end of the day, the past only matters so much. Pokemon has already changed for good, but it will continue to do so for years to come. So new (which I am), or not (which I also am) only carries a bit of weight in this discussion. The reality of TODAY’S market is what matters.
Made me realize, we are really, only just at the beginning.
But truthfully I think the real reason I’m not selling anything, is laziness
That’s a great built in feature, that it’s more of a hassle to sell than stocks or crypto
This made sense to me, got unlimited for fraction of the price. Freed up £700 to put into LC holos. I’ll get it back again.
I’ve been buying even with all-time prices. I’ve been collecting long enough to not make impulsive buys and only buy what I see is good value for me and my personal goals.
I’m not selling at all really except modern cards that have went up as of recent torwards my actual collection goals.
I try to see pokemon as just a hobby and nothing more, however if I see a card that I think is undervalued (usually niche cards that no one talks about during hypes), I will by them without hesitation.
Once in a while I’ll sell duplicates, but ill never sell cards that I know could be difficult to acquire again in the future. I expect these types of cards to eventually go down, but not worth selling and buying back at a later date.
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Believe it or not, there is a reality where people will choose not to sell cards that have 100x since they purchased them. If selling would improve your quality of life by achieving a huge life milestone (paying off student loans, down payment on a house, paying off a house, helping your family out), then it’s definitely worth playing into the hottest market.
However, everyone is in a different stage of their life and has a different financial situation. If you’ve already purchased and paid off property, maxed out your retirement savings plan and taken care of other essentials, then I can see why someone would keep their cards in this market if it still brought them significant joy.
Another thing to keep in mind is Pokémon as a franchise is still incredibly young (in relative terms), and most of the collector base is only just coming into disposable income and real money. I prefer not to get into any speculation, but there’s still many decades ahead for a lot of us here.
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Selling duplicates, as well as PSA 10 1st ed. Holos that I feel have served me well. Goodbye, I will never see you again but thats ok.
Buying binder cards.
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I’m selling very little. I think I’m mainly just stubborn and I really like my cards. Every time I think about listing some of them I struggle and end up just deleting the draft of the listing.
Graded - No problem selling for the right price eventually, as long as it was not a gift or a sentimental card. I love the cards but some of them don’t have the value for me that is shown on the price tag. I could pay for a new roof with some of them.
Binders - Will hold on to those as long as possible, nothing beats flipping complete sets, seeing childhood cards and reorganising pages. Also, binders have been a money sink for me anyway so there is no financial incentive to sell.
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I decided to grade some mint binder cards. Sending these to PSA today with some others. My hope is to sell the 10s, buy back the cards in worse condition for my binder sets, and have a nice profit left over. Would love to afford a Japanese uncut holo sheet. In the long term I think these cards would be a better margin hold than a sheet, but I want to expand my collection 
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Lol can relate so well. It is truly a struggle
I think its easier to not sell a card that went from $1 to 1k vs 10k to 1M. Having a card 100x into 6-7 figures is a totally different ballgame and oddly enough more of a struggle, as its much harder to justify keeping something of that value.
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Amazing photo. Best of luck and keep us posted with the results!
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no. no billionaire is going to focus on a $3k card unless it’s for something far more import and valuable: marketing and advertising themselves to other bubbles or dominant popular culture. leon smuk isn’t a gamer, but he’ll pay someone to power level his characters to market himself to children and young adults who will hype him and buy what he’s selling (bots can only do so much). it’s always to advance greater interests, not about his “degree of discipline and adherence to economic principles within the pokemon market”. he has no other discipline outside of promising a future he can’t deliver on and selling lifestyles he has no connection to. that’s what drives both government and private money his way: keeping himself in the news (“CEO says a thing!”).
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If i had any ex era reverse holo psa 10s id have sent them to zng 10 times over by now. Same goes with any of these multi thousand dollar cards, especially ones hitting $10,000+. I sadly do not though!
One reverse could pay for seemingly dozens of raw copies. Good trade imo.
99% of what I have is raw and not worth $1000+, so itd also be a ton of work to sell it. Cant imagine it being all that worth the effort
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