The truth is plain to see? 
For this card, I would think itās due to price correction after the hype caused by japanese store buyback prices last year. Price seems to be back down to early 2023 levels.
Some sales info from tcgfish
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Fine. Iāll rephrase. I think the card price for alola friends crashed because the japanese store buyback bubble back in mid 2023 had burst. I donāt think the chinese reprint is the main contributing factor that caused the price drop.
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Barely. If youāre collecting artwork only then you donāt need to shell out for the Japanese version, but there are plenty of reprints with expensive originals such as web reprints (unikarp, some masakis, etc).
Even modern EBD Lillie soared with a Chinese reprint having existed for ages. The Japanese rainbow vmax Charizard is still elusive despite being common in English.
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Ermā¦ I donāt know about that. Letās see what others have to say.
Agreed to hear other opinions.
My immediate thoughts is the event @ShinPorygon is referencing.
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Nah, that card had no right being 16k in the first place
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Are you implying P*** auction is rigged?
I think he meant that 16k is an overly high valuation for that card. You can see for yourself now, the prices crashed bad.
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No. Iām saying that the speculation on that card was out of control. Any card with Lillie on it hit unsustainable prices and they all had a dramatic fall back to reality.
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For the segment of US buyers that donāt care about legibility, and exclusively enjoy the quality of the print and finer texturing, there is little reason to buy the Japanese version when a cheaper alternative exists.
However, many people enjoy Japanese because that is the origin language of the franchise, or something to that effect. But for those that only care about the āartā, thereās no point in paying the Japanese premium.
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Its more due to the artifical store buyback bubble popping you see similar crashes across the board.
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I think youāre about to hit the core of the matter, tell us more about itā¦
To be frank, I donāt.
I donāt care if Japanese is the original or 1st edition. Because I canāt read Japanese! 
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You need to go check the conversation last year:
TLDR: Japanese modern prices of chase cards in June 2023 canāt be used as a reference at all because it was at the peak of a speculative bubble.
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One example of this is that companies like Clove in Japan had opened a lottery system / mystery box scheme where you can participate using a minimum of 1000 Yen as an entry fee. There was a pool of 100K cards and if lucky, you have a chance to win one of the high prize draws. The issue is that Clove needed to fill this pool of 100K cards, so they would inflate the buyback prices to entice the collectors to sell their expensive / desirable cards. This caused a kind of a market where Clove would advertise ridiculous buy back prices and this would then be used as a reference point in Japanese secondary markets causing all prices to spike up greatly.
Cheers!
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I donāt think the Chinese version stops wealthy people from buying the Japanese version. But it provides an alternative for the majority to buy a nice card for a more affordable price.
The alola friends card was one of my favorite promos in the last few years but even I sold near the peak of the craze simply because I knew it was artificially inflated.
I still have not purchased a replacement and I may never pick one up. The Chinese version has been tempting though.
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So i guess the situation now is that the bubble bursted?
But JPN Moonbreon is still so high.
I also like Aloha Friends. It reminds me of that special countdown of millennium year 2000 that I went with my classmates. It was a special countdown to me, with fireworks and all.
Aloha friends is quite affordable too, right now. But it got this small anniversary seal at the bottom right of the artwork.
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