Hey guys, I’ve been working on a challenge to complete all of gen 1-3 in Japanese in psa 9 and 10s. I notice how much significantly lower Japanese are than English. Im buying near mint Japanese cards for $20-30 raw and self grading them. I was in Orlando for collect a con. I was seeing psa 9s and 10s in Japanese for very Low. Now I know there’s always a premium for English but the price differences is insane. Psa 10 first lugia is around 100k, psa 10 unlimited is 30k and you buy a psa 10 Japanese lugia and it’s only worth about 1000. I really think we will see a massive price rise in Japanese soon because I just can’t imagine the price to be that massive between the too especially with how popular Japanese collecting is. What do you guys think?
Most Japanese packs from the wotc era had guaranteed holos in every pack, thats why theyre cheaper and more abundant. I’m also not to keen on print runs in japan but sets were printed much less around the e reader sets in english making those cards particularly less abundant and more valuable in english. The english premium diminishes by 5th gen with most japanese set cards being worth more than their english counterparts for most sets from black and white era through every era to today.
Vintage JP will never see a rise imo, modern jp is ridiculous overpriced imo
I’m not convinced that there will be a massive price increase in Japanese vintage set cards (maybe a small rise, but not massive), but I could potentially see some of the other vintage Japanese stuff getting a boost. There are absolutely plenty of fantastic vintage Japanese cards with unique art, unique releases, etc. (like Masakis, JR rallys, Vending, CD promos, ANA promos, etc.), that could see a big following with a little extra education. I think some of that could potentially be spurred on by a newfound influx of Chinese Pokemon collectors as well.
To be fair, Japanese oldback cards have alreayd seen a huge uptick and din’t fall back that hard compared to English.
I don’t expect them to get to the same price due to the holo in every pack thing and print quality was much better, so easier to get a 10.
Still like it that you can complete old Japanese sets so much easier, makes it a lot more fun for me!
Agree with what most others said. Check the pop report for Lugia, combined the English has 60 in a 10, Japanese has nearly 500. Think of how much money has to be injected for that card to get even a third of the way to the English one and be stable. I do think there is room for growth, but nowhere near what’s being suggested here. Also, like @handschoen said, it’s very collector friendly, which is a great way to do set/binder collecting!
Yes Japanese is under valued (set cards).
Ive recognised Chinese buyers are now slowly buying up huge quantities of Japanese old back holos. Plus Japanese cards are higher quality (generally), and have an easier time if hitting the 10s.
By the next boom I’d imagine Japanese will have risen in comparison with English.
Japanese modern is also better than English.
If a PSA 10 1st ed lugia is $100k, that’s $99k more than a Japanese 10 but also $97k more than a PSA 9 copy.
It’s not ideal to use such an exceptional outlier to identify patterns. But looking at the numbers, it’s easier to conclude that the PSA 10 ENG is way overvalued rather than JPN being undervalued. Every PSA 9 copy is one minimum wage employee’s 30 second opinion from becoming a 10
Beautiful 
I believe that the future is Japanese.
WotC collectors will feel like they have seen all there is to see in their childhood cards and collectively turn their interest towards the great unknown — Japanese cards from the same era.
Invest now! I bought most of the ones I wanted so now it’s a good time for you to buy, buy, buy!
I’m sure Japanese vintage will do just fine in the long run but I don’t see us having a massive price spike across the board similar to English in 2020/21. It seems like there is so much attention on modern chase cards for both English and Japanese and I’m not sure that will suddenly transition to vintage.
Also, with how much a lot of wotc era PSA 9’s have retraced I can’t see many English collectors picking Japanese when the prices are this close for some cards. That being said there are so many Japanese exclusive artworks with niche releases that I’m sure could have massive growth if some really motivated collectors suddenly had an interest.
There was a holo in every pack, but there was very little Japanese the collected cards . Try finding mint unplayed Japanese vintage, it is not easy.
I think it’s possible some Japanese could still be undervalued, or at least overlooked. A lot of people who have returned to the hobby focus on their native language and then branch out more over time. I’m definitely interested in exclusive Japanese cards or cards that were only released in Japanese compared to English. There’s a lot of nice cards and sets out there when you get digging around. Stuff that is not exclusive to Japanese though seems to be hit or miss. They tend to have superior print quality and fewer issues than English counter-parts, so they get higher grades easier on average as a result.
When did Japan stop guaranteeing holos?
The most recent sale for a PSA 10 Lugia was $28,800.
This is why Popularity isn’t part of ORMB. Because Popularity can swing dramatically. In this case the auction was ending on a massive twitch streamers channel, and was bid up to 100k+. Since then its done nothing but drop. Popularity is trend, not a fundamental.
After Neo 4 I believe, someone here can correct me if I’m wrong. I know for sure e1-e5 were only 1:2 chance, not sure about early EX sets?
I was ready to instantly say no japanese is over valued. But I guess it depends on the era. For modern it’s way over priced. Double priced booster boxes, trainers selling for kidneys etc
It’s helpful to remember that e4 is a bit biased toward collectors with vast and varied interests. Believe it or not, the “average” collector nowadays does not care much about Japanese vintage, and I do not see that changing.
There are really two crowds: 1) vintage English collectors, and 2) modern collectors who buy English and Japanese cards. The vintage Japanese collector, or e4 member for that matter, is the unicorn among the general Pokemon card collecting population. 
There would have to be a major shift in priorities for this to change.
The issue with Japanese vintage is lack of nostalgia (at least for the western market). Simply put, Japanese WotC/EX look significantly different than their English counterparts. Not worse per se, but they just don’t hit the same way.
When I see this, I get an instant rush of nostalgia:
Whereas I don’t when I see this:
It’s a very instinctual reaction. Objectively, there’s nothing significantly less nice about the Japanese version. But subjectively, the Japanese version doesn’t make me feel warm and fuzzy inside like the English version does.
I was already right and didn’t know it 
Honestly these outlier, exceptional sales that receive hyperfocus and are analyzed to death are some of the least useful data points. I just tend to mentally filter them out, whether it be the lugia or topsun charizord or zoroark set or sunfaded whatever