As a card investor I’m always looking for overerlooked areas of the market. With the rise in price of old booster boxes, pre 2005 sets are becomming more and more attractive. I was looking over my expedition master set the other day and thinking to myself how much holo surface area the E-series has versus reverse from the ex-series. I was looking at the PSA 10 pop report on expedition reverse holos and was astonished how low they were (typically 0-3 copies per card). I then checked ebay and many reverse in PSA 10, some pop 1-2, are going for $30-40 which I felt was crazy. Prices for expedition boxes are $2200+ and single packs $60+ making buying pack fresh reverse holos that may not even be 10-worthy this way seem out of the question.
Who else feels the market for these cards is going to explode? Should I be buying up every PSA 10 e-series reverse for under $40?
Will they increase? Yes, I think they will but it will be a while before then. However, I personally think that putting money into Base Set is the smarter and safer bet if you’re looking to invest.
1st Edition Base 8,9,10
Shadowless Base 9, 10
Unlimited Base 10s
Personally, I do not see the allure for the e-series reverses in a PSA 10. The holo pattern is nothing special, it doesn’t add to the attractiveness of the card. I can see that maybe for specific species you should buy the cards as an investment for the completionists out there. However, the reverse pattern is just not unique enough, compared to, say, Legendary Collection. At least in sets like Fire Red & Leaf Green and Hidden Legends the art box of the reverses were holo, which made even common reverses feel premium.
I don’t think you’re off-base in speculating about reverses. I think the most unique and promising opportunity is with the “stamped” ex series sets - reverses that have the sets insignia written on the art. PSA 10 copies of cards that are integral parts of a set have demonstrated great value, such as Charizard from Crystal Guardians as well as any Delta Species card.
Sorry for rambling but I hope I brought up some good talking points.
Interesting question! As a collector of WOTC cards, I only collected the Expedition holo set a couple of years ago so not too sure about how the value of the set is heading as a whole but IMO as far as WOTC’s E-series goes - current status of Expedition is perhaps the weakest as compared to Aquapolis and Skyridge, not withstanding the fact that it comes after a very strong Neo Destiny. (shows how important it is to have chase cards in a set)
To me the guess that reverse holos will go up in price for expedition is speculating a collective appreciation of the set’s value - usually suggested by the increase in price of sealed packs/boxes or the single holos etc. Considering the increase in expedition box prices as a signifier then yes prices of reverse holos will increase! However, the value of reverse holos comes with collecting master sets and I think the idea of collecting a master set is niche. Expedition also grows pretty slowly as compared to other WOTC sets.
I don’t think the market will explode but interest will grow especially for a set such as expedition that has been overlooked for a while. Again, for a set that grows slow like this, I probably won’t head out and sweep all those PSA 10 reverse holos immediately.
Expedition does contain the alternate artwork reverse holo for the 3 starters from Kanto and Johto that doesn’t have a holo version - those I think have got great capacity for development! Especially when the artwork is from the japanese lottery promo.
I can see a notable increase in value for popular Pokemon (starters, Pika line, Eeveelutions, Gengar, Gyarados, legendaries, etc.), but not so much for E-series reverses as a whole outside of the completionist market. Then again, Lv.X’s are doing remarkably well, so you never know…
So what I’m getting a consensus on is these cards only matter to completionists. That sort of brings up a more difficult question, is there enough completionist collectors to drive market trends.
I don’t think there ever will be enough completionists for the demand to exceed the supply to any drastic extent. Say all the reverses eventually become POP 5 in PSA 10. Will there ever be >5 people that want a random non-desirable reverse and feel that it’s worth $40? I think no. My guess is prices will stablize at $25ish for random common and uncommon reverses in PSA 10, but might hit double that for your fan-favorites.
This is a very niche market indeed. That being said, some of these $30-40 low pop cards might earn $100+ a few years from now, but they would take a long time to sell until you find the perfect buyer for them.
As others have said, I think there’s plenty of better investments, though if you can find mint pack fresh copies for cheap and your prediction turns out to be true, you can then get them graded and collect some nice profit.
Parallels are like the 1st edition of sets that didn’t have 1st editions. Parallels are love, parallels are life.
But as others have said there are very few that would be interested in hunting a PSA 10 set of reverses. And that would be a labor of love I imagine. On the plus side, reverse e-series cards seem to be fairly easy to grade. Another thing to note, some of the reverse e-series cards come up rarely for sale. They can be pretty scarce, especially in mint condition. I’ve sold a number of “common” reverses raw for $40+ just because there are none on the market.
I absolutely love the E-Series reverse holos. It all started when I saw this Mew at my local card shop.
I didn’t like E-series non-holos at first glance because of the E-Reader data occupying so much space. The reverse Holo truns it into more of a bar code that has the same color as the rest of the card, much better looking imo.
I noticed that the reverse Holo is much more subdued in Skyridge and Aquapolis, kinda disappointing.
while i definitely agree on the assertion that the allure for the EX series completionists and collectors, specificially in regards to stamped reverses, outweighs the E Series, I also think youre underestimating the additional allure of the difficulty that comes with grading the type of holo and surface area coverage for the E Series reverses. I, myself, am a huge fan of difficult grades, and while certain EX series are innately worse condition and, therefore, more difficult to grade, many collectors can vouch for the difficulty with finding reverses from E Series without scratches on the holo, hence such low pops.
I do believe that these will go up, but not to the levels that have been shown from the exponential growth of the EX series. So I definitely agree with you on EX series, but I think there is more support for the estimation of E Series growth than you give credit for.
The problem with the difficult grades argument is that, at least for now, the content of the card is more important than the grade it receives – only after the card has appeal does the grade carry a much greater value.
I can picture some reverse holos shooting up for that reason (i.e. chase cards like TV reporter, etc.), but for the most part, despite how hard the card is to grade, I would argue that we won’t be seeing any significant price rise anytime soon unless general appeal for the EX reverses change. Will it rise? Yes, but if we are mainly collecting these cards for profit, there are better, more speculative cards to put our money in.
Totally understand!! But yeah, if there were to be a sudden spike in interest for these cards, given how hard they are to grade and pull for a specific card, their value would spike to no end lol – they’re a very high risk, high reward kind of ordeal.
As a collector of WOTC cards, I only collected the Expedition holo set a couple of years ago so not too sure about how the value of the set is heading as a whole but IMO as far as WOTC’s E-series goes - current status of Expedition is perhaps the weakest as compared to Aquapolis and Skyridge, not withstanding the fact that it comes after a very strong Neo Destiny. (shows how important it is to have chase cards in a set)
