Very interesting hearing how a single individual or a small pool of investors in magic the gathering have been known to buy out as many copies of a card as possible and then the price spikes dramatically. These “buy outs” I hear aren’t a one time thing and numerous cards have exeprienced this in Magic.
I know Pokemon has had big spikes the past year (Shadowless, 1st Ed Base, English Gold Stars), but from what I understand it was not a “collaborative” effort between investors, it was just a high demand from individual colectors/flippers.
You guys think this could hapen in pokemon and does anyone know the catalyst for this happening in Magic?
I suppose it could happen with certain limited cards. For instance, Prerelease Clefable and No HP Dark Persian could potentially be susceptible to buyouts. Is it likely? Doubtful in my mind. But if it can happen in MTG it could probably happen with Pokemon. May have already happened.
Actually this is something which happens in Pokemon fairly often already. There are plenty of collectors who buy multiple copies of various cards alongside sealed product to hold for this exact reason. A fair amount of people on this forum do it, myself included. It would be ignorant to believe many others outside of Efour aren’t also practicing this, as the market is infinitely larger than this specialist forum.
You won’t hear about it often, as people doing this won’t usually want the buyer pool to realise the ‘artificial ascension’ of an asset in a market. Plus there is an inherent stigma attached to investors being tyrants and not also being able to identity themselves as also being collectors.
And to answer your second question about a catalyst. In a nutshell it’s down to seeing growth and an opportunity, plenty of people will dump money into any market or product where there is reliable scope for good returns.
Purposeful buyouts aren’t really a thing in Pokemon. People certainly buy multiple copies of cards, but that is usually more organic. They are typically species collectors, or people who want numerous examples in different condition. There are people who may do it as a strategy, but it is a small minority, especially when compared to MTG.
As smpratte alluded to, the market for the most part is organically grown. It’s pretty safe to guesstimate that the people buying multiple copies purely for investment purposes, are in a minority of under 1% of the collector population. If this weren’t the case, longterm growth wouldn’t continue as it has for so long.
The MTG buy outs in large were a falure except for specific cards. This was a big topic, I think a year ago, and it barely effected the market outside of the power 7 and other very highly sought after cards.
Doing it with Pokemon I image would have the same issue where it’ll only work on hightly sought after cards that are already in high demand. Creating an artificial short supply, unless the cards aren’t ever released back to the public in which case it wouldn’t be artificial. Basically, set cards wouldn’t be an option as there’s too many of them to create the desired result, most promo cards are printed to oblivion, leaving only very limited releases or specific PSA grades of hightly sought after cards that this could be an actual option. Niche items could work as well but would have issues that are already hard to overcome (aka buying a bunch of niche items would be a dissaster to unload for profit).
In all it’s far easier to just let the market adjust naturally rather than trying to gain a quick spike in profit which would ultimatly have to be a long term solution for resale (over saturating the market while selling would be counter productive).
Exactly. The hobby is healthy enough as is. Even if you buyout literally every available copies of a specific set of cards, you can’t dump them on ebay for a quick buck. You have to drip feed them to the market very slowly. You spend what… the next 10 years trying to maximize your investment? At that point, you probably hurt the growth of the hobby more than anything. It’s growing just fine on its own.
This makes more sense if we hit some sort of stall point and prices stay flat for a year or two and someone wants to artificially increase demand/prices and I still wouldn’t really call it a buyout unless some bored millionaire decides to ‘invest’ a couple millions in Pokemon.
Also, since we don’t have the playability aspect like MTG where cards of any condition(1000+ copies available) are as desirable as high grade Pokemon cards(sub 100 available), what is one going to buy out… the 2 or 3 copies that pop up once a blue moon? Most of it is locked up in private collections, so it’s just not going to happen in a large scale.
You committed a buyout in the most literal sense, it depends what the OP is asking or how you’re defining it. A collective effort by multiple buyers, even if unintentionally linked to each other can result in a a specific card being bought out.
For a specific example I’d just refer you to any card that is difficult to purchase on the open market. Any where someone owns a significant amount of copies in it (relative to the population), even if not all by him/herself. It’s not super rare and can be seen on social media posts.
But yeah, you’ve definitely done an awesome job of buying out Charizards virtually by yourself lol.
Agreed totally. That’s what I see happening in Pokemon too. I just wonder if one day one person or investor or group will start to buy up and hoarde a single card or a group of them. I know magic the reserve list is a big time buy out candidate, but all of WOTC era you can make an argument is a reserve list card.
A buyout is intentional, I meant that a buyout can of course occur through an unintentional alliance. If someone buys multiple cards for the sole purpose of contributing towards removing them from the available population on the market, they are contributing towards a buyout. It can be done alone or with others.
I’m not blaming you of using a straw-man as I perhaps wasn’t clear with what I was trying to say. I gave a list of criteria for something to be considered bought-out. I don’t believe that a card being uncommonly found on the market means it has necessarily been bought out, unless the other criteria has been met. Also to be clear I meant multiple collectors buying multiple copies, again for the purpose of reducing the market availability. I didn’t say or mean that everyone buying one copy each = buyout.
No…I never said that, actually said the opposite- I know of no cards it’s happening to in Pokemon, but know it happens in Magic where a card is bought up. I know of no Pokemon cards but that was the point of my original question if it could happen in Pokemon. Just think it’s interesting how there are entire youtube channels dedicated to “Magic Finance” and one of the original bitcoin uses was to trade for Magic cards so I know that community has deep deep roots in investment and speculation just didn’t know if one day when I’m trying to complete collections one card will be completely off the market! But from the answers on here, most likely no. So that’s good.
I just want to make a very basic blanket statement. Buyouts do occur in Pokemon, both by individuals and groups. A buyout occurs when a significant portion, not even necessarily a majority of the stock, is bought for the sole purpose of reducing the available population and increasing market price. Quantity bought by who does not matter. It is more the reason for the quantity being bought, to define it as constituting a buyout. If enough quantity is bought for these reasons to be a driving force on the market price, it is a buyout by any real business definition.
The thing is a significant portion of the stock is getting bought on a daily basis. There’s hardly any product available left worldwide, so how do you differ the ones participating in a buyout and average Joe adding a missing piece or two to their collection?
You’re right in saying that buyouts do occur, but it’s just not something we’ve seen happen in large scale or in the literal sense of one or a few individuals going out of their right way to buy every single stock at whatever price.
Gary is the closest I’ve seen, but he’s just a little obsessed with his Charizards. lol He could absolutely manipulate the prices with ease, but he’s a good guy and he was 0 intentions of hurting the hobby yet I’m sure he gets a ton of hate mail for hoarding so much.
Well it can be applicable to any remaining stock and subsequent stock that is put up for sale going forwards.
Like you’re pointing out, a majority of stock being bought for these reasons will result in a more significant impact on market price resulting from a buyout. Generally speaking, less market control is less market impact.
I’m not arguing that buying a small portion of the stock = necessarily having a significant impact on the market.
You’re right buddy, I can’t differentiate as I don’t know exactly who is buying exactly what. I also agree that is is not happening on a large-scale and this is something I said on my second post on this thread. I agree that the VAST MAJORITY of the market for most cards, is controlled by collectors and not investors buying out cards.
