I’ve been browsing around to find information on the full art pikachu cards trophy cards and the 2004-2012 pikachu trophy cards and I am having difficulties knowing the actual market prices on them. These are my guesses for the cards:
1st Place Full Art (2014): $4000
2nd Place Full art (2014): $3500
3rd-4th Place Full art (2014):$3000
I’m guessing subsequent years would probably be worth roughly $500 less than the 2014 year, since it’s the first year it ever came out with full arts? I know a recent 2015 3rd place trophy card sold for $3500, but I was unsure whether it was a legitimate sale, or someone bid on it for fun.
Would the 2004-2012 pikachu trophy cards be worth around the same ball park?
The 2015 no 3 was an actual sale. It was the most recent.
There really isn’t a way to properly quantify English pikas. The 2004 and 2014 will be worth more because they were the first respective releases.
I think those prices are a bit low for the 2014 cards. That is just my gut feeling. But again, no one can truly provide a fair market value at this point in time.
Definitely, the first respective releases should be worth more. I’m just thinking if the subsequent releases of the Full Art Trophy Pikachu cards would slowly decrease the overall value of the cards. However, the 2004-2013 trophy cards seems to be practically non-existent, despite being released already multiple times. That’s why I am confused with the pricing of the cards
If a 2015 no. 3 actually sold for $3500, then that is more relevant data we currently have. Unfortunately there really isn’t a cut and dry answer to this question.
I do agree people want dpersin prices right out of the gate. However, there are examples of the cards doing well on ebay/aftermarket with patience. Most of the people who expect a premium want to flip it immediately for top dollar, which is not realistic.
Definitely relevant. This is one of those markets where you’re going to get a lot of strong opinions, primarily from people who have stock in them (usually through ownership).
My opinion is that there just isn’t sufficient evidence for a rock hard pricing. Opinions are the best you’ll get. On the one hand you have DPersin definitively altering the market, but on the other he is still a buyer people have to compete with. I’m slow to suggest we can disregard his purchases if competing with him can be the difference between getting one or not. That said, we see a hard drop in price in most cases after the DPersin sale. But have we seen enough second sales to really call this a hard and fast pattern? I believe this is more of an impression partially undergirded by oral repetition.
It’s also highly important to consider the context of each individual card for sale. Why would a 3rd place go for more than a 2nd place? That’s a great question and it can usually be traced back to one or all of these factors:
-What year was the trophy awarded?
-What is the nationality of the different recipients? (Japanese winners rarely sell)
-How many other people sold that year?
These types of things are still being fleshed out in the market and as observers, we have the disservice of private sales being standard practice. With time, I believe more cards will sell publicly and we will have more to work with.
I think it can be stated definitively, the non-fa english pikas are unfortunately lackluster. I never get any inquires about the non-fa english pikas. There probably isn’t a week that goes by where someone doesn’t message me about an old school japanese trophy card, but nothing about non-fa english pikas, ever.
I do see more interested in the English FA pikas. I own both (non FA & FA). I personally like the FA versions more, simply because they were not re-printed for 10 years straight.
Either way, as Charlie stated, there are always multiple variables involved the sale of a high end item. The Year, how many on the market, condition, etc. Also, most of these go privately as well.
That’s good to know. I have had the impression that the FA versions are more desirable, but I’ve generally kept the opinion to myself because I don’t have a way to quantify it. So I find this information fairly affirming of that notion.
Also, another thought reading through this just gave me. It’s a clarification that I think is REALLY important in these types of discussions but that I’ve never seen made sufficiently.
Hypothetical markets do not exist.
What I mean by this is that when we are talking about what a current market value is for a certain card, only what is visible exists and what is visible can never be ignored. This has a lot of implications that I’m going to list in a bullet point style because they all stem equally from what I’ve said here.
-Public sales are more reliable than private sales for determining a current market value.
-A public sale that is an extremity, while acknowledgeable as an extremity, cannot be completely disregarded.
-A trend can only be formally established with sufficient public evidence. Until then it is a theory or impression.
-If a certain influence is altering the current market value of a card, the card still has that value. If every copy of X that appeared under Y dollars was being bought by someone, the market value is not “actually” less than Y just because someone is buying them all under that price. That’s a fallacy. What you’re able to purchase it for is still the proper market value.
-The existence of any number of copies of cards not currently for sale is only tangentially relevant when determining the market value of a card.
I see pretty much every single one of these points violated during the course of a standard discussion. Here are some examples of what that looks like so you can avoid falling into the trap:
-“I heard that X seller got Y price for card Z when he sold it last year. So the market value is actually higher/lower than that eBay listing.” - This is using information that cannot be proven to make an argument so you should already be suspicious. But even if you were to entertain the figure provided for card Z, it does not change the current scarcity of the card as it pertains to the market and the price it sold for has no bearing on the conditions surrounding what is currently for sale. All that matters is the likelihood that the card would re-enter the market and the demand/supply existing currently.
-“Well, there are eight copies of card X currently for sale between $2500 and $3000, but last year one copy sold for $4000 and another sold for $5000!” - This is likely ignoring how many copies of the card are available. If the sales at $4K and $5K occurred when there were no other available copies for purchase at the time, the results might not be surprising. We know that there are eight copies available now, suggesting that different sellers are competing with each other and participating in a market surplus relative to the number of active buyers. What does this mean for determining a range? It might still be said fairly that the higher end of the range is between $4K and $5K because we know the price can be achieved under the right market conditions. The lower end of the range is almost certainly as low as the cheapest available copy for purchase but it cannot be stated with complete certainty if no other sales exist. The cheapest available card might be the lowest potential sale ever achieved and we will all look back in the future and hate ourselves for not buying it. However, this is the realm of speculation. Additionally, it would be inappropriate to identify a downward trend in the market at this point because two sales over a couple years are insufficient for determining a trend.
-“There’s a guy in Mexico that is buying every FA Charizard that appears under $10, so it’s not actually worth the $12 price tag you see on eBay. It’s just one guy keeping everyone else from buying the card for what it is worth.” - We have the unfortunate circumstance in our hobby of being small enough for one person to radically influence the price of cards without needing unrealistic funds to do so. That said, anyone buying counts as a real buyer. If you are not able to purchase a card for a certain price because other market actors are buying them up below that threshold, the market value is determined the same way. Whether it is one person buying 100 cards or 100 people buying one card, the market value is still considered the same because the goods are reliably purchased at that price.
-“There’s no way X card is worth Y price because there were 1000 printed!” - This is entirely irrelevant. Supply and demand simply do not work this way. If there are a thousand copies of a card and only one buyer, then you’re going to see a piss poor value on the card. If there are 1000 copies and a million buyers, you’re going to see sky-high prices realized for the card. All that matters is the availability of a card relative to the number of buyers and the price those buyers are actively paying for one. There are so many examples of these principles that I’m not going to go into them now, but if it comes into question or you do not understand feel free to ask more specifically and I’ll be glad to provide some different hard examples of this reality.
That 2015 2nd place Pika Trophy that just sold on eBay almost caused me a heart attack today… I was this close to buying it… put it on my watchlist… went to class… exit the class… Sold out… As if this year couldn’t get any shittier jk lol. @smpratte if it was you who bought it keep me updated lol.
This does seem like wishful thinking only because the art is not exclusive. Stamps rarely seem to produce much value in themselves unless they’re exceedingly rare relative to their counterpart. These are just somewhat rarer than their more common equivalent. That said, I think what will really drive the value one way or another will be who sells and who does not. The 4th place would almost certainly be the most valuable if only a couple sell while lots sell in every other position. Collectors seem to want the set of 1-4 when they dish out the cash for one of them, so it could be the do or die card for collectors after that full set.
@smpratte : Thanks for letting me know! The interesting thing is, the non-fa pikas are so seldomly talked about that it is near impossible to find any historical pricing on those cards, whereas the new FA pikas have some information about them! I definitely like the FA pikas more, and I am planning on purchasing one which is why I wanted to know a rough estimation of their pricing. But yeah, these cards are so rare that it’s hard to gauge the price on them, and the range would change all the time. I’m just afraid of investing into a FA pika and then the extras being printed in the next few years would significantly depreciate the value of the card, especially if I would be buying a non 2014 one.
@djgigabyte : thanks for your estimations! Do you mind showing me a picture of what you are talking about for the 4th place? I tried googling it and I got no relevant information.
@churlocker : thank you for your detailed insights and explanations, they are really helpful. I can definitely see the fallacies you have mentioned, but sadly as a newbie it’s quite difficult to have good estimations of cards unless we ask experienced veterans for their opinions, which would bring subjective analysis towards the value of a card. I try my best to simply purchase cards for their historic value and art, but sometimes I am never sure if I have overpaid by too much because value is not always quantifiable due to information asymmetry. For example, seeing No.3 FA pikachu being sold more than No.2 FA pikachu can bring confusion and skepticism to a buyer who is interested in the FA pikachu.
@nuttun For sure. And I hope my remarks don’t feel targeted at you or anything. It just brought what I wrote to mind and I figured I’d throw it out there for everyone on the forum to read, consider, remark on, etc.
@churlocker: No hard feelings at all! It’s really helpful to give these insights, and it will also help future readers in understanding the value of cards. Rare card prices fluctuate a lot, and I think it is something important that newbies should understand instead of grasping at the limited information present on the internet.
Thanks for the link! I am a bit confused at the context though, especially here: " 1-4 in half art then the No. 4 is what it all hinges on", what’s the 4th place half art we are talking about? Was there a printing error on the 4th place card’s stamp? I looked at the picture and I do not notice any typos or anything.
In 2013 the trophy cards were still the normal artwork (Not full art; What Dan called half art here). This was the year the 4th place trophy card was introduced. The next year, in 2014, the artwork switched to full arts. That means the six 4th place cards from 2013 are likely the only 4th place copies of that artwork that will ever exist.
So anyone looking to complete a set of the old artwork English pikas from 1st to 4th will have to acquire one of those six cards.
Dan has one. David Persin has one. As neither is likely to ever go for sale in our lifetimes, that leaves only four possible copies to be obtained. Which makes it arguably the scarcest English pika.
Thank you so much for the clarification! It was really helpful! I was really confused because pictures of the half art Trainer no.4 in 2013 is really difficult to find, even on google images. If you did not clarify, I wouldn’t even know it existed!
Edit: I just want to thank the admins and founder (churlocker, djgigabyte, smpratte) for giving extremely detailed information and support in answering my question
