Gold dealers, for instance, will buy gold all day long at spot price, then tack on $50-$125 per coin depending on how it’s minted. The risk is when they buy at a high and then it starts dipping and still have to sell. They combat this with buying paper shorts on gold, so when it goes down they are washing out on losses.
How do Pokemon sellers handle the same risk? For instance, Umbreon was selling at $3000 not too long ago, now it’s at $2500 consistently.
If they bought at 80% of $3000, they don’t have much room right now. Only thing I can think is they just put cards aside until they go back up, but they wouldn’t have much to sell in the mean time?
I dont know of any buyers taking in 100s of psa10 umbreon evolving skies at the same time. If they were big enough to do this, they probably already unloaded inventory
This was easily forseeable because Umbreon from Prismatic has fallen steadily and it’s the hotter and more rare item right now. Moonbreon has to track and stay at a price under that. Sunbreon was selling for $4,500 in a psa10 and sometimes more. Right now its getting 3,500 which means moonbreon has to fall in line with that
And this was easy to see as that price was unsustainable. You can buy a 1st edition psa10 dark charizard for $4k or less
The initial drop of sunbreon psa10 at $4.5k was almost certain to drop as more supply hit the market. Moonbreon sellers were cashing in on the Umbreon spotlight
just a couple months ago moonbreon was 1.4k, so the majority of ppl holding this card are not hurting…
I doubt moonbreon gets 3,500 for a long time. Prismatic has to go close to the end of its printing cycle for moonbreon to skyrocket again
you cant “short” pokemon cards
you cant buy puts
if you bought at the top of the market, you can sell and take your loss or hold and wait
How do they deal? Take a loss. If they dont want to do that they can participate in market manipulation to overinflate the value to get out from under the loss. Everything from shill bidding, direct calue manipulation, to covert viral advertising. If you dont do that, its hold until value goes up or work it into a trade where you arent losing as much.
This is exactly what piqued my interest… I thought that same thing while Atlanta Collectacon when I saw how many PSA 10 Umbreons were for sale between $2800-2900… I figured they’d be a little quicker to make a sale if they had acquired at the prices of the last Collectacon in 2024, but they would not budge off that price.
If they weren’t able to budge $100 for a deal, how are they coping with the current $2500 card price? lol
If you are a smart store owner you are likely buying at 80% of Market, so the 20% fall doesn’t hit so bad. I would assume if you have a store and you have cycled through many of these cards, you have made a huge profit over the last few months.
A responsible store owner likely isn’t sitting on more than 5 copies of a card at it’s all time high.
If you fear a greater dip and have access to distribution. Safest play might be selling and buying sealed product.
is it not tracking under sunbreon? did it not fall immediately as sunbreon did and also rise in accordance with it?
It’s not really a hot take when it’s the actual market in front of your eyes telling you the answer. maybe your… new, to pokemon
sunbreon is the hottest chase card in the entire pokemon tcg right now. Vmax will absolutely track at a price below sunbreon
also flooding the market is ridiculous when it takes 1,700 packs just to pull a sunbreon. and market demand for modern is at an all time high. there is no booster box. Vmax had a similar pull rate but the product was significantly cheaper to open so people could rip away. It will take many months for the population of sunbreon to sniff that of moonbreon. Also there are many new and returning people in the hobby, and they want the current chase not the 2021 chase
Its just that “it takes 1700 packs to pull sunbreon” is not really a scientifically supported number by any means. It’s something you or someone else came up with by watching youtubers and whatnot streamers but considering how much product is just sitting around boxed in peoples houses and how Pokemon company did not print enough to begin with - I’m not sure how you can argue that your number is some kind of hard and fast rule.
The fact is, they’ve been known to change pull rates between printing waves and theres really just no telling where this card will end up right now.
Nothing about this current market is sustainable, including the value of this new Umbreon hype card. Not to say it wont accrue a lot of value in the years to come - but we’re likely headed for a major crash surrounding Prismatic in the future. Way too many people are underestimating just how much this set will be printed because of the hype and thinking Pokemon company cares at all about the value of your “investments”.
You want to know why Evolving Skies has grown in value as much as it has before the recent hype?
Because the previous hype cycle was actually dying out right as Evolving Skies hit the market.
This is an entirely different situation with Surging Sparks and to a larger extent Prismatic. We’re at the perihelion of a major hype cycle with growing market sentiment. Tons of people botting websites to hoover up product and have an entire room of their house full of boxes for whatnot streaming and facebook marketplace sales - while Pokemon company is keenly aware of the situation and is assuredly going to print an insane amount of cards throughout the rest of the year to meet and overcompensate for demand.
The analogous set to Prismatic, in my eyes, is Shining Fates. Check out how charizard is doing after multiple people paid $15,000 for the black label.
I think the difference is that gold is ultimately one thing so there is pressure to diversity. Whereas cards inherently carry some diversification. In other words, it’s not like sellers are exclusively buying and selling umbreon. A loss on a particular card is covered by the rest of your inventory. If we ever have a situation where all cards just collapse in value in a correlated way, I don’t know if many people are preparing for such a situation and may just take the L.
Exactly this. If I notice a dip in one category of Pokemon cards, I’ll hold it (and maybe start buying depending on the fundamentals of that thing) and focus on something else.
Usually raw cards though. I’m assuming you’ve never been a vendor? Have you been able to sell a PSA10 moonbreon to a vendor for 2500-3000? Where your sauce?
these “vendors” wont be in bizness for too long if they blindly do this. where are these vendors who were paying 85% cash for moonbreon when it was at 3k (assume this would be at the upper end coz how and u get any hotter than moonbreon ). i believe alt even had a few sales close to 4k if you can believe their sales to be true
You have to go to a big card show in a big city at the beginning of the show.
Find the vendors at a card show that are about turnover, not milking every gain off each sale sale.
If a card is selling for 3k when the show starts, vendors will definitely buy it for at least 83% at $2500.
Anyone coming in looking to buy Moonbreon at that show will be expecting $3k, or $2.9k with a deal. The vendor knows they can fire sell it for at least $2600 before the show closes and profit $100 in a few hours. Or swap it out for one they have if it’s in better centering etc and fire sale the one they already had…
