Person A has an item with low pop, or not a lot of sale information readily available, so they list it for an absurd price.
Person B: For whatever reason, buys item for way over market value.
Any one else with the item: Refuses to sell the item for less than the last confirmed sale.
Should a confirmed sale of a low pop item for way over current market value denote a raise in value, or just that some one is foolish enough to over-pay?
Without spelling it out for everyone, this obviously creates a lot of room for manipulation with false sales, etc…
^this. When something is truly rare and low pop, it is worth whatever someone is willing to pay, I wouldn´t consider that overpaying. You have to acknowledge that the truly rare stuff is in hands of people who often don´t need the money but would much rather get something of the same rarity as their own item. In the TCG world, MTG high grade alpha is another example where money can not buy you everything.
Does one impatient person dictate the market? Does one poor listing dictate the market?
The answer is no.
There’s a real lack of liquidity in pokemon (both the supply and demand side) and wild swings occur. Eg: crystal charizard, 20k trophy kangaskhan, koga beedrill etc etc
To answer your question: yes people can manipulate the market very easily but the market can also correct just as easily. So when something appears overvalued just be patient - theres always another chance.
If there has not been many sales on a low pop card, and then all of a sudden one sells for a very high price, by definition that is the market value. If there are many sales following a similar trend with an outlier, you can say it was a fluke.
The question to ask yourself is where is the cheaper option. Picture the rarest cards in the hobby. If someone is pursuing a trophy card that hasn’t been sold in many years, then all of a sudden one sells for double the last price, it is not “manipulating” the price. Someone has realized that there aren’t many opportunities to find that card, so they are willing to pay a high price to avoid remorse on passing it up.
Complaining about a card being too high priced when there are no cheaper options available is like yelling at the clouds.
Some really good comments here especially from mrmilk
The market will self-regulate. Pay what you feel is appropriate for an item. “”“Manipulation”“” is short term. If you really believe a price is not appropriate just dont pay it. If you’re patient either the market will come down to what believe is appropriate or you will have to increase your offer because you underestimated the true value.
As a specific Pokémon collector I’m met with this quite a lot. There are a fair few Pichu cards with a pop of just 1 or 2, and this leads sellers to believe they’re worth hundreds.
The reality most of the time though is that it’s usually a really common card and the reason for it being low pop is because nobody else has bothered grading it. In this case I give them an offer of what I feel the card is worth, and if they reject it I’ll just note down that the card is low pop and see if I can get one graded myself instead.
If the card is rare it’s a bit of a different story, but posts above mine have covered that.
Market Self correct as @smpratte says. Im hands down sure cards like Koga’s Beedrill were ‘‘manipulated’’ by some people. The card skyrocket the price up, its pop60 if im not wrong, was selling steadily between 200-260 considering pokemonprice and private sales through instagram - virbank. Suddenly, card went 3x up and people were offering it for like U$S1K.
While i do have the card and paid $230 for it during THIS YEAR, im not complaining im just sure some people did this on purpose and card wont retain this U$S1000 value and will plummet once again… my 2 cents on this specific card.
A small number of sales do not establish a market value for a card. They are just data points. A product doesn’t have a “market value” until it consistently sells at a specific price range.
Therefore rare items don’t ever truly establish a “market value.”
Because rare items don’t have a market value, people have a hard time figuring out what to pay for them.
Most buyers have a herd mentality. A herd mentality means that a buyer is never willing to pay an amount for a card that someone else hasn’t already paid but is very willing to pay what other people have already paid for the card.
Thus, when it comes to very rare items, it only takes a small number of shepherds to move the herd to a very different price point.
When prices suddenly shift for rare items, the price doesn’t necessarily eventually go back to its previous value. There are many examples of Pokemon cards that suddenly shifted in value that eventually went back down in price but there are also many examples of cards that only continued to rise in price.
All of the above factors explain the sudden price shift in something like a PSA 10 1st edition Koga’s Beedrill.
More generally speaking, one market shift I’ve seen over the last several months is a major increase in price for the lowest pop PSA 10 1st edition WOTC set cards. Cards like Jungle Snorlax / Vaporeon / Kangaskhan / Wigglytuff / Clefable, Fossil Lapras, Misty’s Golduck, Koga’s Beedrill, Neo Genesis Typhlosion / Slowking, etc. All of these cards have been going up a lot in value, because there are PSA 10 set collectors who are desperate to acquire the rarest cards in the respective sets. Although sales of all of these cards are rare enough that they don’t truly have a “market price,” taken together it is fair to say that the market value of the rarest WOTC set cards has increased significantly.