3 illustrators & 4 trophy pikas all for sale in the same month, that’s crazy.
Someone raising cash or cashing out big time, not a good sign for vintage
Collectibles are down but that means we can get cards for a good price.
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Why would this be a poor sign for vintage?
The Japanese trophy realm is so far removed from the average consumer that I would hesitate to draw any conclusions between wealthy people selling trophies and the general market health.
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The psa 10 pika is already high/a record price. And the 8.5 illustrator ended at 570k. I don’t know how that can be perceived as a negative.
Regardless, I wouldn’t equate the highest end cards to the overall market.
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Have you ever seen this many big cards come up in such a short period of time before? (Trophies, illustrators, wotc 10, test prints, etc) If so, what happened the last time? Did the cards go into hibernation for a while?
Feels like an over generalization. There are plenty of reasons for an individual person to sell, a lot of which have little to do with Pokemon or the market as a whole.
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Its tough because there really hasn’t been anything comparable. There is just so much money in the market. At nationals so many sports guys were interested in tcg, in a way I’ve never experienced. Also these auction houses are pushing tcg harder than ever. Even a couple years ago, pokemon wasn’t a priority for goldin.
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So apparently another trophy pika set just sold for 20m yen in Japan. Tbh I think if this influx of high tier cards continues long enough it may not be sustainable. Proretrox has an illustrator for sale almost every month. Might be a retrace in the future.
In addition to what @smpratte said, your observation above is accurate, but it’s missing the complementary piece of what these “big cards” are actually selling. If people are purchasing at or near the previous price points, then the movement of assets can be a result of a countless number of reasons. There are too many unknown variables to conclude the health of the market with this observation alone.
However, should there suddenly be a mass exodus of interest at all levels of the market, from pack collectors and binder collectors of all cards to the BGS Black Label stonkers, that would be a different data set with more noticeable cause for concern. This happened once before, before the era of E4/UPCCC & PokeGym, where long time members of the community were trying to sell their collection and no one was willing to purchase mint 1st edition WOTC holos for literally $1 each, and mint 1st edition Base Zards were struggling to sell for $60.
Should today’s market experience that level of exodus today, and we see that scale of price drop at all submarkets within Pokemon, there would be some noticeable early indicators - happy to share that from my perspective, the more frequent emergence of the “big cards” during the past few years alone do not contribute to this concern 
cpbog1
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Ehh proretro’s last post was January, but I get what you are trying to convey. I actually wouldn’t mind a retrace, but there just currently isn’t an indicator. I remember Brent from pwcc said something obvious yet poignant about the 100ish copy collectibles, “there will never be enough supply to satisfy demand”. I just wouldn’t bet supply being the only factor to drive down the lowest supplied items. People are just more aware today of what is actually rare.
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Around March last year there were a bunch of trophies auctioned in a short period of time. While there weren’t as many Illustrators/old back Pikas, there was pretty much at least one of anything below that tier. I remember 3 pika rings sold within the space of a week.
I think the reality is that most of this stuff is so rare that it just doesn’t come up for sale much, regardless of it they appear in bunches or not.
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I remember that actually! I feel like this is a new level though. In just the last three months we’ve seen multiple Snaps, multiple old back pikas, multiple illustrators, multiple Trophy Kang 10s, more art academies than I can ever remember lol, more FPO than I can ever remember, multiple 1st ed PSA and cgc zards, multiple GS Rays, multiple tropical mega battle, multiple test print and disco sheets, it goes on and on. And the market is absorbing no problem, it’s crazy!
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I agree. That felt like a fluke one-off event, this feels more sustained.
Rare trophy cards have different price points based on grades. It’s no surprise that the psa 10 no.2 pika is going for such a strong price - it’s the highest grade and only a few exist in it. It’ll be wrong for any psa 7/8/9 no.2 pikas owners to ask the same price the 10 sells for.
We can see the same thing happen in the sports card market. Take the mickey mantle is psa 8 vs psa 9 vs psa 10. Check out honus wagner - even the pinnacle of sports card have price points for varying grades.
People will pay a premium for the best possible quality card because its the pinnacle of the set collecting
Hec even take the cgc 9.5 (now a 10) snap gyarados selling for roughly 30k more than the psa 9. Why does it deserve the premium? Because if someone wants the best possible set the options are limited where as completing a snap set is difficult but not impossible.
Now onto why is supply so high? Well we know that extra copies exist and with each competition a sheet would have been printed and extras given to employees. It only takes one employee a year to sell their cards to make supply seem high as compared to their relative known distribution amount.
I think the higher amount cards we’ve see lately is related to accessibility of Japanese market. We have so many more people purchasing in Japan and reselling in the Usa. Where as before only a handful of people would take the risk and purchase on Yahoo Japan and ship the card.
Supply will eventually be absorbed and people who think they can pay the price of recent auctions will kid themselves when no one will sell to them. The best time to buy a rare card is when supply seems high.
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Proretrox has 2 illustrators for sale atm 1 cgc authentic & an ungraded copy. I think they sold another 1 or 2 copies this year as well. If a retrace ever happens we’d never see it coming. Unironically it would be a massive opportunity for collectors like myself.
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I wouldn’t read too much into the influx of trophies listed in this lot. I see it as being nothing more than the sellers hoping that the exposure and hype around worlds would bring in more eyes and a higher $$$ value, and consequently it is just a good time to sell.
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It’s time to #BuyOrBuy as Scott would say haha
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This is exactly why a big retrace would be so difficult - because there are a bazillion people who feel the same way.
For every person that can afford those cards at today’s prices, there are hundreds or thousands more that want them but can’t afford them at those prices. At some point during a retrace you’d hit the point where the buyer pool gets bigger because they’re more affordable, and people would buy them up.
Obviously some kind of mass exodus throws all of that out the window but I don’t even know what it would take at this point to make cards with ~100 copies drop a significant amount in the long term.
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Do you know how many people attempted to buy that set and how fast it sold for?
The market is healthy
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