I feel like I keep seeing “just returned to collecting the tcg for the first time 15 years” posts on reddit and it’s honestly making me anxious as I’m just a casual collector with not much of a disposable income. People coming into collecting is stressing me out because there are still some old cards I’d like to get and I’m getting the fear that by the time I have a good enough disposable income to support this hobby much better everything will be 3x to 4x as expensive. The time I’ll have a disposable income is in about 3 years, with about a bit more than 2.5 years left of doing university.
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I wouldn’t stress over it. We’ve all been through that. Just stay within your means and spend the next couple years educating yourself in the hobby so when the time comes that you can plunge a little, you’ll be ready:)
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How much it’ll grow over X amount of time is anyone’s guess. That being said, growth in what you’re looking to acquire isn’t necessarily a bad thing since that means what you have has probably increased in value and youre buying into valuable product.
I’m not looking into anything too expensive, I’d just like to collect and complete the EX era sets for one.
A gold star Rayquaza and other gold stars would of course be necessary for it, and what stresses me out about it is that it always seems like more and more attention is being brought to this game through YouTubers opening packs and adults randomly deciding to collect again. As a student my “buying power” is not very much, the only thing I have is a few uncompleted very recent SM sets and a Generations set with just 7 cards still missing. The prospect of buying most gold stars right now is already insane for me, and my fear is that in a few years once I’ll have just an above average income it won’t really be one that can keep up with the increased value certain items I want will have by then.
And because my buying power is not very much while certain other people’s is, I’m scared that everyone with money will just buy out all the cards before I can get them and the only thing left will be highly costly listings.
All I want is some completed EX era sets and there’s this constant anxiety about whether the prices are going to rise due to growing demand. If you look at Google trends for example, the Pokemon TCG is in an upwards trend currently. It’s one thing if cards naturally increase in value due to being old and less and less supply being available, but it’s making me anxious that the supply/demand ratio is also possibly being upset at an accelerating rate because of the rising demand.
I wouldn’t worry about it too much. The reality is, we’re in a fairly overheated economy in general. IE employment is high, stock market is high, everything is high. Should there ever be a crash, you can bet the Pokémon card market will crash with it. Of course the older, rarer, and mintier cards might fare better but if you just want a specific card (PSA 8 and under) that’ll probably become/stay fairly affordable
You’re right. I do have some issues overall though with anxiety so this kind of stuff gets to me fast in general. I’m really trying not to stress out and just take it easy but sometimes…
Another thing that stresses me out a bit is that I bought into Alter Genesis/Dream League/Remix Bout in JP cards. The idea was that since I only collect, it would be fun to collect the JP ones. However I noticed that for certain Japanese sets the singles actually stay more expensive than the English ones, and get more expensive overall if the Japanese set is over a year old simply because Ebay sellers overprice them and the Japanese sellers sell them on Ebay less and less. Certain JP cards from modern sets might be the equivalent of like 5 bucks in Japan but 25 bucks or 50 bucks on Ebay because the only one selling it is some random US seller.
It’s making me feel as if I have to hurry and complete these sets before the supply stops being so generous.
Assuming you’re in America, I’d say Japanese cards are a pretty poor example of scarcity (at least when discussing modern cards) since you’re primarily paying for import/service as you’ve noted. Bear in mind that while people enter the hobby, people also make their exit so it’s not exactly a constantly shrinking pool.
A lot of the recent JP cards can be gotten from JP sellers for a while with totally free shipping, and many of them are willing to undervalue the package so that you don’t pay import costs. Meanwhile if you look at US sellers from the very beginning, they always sell their cards for about 2x-3x more. I live in Europe so I also get import costs from the US.
Therefore the best option is to order from Japanese sellers because they’re cheaper and sell with no shipping costs.
However the problem that appears, and the reason why I feel a sense of urgency, is that while modern EN cards actually decline in value upon being rotated out of the meta very often, JP cards only actually get scarce and more expensive after about a year and a half. Therefore while JP cards are initially cheaper, it seems that later on they’re actually more expensive to get outside of Japan. In general though the prices on Ebay are quite high from the start compared to what they sell for in Japan. Completely new cards from the latest set selling for 5 bucks in Japan are 25 bucks on Ebay.
And the prices on Ebay after a while when the only supply left is the US sellers, are not actually reflective of the sellers paying import. They’re the result of sellers inflating the prices on purpose because people can’t really know what people in Japan are paying for it.
I got back into the hobby during my last couple years in high school and the entirety of the time I’ve been back I’ve been working with a student budget, so hopefully I can provide some perspective and advice from someone who’s been (and still is) where you are.
Prices are fickle. There are cards that are exactly the same price or even less than they were in 2014 when I got back into collecting and there are cards that have skyrocketed. My first couple purchases were for mint gold star cards for like $30, which obviously isn’t going to be the case now. There are also some PSA 10 cards where the price really hasn’t changed that much, maybe gone up by $50 since 2014 which really isn’t too much. I certainly feel your anxiety with wanting to get out in front of price rises, that’s what’s structured a fair portion of my collecting as well. If it’s something you’re really worried about, here are some tips on dealing with that: buy one card as opposed to many, i.e. don’t spend $50 on 5 cards, spend $250 on one. It’s much more likely the $250 card will rise in price at a faster rate than the $50 ones, so your money is better spent there. Also, buy the highest end cards first. You mentioned the EX series as big for you (me too!) so I’d recommend getting Rayquaza/Charizard gold stars first. Scaling down in condition is also going to save you a lot of money. A PSA 7 example of these are still fantastic and great-looking cards, but you will likely spend hundreds if not thousands less than a 9/10. This can get you out in front of any potential price rises. But it is a tricky situation as nobody has a magic 8 ball of Pokemon card prices. Gold stars could drop by half tomorrow for all I know.
In my opinion, as a low-resource collector you should allow issues like possibly being “priced out” to inform your collecting but not control it. You won’t have any fun if you’re just worrying about what you might not be able to have. I’ve readjusted my goals since 2014 just because of the realities of the market and you likely will too. For example, I really wanted to pull a gold star myself. Back when EX packs were $7-10 each this was a reasonable goal if I dropped a hundred bucks every now and then. If I spent all the money I had at the time on EX packs I probably could have done it too. But I didn’t, I spent it on singles and opening new sets and PSA grading and I had a blast doing it. Some things will pass you by and it’s not the end of the world if they do. It happens to everyone in the hobby and it’s a simple reality of collecting, there’s always the “what if I spent x on y card z years ago…”
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Same here! I got two years left of school. Ive been cramming six classes a semester and been out of work.
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Like everyone said, don’t stress over it. Besides the few marquee hype cards or the wizards stuff, everything else is actually really affordable relatively speaking. I know people are going to bring up that $500K - $1M tournament pokemon card and say its rarer than the alpha black lotus because alpha black lotus was mass produced compared to the pokemon tournament card…1 champion, 1 card. Fact is, pokemon is entry level in the world of collectibles and entry level will always be affordable. Even if pokemon took a huge dump right now, if you don’t have the $$$, you wouldn’t even be able to take advantage of it anyways. On the other hand, lets say prices start to rise exponentially, if you have the $$$, price point won’t matter, it will be affordable anyway you look at it. Don’t let these abstract things get you all twisted up in the game. The best thing you can do right now to elevate your pokemon game is beast out in school so you can be in a position to beast out on pokemon when the opportunity comes.
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These people are the ones that missed the Pokemon Go expanse and now realize they could’ve made a lot of money.
Based on how many “I am ending my collection” or “I am cutting down on collecting” posts I see on various Facebook sale groups I am a member off shows for me that there might actually be a shrinking popularity. Or, also possible, people are done with the print-till-oblivion methods. Also; FOMO is a big deal within Pokemon, and we’ve seen that with the cancellation of artists coming to sign cards. So maybe this selling frenzy I see myself is just the people leaving because they missed out and are so salty with it.
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Thank you this actually helped a lot…
I just get worried over the sets I start collecting being too expensive to finish mostly, but you’re right that collecting shouldn’t be stressful or driven by issues like that. Many of these cards and sets I worry about are not even cards I have yet, so it wouldn’t matter too much regardless if I can’t get them at some point anymore. There are plenty of new nice cards coming out.
Do you think that these people coming in are likely just temporarily here? I noticed that a lot of the bulk sold in lots for example are from 2016 sets because in 2016 the PKMN Go craze caused lots of non-true Pokemon fans/millenials who grew up with Kanto/Johto and were never true fans to buy Pokemon cards. Then they of course lost interest and sold their damaged crappy bulk cards from 2016. I see so many card lots or overpriced listings of “collections” that are just a bunch of BREAK and EX cards from 2016 and Evolutions very often. And then they weren’t even true fans so they never sleeved their cards or took care of them in any form so they’re asking like 50 euros for a stack of Heavily Played quality bulk cards lmao.
I wonder if the kinds of players/collectors that come into this game are two types: those fuelled by hype and non-true passion (for example people getting “into” it because they saw Leonhart/UnlistedLeaf open like a booster box), the kinds of people who will quit within a year or two at most, and people who actually adore Pokemon and the cards and are in for the long run.
Funnily enough the stress has sometimes distracted me from school… You’re right that it’s not good to worry about this stuff, when I have an income I can just see what I can still afford. Besides, plenty of new good cards are coming out and a lot of the SM sets right now that are dropping in price soon actually have some good cards with nice artwork. I enjoy these too personally, and even though ideally I’d collect full EX era sets I guess it’s not that bad to just collect other cards if anything gets too expensive later on.
Fandom has many many levels, and a lot of quirky ticks. And I think calling someone “not a true fan” because cards haven’t been sleeved is a bit cutting the corner. I didn’t sleeve my cards until a the release of Team Rocket set after I opened my first Base Set pack. So all those fancy Base Set holo’s I own were just stacked into a box. Young and not knowing. And frankly, I still only sleeve that what is in my collection binder, and only single sleeved in the cheapest penny sleeves I can find. Not gonna spend $200 and hours of my time sleeving up hundreds of common cards that are listed for 0.01 on CardMarket.
I don’t consider myself a big as Pokemon fan at all. If any, I am a bigger fan of SpongeBob and probably own more merchandise and stuff from that, than I do from Pokemon. I like Pokemon, but I am not after every single card out there, I am not buying packs from every release, and for sure I am not putting $5000 onto my saving account so I can maybe buy a sealed booster box in the future. Yes, I’ve sealed product and that product has been bought because I liked the product itself (e.g. Ash vs. Team Rocket dual deck, and the Kanto Gym Leader boxes) knowing the items won’t be released as is ever in the Western market.
The fact that there is so much 2015-2017 not mint bulk out there is because many people jumped into the hobby, bought the (late) XY sets like Evolution, Roaring Skies, Flash Fire to get those $15+ cards to flip and dump the rest into their old Nike shoebox. Everybody knew Charizard was the shit, and Shaymin was a must have card. So everybody that wasn’t in the hobby before chased those card and only cared for small profits.
As I said, the hobby is full of people suffering from Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO) and as addition to it, many collectors/flippers are students with a lot of disposable income (student loans, evening/weekend jobs) and no costs (living with parents). They fling $1000 into it, get the rush of pulling that card. Get the 420 likes on Instagram and go for the other hot thing. Selling everything they bought a year or two later, when they need money and they don’t care any more just to recover a bit.
Yes. YouTube channels have an insane role in all of this. If a goofball like UnlistedLeaf can jank up the price of a single card by a few hunderd dollars, just because he has to cash out his own stock, people will see and think “Wow! Ez moneyz!” and BAM! Another ScumBag420Raffle Instagram is born.
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Hmm… I agree it was irrational to say that if you don’t sleeve your cards you’re not a true fan. As a kid I never had access to sleeves because I could barely even afford buying a few packs.
However what I meant is people who don’t have their heart in it, who just bought it due to hype or impulse and don’t care to collect in the long term. I noticed lots of bulk of Evolutions and my theory is that the reason for it was that it was a Kanto-bait set during a period of time where the same people who bullied others for liking Pokemon 5 years ago suddenly were into Pokemon again. These people who got back into it purely because it was hype and popular weren’t really fans, and they just bought cards on impulse. 2 years later they of course didn’t care, but I noticed that particularly bulk from this era is often in terrible condition when you see listings from certain people. They didn’t even take care of it to the tiniest degree and think their 2 year olds cards are worth as much as the packs they bought.
Really wish channels like UnlistedLeaf could disappear to be honest, the market instability they bring annoys me to no end…
It’s not bad for the hobby and keeps it alive, but it’s bad to me personally how it brings market instability. Maybe good for people who already bought the things they wanted when they were still cheap, because their assets gain more value, but it’s pretty bad if you want some old cards and Mr. YouTube makes them 3x as expensive to get due to hype.
I agree that it’s good because it brings people into collecting in general and keeps attention on the hobby, but it’s not entirely good either if you had your prospect on certain cards.
And who are you to say I need to “sell up and leave” because of my opinion? Maybe I am wrong and it is a good thing entirely for us that he is making videos and getting so many views, but that doesn’t mean that an uninformed or ignorant opinion means that I’m “unworthy” to be in the hobby. I’m open to changing my mind. No need to be so rude to me.
You really shouldn’t worry too much about this. Youtubers tend to “hype” newer product and even that dies down fairly rapidly. Most of the time prices fluctuate up and down. Being opportunistic is key. For example, let’s say YoutuberA makes a video and brings a lot of attention to certain items you were collecting. What do you do? Focus on something else. Just be patient and know the market for the cards you want.
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Pokemon is the most affordable established hobby. Majority of the cards are sub $50. Even the “vintage” wotc cards are affordable for binder collections. Even the more valuable cards can be acquired with time + planning. I always have binders going, and gradually put them together over a year or so. Its fun, and keeps the collecting fire burning. Just don’t panic. The more valuable cards are in the minority.
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