Been looking at mandarake prices recently and everything is soaring. Umbreons/ Espeons are about 10x the price they used to be. Crystal lugia for nearly 40k in 1st ed, 20k in unlimited. Normal print alakazams from expansion for nearly 5k. Anyone have any idea?
order.mandarake.co.jp/order/detailPage/item?itemCode=1061751404&ref=list
I think the prices have to do with some youtubers who have talked about these things on their channels to their massive audiences(cough cough unlistedleaf cough cough). Iâve been hearing that more English collectors have been buying from them because of the exposure they got. Also prices do go up eventually because they are older cards.
I mean, I donât think that it is soaring too much. Just catching up to the English counterparts. Two main reasons: Location & Secondary Market Prices Increasing
It just depends on the one you go to. Tokyo is picked over hands down. Reason being there are too many foreigners lurking around the city wanting to poach deals to resell on eBay, facebook etc. When I was there last month, I got some pretty stellar deals at Mandarake. To clarify, the one in Osaka. There arenât many foreigners who want to move to Osaka, in comparison to everyonesâ dream of moving to *insert sparkles* TOKYO! */insert sparkles* I got a 5th Movie Deck for 10,000 JPY, some trophy cards for sub 30,000 JPY. Just depends on where you go and what they have.
Why should the Japanese retail stores sell for dirt cheap, when people go in and flip what they sell at a premium? The workers there arenât stupid. They price to sell, but at the same time want to earn a nice investment for the shop. If they are buying items used, they need to up their purchase to meet the demands of the people selling their collections too. So prices are up on the secondary market, they offer more for the items, and thus need to charge more.
Prices just naturally increased. At worlds I spoke with numerous Japanese businesses and they said that prices are up because so many people in Japan are running business/flipping cards. Everything was significantly more expensive at worlds this year, and they were like, âthis is what it costs in Japan nowâ. This is the natural result of competition.
You didnât make it clear from your post whether when you said Osaka you meant the mandarake in Osaka or not, but Iâll respond assuming that is what you meant.
Mandarake is a chain in that all cards, regardless of location are priced on a database. You see a card for 2160 JPY in Tokyo, it will also be that price in the Grandchaos (Osaka) store. I know as Iâve seen their centralised system as I helped them adjust some prices a while back. Many trophy cards go for 10-15k there so that doesnât surprise me.
In general, other shops arenât increasing prices much, but Mandarake is the only one I know of with an international shipping option so I guess theyâve been seeing increased sales recently from this venue. But my worry is that most of these sales are false (I know some people have bots set up to purchase items the second they are posted, only to return them when they realise they donât want/ need it or the condition is less than they thought). That to me is one of the main factors in their increase in price.
But in general there are only a few people who work at Mandarake who are really knowledgeable with the prices of cards. And they do adjust the prices, not just by rarity but by how frequently people buy stuff. For example I used to buy up all base Zards and expansion packs, and they quickly doubled, tripled etc in price. But recently Iâve seen some cards shooting up which just doesnât make sense (for example that standard base Alakazam, for like 50 USD).
What Iâm more interested in, though, is what do people think this will do to the overseas JP market in general? Iâve wondered for a long time when some prices will shoot up in value (hint: NR holos, Crystal Zard etc), but with many of the JP collectors not understanding the market and prices in Japan, I feel they will never âadjustâ to new pricing. Put it this way. I bought my unlimited Crystal Lugia from Mandarake (in Osaka actually) for 12k + tax. Approximately 130 USD. It achieved a PSA 10, but if it didnât it wouldnât have been worth its price, going off what the foreign market will pay for this card. Second example. Mandarake price a gem mint 1st edition crystal zard at 37k (370 USD). A Shining zard at up to 42k (420 USD + tax), but no-one would pay near these prices for a raw card, at least not in the UK.
Essentially what Iâm interested in is, where did people get their idea of the value of JP cards, and will that idea have to change in the near future?
This + Brexit (weak ÂŁ) = Me 
Prices increase naturally yes, however with so many people flipping I have done some thinking about this matter.
Alot of people are now aware Pokémon is here for the stay and this caused alot of initial flippers/investors to enter the market. However as of late I have noticed that investors without any knowledge of the market have started buying cards. I have literally had several people new to the community ask me what they should invest in for long-term profit. (talking about people here that are willing to spend 10, 20, 30k or more)
Pokémon has been increasing steadily for the last couple of years, smart money entered the market years ago. Lately we have seen an increase in media attention, mostly in the form of videos on Facebook and as of late, some publications in SMR.
I feel that lately (and I think we will be seeing this more and more) people have started to give cards a speculative value rather than market value. This is mainly caused because of the initial investors that entered the market. If to many investors and flippers enter the market, the speculative value could become to high and enter bubble-territory.
I donât think we are near that phase yet but I do think that there will be a point where there are to many investors/flippers trying to earn money, causing the speculative value to rise to much. At the point where collectors are not willing to pay the speculative value anymore we could see a blow off-phase. Again, I canât see this happening in the very near future as I think there is still lots of stretch left in the market.
I think Mandarake and many other Japanese sellers are picking up that Gaijin are buying into Pokemon alot more, and beginning to price cards per ebay and usa sold values.
I went to some stores where prices weâre being based of ebay.com USD sold values haha. Which is crazy, but enough tourists are coming into Japan and buying up everything, that they can get away with increasing prices, as some tourists donât know any better, and just go crazy on whatever they like while they are in holiday mode.
Mandarake is probably running lower on stock now, yahoo auctions is becoming super difficult to win auctions now, and many japanese businessâ are pricing to the overseas market. People are smarter now, with twitter and social media in Japan. They keep track of all the crazy bids going on yja as well.
This statement probably answers your question. Everyone and their dog knows about mandarake now so I expect as they have sold more to foreigners recently and they have figured out they can put up prices on certain cards as Iâm sure they know people flip their cards and are just trying to maximise their own profit which in turn means not as many people can flip their cards.
Just to make it clear, that excerpt wasnât a general comment. It was only base zards and expansion packs (of which I only found 5 of anyway) that I bought up. Those were for my personal collection. But at the very least as those purchases were spread over a long period of time it was very easy to see the prices rising (500JPY for a mint zard in the beginning up to 4000). Expansion packs went from 1000 to 5000 (for short postcodes).
But yeah I guess theyâre getting a lot more gaijin buying stuff like crazy in holiday mode they can really do anything. I wonder what local Japanese collectors are thinking right now, or if theyâve also realised and are happy to pay the price to sell on to the foreign market. Then thereâll come a time there are more rare JP cards in the UK/USA than Japan and we can resell for our own profit lol.
Well hold on to your japanese cards boys and gals, its gonna be a fun ride in the next couple of months!!!
Iâm fine with that as long as itâs only mandarake to invest in their international sales channels
It also seems like more Japanese sellers, who would have been on yahoo, are using ebay now to gain a wider international audience.
I hear this on occasion, and I think the aspect always overlooked is the size of the market. When people quote sales from years ago, and see the numeric growth in price, they always overlook the numeric growth in the amount of participants in the market. Sure, in a vacuum where only 1000 people are collecting, and prices quadruple overnight, naturally people wonder what is the reason?
With Pokemon, the amount of flippers are not the majority, or anywhere close. Most flippers in this hobby are irrelevant, and have no meaningful impact on the market.
Moreover, the amount of investors is completely negligible. Also, an actual investor has the same pattern as a collector. Lets say 100 people right now are purely investing in cards, and arenât going to touch them for 5 years. What does this mean for the market? Will they sell them in 5 years, maybe. Will some simply forget about the hobby, maybe. Will some continue to invest, maybe. It will most likely be a mix of those scenarios, which are all identical to the path of a collector.
Regardless, we donât have buyouts in Pokemon. We have barely any strategic investing. The concept of âinvestingâ is extremely rudimentary. Also, a lot of collecting is emotional for pokemon collectors. Some individuals struggle with the concept that you can collect And invest, because life isnât binary, but that is another discussion in itself.
Either way, the amount of people participating has grown with the prices. For example, Lets hypothetically say years ago 5,000 people participating in the market, and charizard 1st ed was $1000. Today 100,000 people are participating and charizard is $20,000. That isnât a bubble scenario. That is simply a market expanding.
Also, as life and markets are three dimensional, the other aspect is the average spending power of the participant. Not only has the volume of participants increased, so has their average spending power. Unless the market was majority comprised of outside investors, which saying that about pokemon is laughable at this point, there isnât enough to warrant an overall speculation.
Yes I second your opinion on this matter in the current time, thatâs why I mentioned that I donât think we are in bubble territory or will be soon but the current hype and growth in the hobby surely has a âbubblish feelingâ to it.
Initial investors are attracted due to the current media attention, so their share of the market will become bigger. I have seen a large increase of people trying to flip or at least earn money on Pokémon. I see Instagram getting flooded by people trying to make a quick buck.
You mentioned the amount of people growing which means the market capacity of Pokémon is rapdily increasing.
And as I said before, I think there is still enough room to grow but it is a typical bubble scenario in the making. The Pokémon market is more bullish than ever with prices rising at a higher rate than before the media attention. I also think the growth of the hobby itself (collectors and flippers/investors entering the market) is contributing to the price-rise. I think, because of the lack of mint raw cards and the market capacity expanding we could see exponential rises on high-graded PSA cards.
This is all very long term thinking tho, I can easily see the prices of cards increasing for a couple more years.
Offcourse this all hypothetical and just a train of thought I had.
@robbiegrass I definitely understand your perspective! This is simply the ongoing discussion right now in Pokemon.
Personally I cannot not fully differentiate from MTG 5 years ago and Pokemon today. I hear this comparison a lot, especially from mtg guys getting into pokemon. Pokemon is younger, and is not as fleshed out as MTG. I would argue that Pokemon is more popular, but the efficiency and understanding of the market is still very rudimentary, and even juvenile in some instances.
Anyway, I am curious & excited to see how it plays out long term. I think its a unique hobby that provides something for everyone, but of course I am partial. 
I try to look at PokĂ©mon from a stock market perspective. We all try to predict their direction, but in the end, their path has not been decided yet. We can only analyse the situation based on facts and knowledge. I have made the comparison with MTG aswell, but I donât have enough knowledge of the MTG market to establish an un-biased opinion. I do not know how big MTG is in comparison to PokĂ©mon, collector and player-wise.
I do enjoy discussing the subject tho and also curious to where the hobby is going and will be 1 year from now. I just hope we can sustain the size of the community long term!
I love some of the comments in this threadâŠ
I honestly donât expect there will be a significant value loss for older Japanese cards, depending on the set. Japanese cards have been in cruise-mode for at least a decade, and I donât expect that to change in the immediate future. Demand rose and supply got low. I personally donât see a huge price spike near anything like what weâve seen with the older western releases. At least not on the same scale. Only time will tell how the cards will mature, though.
I have significant trouble comparing our hobby to those like MTG. The MTG culture is quite different as it stands right now⊠and the MTG culture has a lot of deeply engrained issues to say the least, that we donât have currently. (I could not be prouder of the community we have)