Hello all,
What do you guys think the impact of everyone holding a few booster boxes of modern product will have on the future of the current modern sets?
I feel that everyone on YouTube at the moment is holding onto multiple booster boxes of modern product and encouraging everyone else to do so as well. I know that Pokemon will probably never kick the bucket as hard as sports cards did in the late 80’s and early 90’s but do y’all think that we may see something similar happen in the future of Pokemon?
I know that this is a topic that runs primarily on speculation, but I thought it would be neat to hear the community’s opinion.
It will naturally slow the growth of the product since supply will be constantly available when prices rise. The question rather is how the demand compares to the amount of boxes held. There might be sets that experience little to no growth in longer time spans whereas other sets might see a steady growth. I personally think you could make much wiser choices if it´s only for potential monetary gains.
I’ve bought a couple of booster boxes of fairly modern product for sets that I like. My thoughts are that if it goes up in value great, if it doubles in price maybe I can sell one and keep the other one sealed and now hasn’t cost me anything.
If nothing happens with the price I also don’t care because it means I’ll get to open those packs that have been sealed for like 5 years and I can chase some older charizards again and it will be so fun.
I have no idea what really happens when maybe 10% or however much it is of the supply gets eaten up from people buying and holding onto them. All I know is that they will probably never get close to WOTC box prices today. Far too many people doing it. The only reason WOTC cards and the boxes are worth what they are is because they were the first and we were kids, no one looked after their cards. Boxes could only be ordered from retailers through suppliers not just anyone who has an internet connection. If everyone ordered boxes back then there would be so many still around now.
I think this is an important aspect of why modern is such a shaky “investment.” Sure the gargantuan print numbers are an issue, but the awareness (or lack thereof) is probably equally important. Pokémon originally targeted kids when it came out, so naturally most of the product was opened… by kids. Now, with more adults in the scene AND the internet AND the second-hand market being more mature, many people think they’re entrepreneur geniuses by buying some Evolutions boxes. When everyone has a genius idea like that, it might not be the best idea to follow. I would bet that there are more people sitting on Evolutions boxes now than there were people holding onto any WotC set from the beginning. If you want to, the cost of entry is the lowest it will likely ever be. The downside is that there might not be as much upside as buying something that’s actually limited and desirable.
If you’re looking at this solely from an “investment” standpoint, there are a lot better places to park your money in the hobby these days than in modern booster boxes.
With any collectible item, if everyone is doing it then it won’t be rare and thus won’t gain long-term price appreciation. Case in point - beanie babies. People were buying them because they ASSUMED that when they were retired (out of production) the value would go up 4-5x the original purchase price. Long story short, they never went up in value because there was too many of them and too many people had kept them in good condition. Another good example is funko pops. Most people buy these items because they think they are going to be valuable in the future. The problem is most people keep them in the box so there will always be tons of them floating around years from now.
I think the same thing will happen to modern Pokemon sealed product, especially anything after phantom forces. The sets after phantom were printed in massive quantities due to pokemon go. Sets before phantom might be worthwhile investments though.
If you want to invest, go with WOTC era holos IMO.
@pikachuisbestpokemon, That’s what I’m afraid is going to happen to a lot of the modern sets. So many people are deciding to “invest” and stock up on some boxes and I just don’t get why they wouldn’t park that money in a more secure place. To each his own
No doubt about it. I find myself cringing at all the modern product some of them are purchasing. They could buy so much vintage goods with that money. But as I said, to each their own…
The impact will be HUGE. I mentioned this in another thread recently, but this is exactly what’s happened with modern MTG (2012-now). It became a very big thing to buy and hold boxes of the newest sets as ‘investments.’ The logic in 2012 was that if boxes of sets from 2005 were worth twice the original MSRP, then in seven years the current boxes would experience a similar growth. But the reality is that when there are thousands of people holding onto something as an ‘investment,’ there is very little room for growth in the value of that thing. Especially when the primary ‘investors’ are young people with limited capital – so there are very often life circumstances that make the ‘investors’ have to sell.
Regardless of what the reasons are behind it, the undeniable reality is that there’s been basically ZERO price appreciation of post-2012 modern MTG product. Whereas anything pre-~2012 is worth dramatically above the original MSRP, with very few exceptions. This is despite the fact that many of the sets that have been released since 2012 have been extremely popular, some even having so-called ‘lottery’ cards (cards of significant value with a similar pull-rate to gold stars) that make the product very attractive to open. But even with all of the ingredients that would otherwise lead to appreciation in the value of those boxes, the prices simply haven’t budged (and when they have the prices very stubbornly increased, and only very modestly).
This is what is happening/will happen with modern Pokemon product. When you have thousands of extra boxes that remain sealed because of ‘investors,’ there is very limited room for price growth. Imagine if there 2000 extra sealed boxes of EX Dragon in existence. How much would boxes be worth? Certainly not $10k (which is what the last recorded sale was for). People didn’t hold those sets as ‘investments’ and so older sets (WotC, EX-era, and D&P to a lesser extent, too) have very, very low supply. And people underestimate just how much of a factor supply is in markets like that of Pokemon. For a very concrete reference point, look at low pop PSA 10s. Take PSA 10 Yanma holo from 1st Edition Neo Discovery. There are only 12 of them, and who knows how much one of those is worth – but undoubtedly low five figures. Let’s just say $10k for the point of demonstration. Compare that to another holo from the same set: Magnemite. In PSA 10, it’s worth a whopping $200 – despite the fact that the pop is only 8x larger than Yanma’s. If the relationship between supply and price were linear, you would expect Yanma to be worth only 8x more than Magnemite. But even with my conservative price estimate, it’s worth 50x more. The same principle applies and will apply to sealed product.
@zorloth, That’s a really great case and point. Maybe we are a little early to be seeing the amount of investors that Magic has enter into our hobby, but Pokemon is more popular. I think our time is coming to have a greater level of people holding product, maybe even to a greater extent than the Magic investors are.
The trend definitely seems to be starting. When I say ‘investor’ I’m using it very loosely. People ‘investing’ in modern product are almost always people with low capital who can’t afford $10k booster boxes and who have, with all due respect to these people, zero clue what they’re doing. I’m a member of a Pokemon sealed collecting group on Facebook (I don’t post/comment but I see the posts and discussions on my feed) and there are droves of people buying Burning Shadows and Hidden Fates boxes to hold. This is happening because they see the price increases of WotC and EX-era product. They see that boxes that were $500 just 5 years ago are now worth $5k. And so they extrapolate from this that modern product will experience similar price trends. The logic (if you can call it that) ignores just about every relevant factor that led to the increase of older Pokemon sealed product in the first place.
But that’s even more of a tangent. I 100% agree that this is starting to happen with Pokemon. And time will show that these people would have been much better off spending their money on WotC/EX-era product and sitting on it. I think it’s just hard for some people to justify spending $100 on a single pack vs. $100 on an entire box of packs. To many, the obvious decision is to buy the box, when in reality they’d be better off buying the pack. A parallel example in MTG: boxes of Mirage were ~$300 in 2012 and now are ~$1100. Boxes of RTR (the newly-released set) were $100 in 2012 and now are a whopping $115.
I agree with ya. It does appear they’re sabotaging themselves in the long-term for going with the modern product. Everyone wants to take the easy route though. It is a bit easier to comprehend buying a booster box over just one pack.
Everyone wants to tell you not to invest in Booster Boxes or modern product.
You might not make a ton of money (maybe you will) but odds are heavily in your favor that you won’t lose it either.
Unless they start printing more, sealed product only goes in one direction. If you would have asked this board 5 years ago if you should invest in XY Phantom Forces people would think you are a dimwit. Now those $12 blisters are selling for $50 and the
booster boxes go for $800.
Sealed requires no research, it’s a fine way to park funds. It’s also fun to have a box or two of modern laying around (Not for the kids, but in case the adults want to splurge and open some boosters.)
That $12 that’s now $50 could have been $150 if that $12 had gone toward vintage Pokémon product. And 5 years ago was before the modern sealed ‘investing’ trend really caught steam, as I understand it. So i wouldn’t expect to see remotely similar returns 5 years from now for modern product.
@zorloth , I would have to disagree with your opinion regarding MTG sealed product. I think an important thing to keep in consideration is entry point. If you are buying boxes at $100 from your LGS I do admit there would be little appreciation, but if you get them within the $80 range, which is feasible through ebay, most modern MTG sets appreciated at least 10%. I’ll give it to you, not as much as pre 2005 product, but still. With current bank interest rates, I think that is a very good appreciation for such a short timeframe.
In regards to pokemon sealed product, I would say that its appreciation will always depend on the cards inside. One important distinction between Pokemon and MTG is that MTG sealed product appreciates by both collectability and playability, whereas non standard Pokemon sealed product seems to be tied mostly to the collecting community and not so much to the TCG itself.
In both hobbies, the secret to sucess if you believe sealed product is a good investment, is to buy every single set that comes out, so that the losses on one, will be compensated by the gains in others.
The thing that not a lot of people mention when ‘investing’ is the entry cost which is essential to the success of their endeavour. Either way, as long as you know you would enjoy opening the products in the future and won’t need that money for essential expenses, even though I do not do it myself, I see nothing wrong with hoarding boxes.
