I see a lot of new channels talking about investing in regards to pokemon. I’m hesitant to call any out by name, but I just see it as irresponsible that these channels seem to be pushing newer cards as investments. It’s like someone getting into stocks, but they can’t afford Amazon or Apple so they push penny stocks as the next best things. Why would I listen to an investor who a) hasn’t been doing this for years and b) who has a large amount of wealth. Some of these people don’t even know how to use ebay sold listings correctly, yet people are coming to them asking about investing. some of these people have had a little bit of success since they started 1-2 years ago and now think past outcomes are indicators of future projections. I find it highly irresponsible and dangerous. What has been your experience with the uptick in pokemon investing channels and the topic online?
Also nothing wrong with talking about pokemon card prices or investments. Other than Jake & Raffi and the one gentlemen who did atari games I find most of the people, that are finance focused, as unqualified and/or lacking in knowledge of the hobby.
I think a ton people who have been collecting Pokemon for more than a few months have an inflated sense of self relative to investing. They see that their collection or ‘investment’ in Pokemon cards has doubled or tripled in value and they attribute that success to their own ingenuity. The reality is, though, as everyone on this forum obviously knows, just about every WotC or EX-era Pokemon card has seen a dramatic increase in market value over the past few months. So literally anyone who collected these cards prior to April has succeeded in this regard. But this does not alone qualify one to give investment advice relative to Pokemon cards (which is itself an idiotic concept given how unpredictable and subject to manipulation the market is). That’s not to say that there aren’t many members of this forum with impressive breadths of collecting experience, but that one’s collection having risen in value says nothing about a person’s knowledge of the Pokemon market. This is why I think we see a lot of these Pokemon ‘investment’ channels; people have just had their egos inflated by the recent price spikes.
I started really collecting in Jan/Feb.
I am a genius and my cards are all with more now.
Ok, if I was really that smart, I would of finished my team rocket set back in Feb.
I will say that there are some good cards to collect in modern. But very few of the cards I see as investments. Not every set or every card credited equal. Think that is were they will get people into trouble. I have some because I’m going after sets more so than cards.
Everyone knows about hidden fates and everyone and their mom has 20 in opened boxes of it. Every one of them think that is their retirement fund. I bet 1/2 the HF boxes are out their unopened.
I agree with you. I’m even hesitant to recommend vintage Pokemon cards as safe investment, let alone modern product. This market is still not established, and what’s happening now or what’s been happening for the past 10 years says not that much about the future development of the Pokemon collectibles market. My only advice is: Buy what you like, and buy it because you like it, not because you are hoping to make money. Treat each penny you spend on Pokemon cards as lost money. If the product gains in value over the years, great. If not, you still have something nice to look at and don’t suffer from buyer’s regret.
Ultra Prism boxes are over $400. Shining Legends Mew PSA 10 has sold for over $200. PSA 10 scream Psyduck has sold for over $300. Hidden Fates etbs have sold for over $200. Team up booster boxes have sold for over $300. PSA 10 Rainbow Charizords have sold for over $2k. A complete hidden fates set sold for $2.4k last night.
But go on… you were saying something about all modern product being completely uninvestible?
Current prices bear very little on a long-term investment strategy or position. 2012-13 gold star bubble, 2016 base set 1st hype, BGS 10 black label HF Zards, the list goes on. It’s not useful to simply take a snapshot of prices at one point in time and say high prices now mean product will be worth more in the future, because we know that’s not true.
The idea that modern product will wallow in obscurity for eternity is ill-informed. Modern Pokemon has the highest level of interest since the OG sets and may even have eclipsed it. Modern cards will be worth more in the future and there are certain modern cards that have a strong long-term potential to be valuable. You don’t have to be a genius to see that the modern ultra rare Zards are strong cards. However, this high level of interest means hitherto unseen levels of printing and availability. Pops for modern set cards are through the roof. Of course, pop doesn’t matter if there’s a buyer for each card in the pop at a high price, but it’s a variable to consider.
If you are investing, you have to look at the entire market and ask not “is item x a good investment” but “is item x the best investment” out there. Right now Burning Shadows Hyper Zard, with a population of near 660 in 10, is selling for more than the objectively rarer, harder to grade, and older by 13 years Charizard ex. That doesn’t make sense. Shining Legends PSA 10 Ray was $40 a year ago and is now $200+. Again that’s got a pop of over 500.
Anyone claiming to have clairvoyance on the market is dumb. But a lot of very well-credentialed people are expressing serious concerns about the modern market. Personally I don’t doubt that Shining Ray is a $200+ card or Hyper Zard is $2.5k+, these aren’t market manipulated sales or anything. I also don’t doubt those cards could be worth that in the future. But buying in as an investment at these prices 3 years after release when there is a large amount of rarer, harder to grade, and older stuff out there for the same prices?
I think that if you’re actually trying to invest, modern Pokemon at the current prices has the most risk out of anything in the hobby. And these “investment” channels are capitalizing on the very visible returns of older product as a marketing strategy to move newer product.
Tl;dr: Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater on modern product, but be careful at the current prices.
The one that I have seen that bothers me the most is the word “investment” being used in ebay listing titles. As for videos my issue isn’t that people are pushing modern as an investment, it’s that people who don’t really know what they are talking about are pushing any kind of investments.
I think the people who have jumped into this hobby without any genuine interest who just see this as an easy way to make money are a loud minority. At the very least I hope they are a minority.
I was about to say that besides Jake & Raffi and maybe one more, majority of channels are pushing this, i dont know if on purpose or to generate views but either way is risky. Some of them are even overhyping the “crazy profit” from modern “”“”“”“”““investment””“”“”".
The huge problem, you can even see it here in the forum, is that the vast majority of people in the hobby are people who lack a financial education to even know how a real investment works. People are literally gambling on these modern sets and that’s dangerous. You need to have some sense of passion or knowledge in the hobby before jumping into anything “”“invesment”“” or you’ll have a bad time.
Another key factor is knowing the consequences and maturity of those acts, if you can afford to lose that money and you know that you might end with a lot “fun to open” product and nothing more, then no problem.
The other problem is that as opposed to stocks, most people who are spending money on Pokemon to make money are spending it on the very same thing they are emotionally invested in. As a result, they could base their investments on their emotions instead of numbers, because in their mind, their favorite product must also be the most desirable product out there. And more often than not it turns out that in the long run it’s not a good idea to just listen to your gut feeling. For example, if one of the younger people on the forum grew up with mostly modern product and came to love it, they might feel that modern product is the optimal investment, disregarding pop numbers completely.
So in a sense, the passion for the hobby could backfire when it comes to investing.
My main concern for modern sealed is that (and obviously there is no way of actually quantifying this) it appears that most people seem to be buying Black&White/XY and probably some Sun&Moon sealed as investors rather than consumers. The investment relies on organic demand being greater than the supply at some point over the next 5/10/15 years in order to see price increases, and that is not going to be sustained by future investors and flippers alone. I ask myself - will there be a genuinely large pool of B&W, XY era collectors entering adulthood looking for some nostalgia to the point where they are willing to pay $hundreds/$thousands on boxes, booster packs and PSA cards? Will their demand outweigh the, in some cases, ample supply that will be available based on how much product people are sitting on? It’s an unanswerable question, and so building a serious position in these eras does come with serious risk and is not a golden ticket like some are saying.
There are definitely a lot of people who are hoarding lots of modern boxes. I’m not saying current modern cards having future value. 90% of People didn’t save older boxes with the intention of them being worth what they are today. Given what Rudy was saying about XY boxes and then all the new investment channels are pushing modern cards makes you wonder what is driving the value up on these cards. Some of the reasoning is that in 20 years base set went up this much percent and XY is similar to base so it will be worth what base set is now in 20 years.
[/div]The huge problem, you can even see it here in the forum, is that the vast majority of people in the hobby are people who lack a financial education to even know how a real investment work. People are literally gambling on these modern sets and that’s dangerous. You need to have some sense of passion or knowledge in the hobby before jumping into anything “”“invesment”"" or you’ll have a bad time.
Another key factor is knowing the consequences and maturity of those acts, if you can afford to lose that money and you know that you might end with a lot “fun to open” product and nothing more, then no problem.
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There is a smaller new channel and the guy was a financial advisor. He’s pushing XY evolutions as a investment. He’s even talking about pokemon investment portfolio breakdown. It feel like that Zoolander meme of “insert topic” is so hot right now.
That’s a person with a financial degree and background giving, in my opinion, really bad advice.
I remember that in BW and XY era many modern cards lost value after the standard sets rotated out. Many of the boxes didn’t go up in value. it took forever for those sets to go up in value compared to vintage and PSA graded cards. Modern is the low hanging fruit of Pokemon investing.
This is a very important point that people miss. People invest in BW/XY/SM with the hope that it will be the new EX-era (as far as the price trajectory of sealed product is concerned). But they disregard the fact that EX-era sealed product became so expensive largely because people didn’t ‘invest’ in it. People have to remember that if there were 5000 more sealed boxes of EX Delta Species, for example, in existence, both the boxes and cards would be worth dramatically less. Yet this is precisely what will happen with BW/XY/SM eras, since ‘investors’ are hoarding, collectively, tens of thousands of sealed boxes. That, coupled with the fact that there’s not nearly as much interest in those eras yet (or perhaps ever) as WotC/EX eras, is a recipe for a very poor ‘investment.’
Deja vu…this is so eerily similar to what happened with MTG sealed product ‘investing’ 7-8 years ago. In both Pokemon and MTG, people try so hard to replicate with newer products the price trajectories of older products, and always fail and always will. Return to Ravnica will never be Lorwyn, and Burning Shadows will never be EX Team Rocket Returns. Even if the product was equally good, there’s simply no way to replicate the organic market trends of the past.
No one has clairvoyance but hindsight is 2020 (pun intended). The example you provided is very specific and people have been saying the same thing for years but in reality, the price trend for both charizords has been nearly identical in the last 3 years. Past performance is no indication of future performance but the fact of the matter is that if you were strategic in how you bought Sun & Moon products, you could be very far ahead today. One can try to rationalize that with unfounded feelings that there are more modern flippers or that their personal flavor of stonks is better but again, in reality, it is fact that you could have bought modern product in the last few years and made money.
I’m not telling people to invest in modern. I was just addressing the OP’s concerns about modern product investment videos being unethical or misleading. Everyone is entitled to their own feelings about the future of modern product. But to say your feelings on modern as an investment is the true objective reality - which are in direct opposition to the actual facts and data - is just wrong.