1st time poster here. Came here to get some insights into 1st edition base set value and growth. I’ve just recently gotten back into the hobby and have nearly completed my collection of the 1st edition base set.
I don’t have a lot of capital, so I’ve been buying lower condition cards than many collector’s aim for. My goal is NM 7 holos and PSA 8-10 for non-holos (depending on rarity).
I really just want the complete 1st edition set, not really concerned personally about them being all mint or not. But I started wondering about how the low value cards will grow in value.
What do you all think? Are the PSA 9 and 10 cards going to diverge off into continual growth and the rest of the cards stay stagnant? Or do you think all 1st edition base set cards will grow in value at a similar rate (with the exception of outliers like BGS 10 charizard etc.)?
Good question, I would say it will continue to grow yet at the same time I wonder if we will ever see a decline in the near future. Prices are getting extremely high which is turning away collectors to different sets. I would love to obtain the first edition base set but I myself got back into collecting recently and the prices have turned me away. I think if the hobby continues to grow the way it has recently then the value will only continue to grow, and everyone buying these up are putting them away in their collection so it may get really tough finding certain cards. It is tough to say, my guess is they will continue to climb in value but I see them eventually hitting a peak.
I would certainly think there is room to grow for lower graded cards, especially 1st Ed. base. This has happened with sports cards and even PSA 10 1st Ed. Charizard as lots of collectors have been priced out of the higher graded copies, which has the effect of solidifying and raising prices on lower grade copies.
Right now a lot of collectors are going after PSA 9/10 sets and most people are not being priced out, especially for non-holos. In the future when non-holos grow in price (and they will) lower graded copies will be more valuable.
My advice would be to buy the highest graded copies of holos and big non-holos you can right now. Those are the ones that are going to be hardest to get in the future as prices rise. You can score a lot of PSA 9 non-holos for very good prices now and I’d suggest going after those as well.
This is good advice. Years ago, I started my 1st ed base PSA collection buying the cheapest cards I could (because it’s more fun to buy 6 cards rather than 1). So I got things like Gyarados and Raichu PSA 9 for about $90 while a PSA 9 Charizard was sitting at $600+. Now you can find Gyarados and Raichu for a few hundred and I recently bit the bullet and got the Charizard at about $3k. I would have saved quite a bit of money if I bought the Charizard first. Get the heavy-hitting cards first.
In terms of investing in PSA 7s and 8s, if I had to guess I’d expected to see their value grow over time. I also think a whole set is valuable regardless of grade. There’s got to be people out there that would probably like to have the whole set and aren’t too obsessed with condition.
It was daunting to look at prices before I owned any of them. Looking at a PSA 9 Weedle for $30 or PSA 10 Lass for $1200 and just thinking, wow I really missed the train. I only decided to start collecting the 1st edition set because I happened to have the opportunity to purchase a random lot of 1st ed cards ungraded. I honestly wasn’t even looking for them, I just happened to find some and got them for a decent price. Suddenly it dawned on me to actually collect the whole set.
I should be able to get almost every non-holo in PSA 9 or 10 (except probably Lass HA! we’ll see…), and each holo in NM 7 or better. I landed on PSA 7 because I think that a PSA 7 card is still a really attractive looking card. You can’t really tell much is wrong unless you look closely. The price point between PSA 7 and PSA 8 or 9 right now just makes sense for me where I have maybe $500-600 of disposable income each month. But then when you get to PSA 6, that’s when you start to get into crease territory, which to me should be avoided (depending on the card of course). I’m looking at this both from a point of view of what I want, which NM 7 is just find by me, and by what someone in 5 years who wants to buy the set might want.
It’s difficult to grasp just how many 1st ed cards there actually are in existence and the scope of the demand for them.
There’s only a few thousand total PSA graded 1st ed base cards in existence. There are a good number of ungraded cards, but how many left and how many left that are gradable? Finding mint or even NM ungraded commons, let alone holos, is becoming so difficult.
Eventually we will get to the end of those ungraded mint 1st ed base cards. The consideration for me is once all the 8, 9 and 10 grades are in the upper echelon of the collection world, untouchable by most, will there suddenly be a surge in price of cards like a PSA 6 Haunter? It’s strange to think, but I can possibly see low graded cards like that becoming $100+ each. I think that this is very possible.