This has been bugging me for awhile but after the large price increases over the past months the market…just seems mispriced all over the place. Anyway, just wanted to get your thought if any correction will emerge over time for the low pop holos? or this isnt a mispricing at all and relationship will sort of maintain
Pop 8, Ampharos market value ?
Pop 9, Typhlosion, market value ~15k?
Pop 10, Blissey / Slowking, market value…5/6k?
Pop 12, Yanma, market value ? (am discussing with someone here so won’t opine)
Pop 15, Misdreavus, market value…2/3k?
Pop 18, Feraligatr…market value 4.5k? (saw someone on efour mention he would offer that)
Pop 44, Brock…market value 2k?
Pop 129, Yanma (PSA 9)…150 bux?
Pop 131, Typhlosion 17 (PSA 9)…2.5k?
Pop 221, Typhlosion 17 (PSA 8)…1.5k?
I know this is kinda simplistic, but taking a simplistic view because the above cards, to me have prices primarily driving by set completionists rather than people who just want it cause pretty (e.g. like lugia etc.).
I initially thought i could draw a straight line across and see better correlations…but doesn’t seem to be the case. Correlations seem higher pre-covid. Some high pop cards are selling rly high (psa 10 typhlosion is special, but psa 9/8 typhlosion aren’t really anything special if i had no context of pokemon and compared pop reports)
Thoughts? Or moot question as the low pops are so rare prices can jump 2x/3x in the next sale anyway
I get your point but you can’t plot emotions, history and so much more with just numbers.
Some prices do not seem to make sense but if buyers pay the price who are we to decide?
that’s true, but what I’m trying to discuss on this thread is making sense of the volatility, and the ideal outcome is to help others decide to (i) pay up if needed, (ii) avoid overpaying for a particular instance and (iii) finding relative bargains
Prices generally make sense over time…i recall raikou was selling far more than entei at one point, and as its pop creeped up it stayed high for awhile, but eventually dropped as realization sunk in over time. There was a lag, but you could have predicted it to some degree
I was thinking about this too. I still have very limited experience compared to many others here, so take it with a grain of salt.
From my observation, it seems that popularity/demand/hype are WAY more important for the price of a given card than its rarity (rarity here means pop for specific grade).
There are some pop 3 PSA 10 unlimited Japanese e-Series holos on ebay right now for 60$, it’s absurd. But absolutely nobody wants them.
Rarity seems to be only important when there is demand in the first place.
So IMHO, the saying should be ‘older, minter, popularER, better’.
I guess there will be a correction for your mentioned cards eventually, but they won’t catch up to T17 unless they get the same amount of hype and demand.
All I can say is: Take the values of some cards with a huge grain of salt. Pokemon is not like electronics where thousads or millions of copies of the same item get sold. Many of our current value estimates are based on a single purchase. That’s just not reliable. For many of these rare cards, the ‘market value’ is literally ‘what’s the price that the one person who has the card up for sale demands’.
I also want to address the T17 situation because no matter what thread I open, it just dominates every discussion and it’s starting to bother me a bit. The card is definitely overhyped, but that hype had to come from somewhere. In this case, it only needed 2 criteria: 1. It’s a WotC holo with a 1st Ed stamp, and 2. it is damn hard to get a 10, resulting in a low pop. That’s all it needs to get prices soaring, because there are some people out there who want to collect the entire Neo Genesis 1st Ed set in PSA 10, and they have no other choice than to buy T17. T17 is also not an anomaly, just look at the prices for Base Chansey and Neo Blissey, which are in the same position as T17. And with Pokemon cards, the best time to buy was always yesterday, so these collectors feel inclined to buy the hardest to get cards now, rather than later.
The point is, why be angry that the card became so expensive? Unless you want to collect Neo Genesis in its entirety in PSA 10, there are not that many reasons to insist on owning T17 as a 10. It’s not the face of the set (that’s Lugia), it’s not a part of some super popular mini collection like Crystals. It’s just a regular holo, and as a set card it was mass produced. The only reason why it’s so expensive is an awful print/manufacturing quality, and out of all reasons for a card to be expensive, I consider this one the least attractive. There are so many more charming cards out there, so why continue to beat a dead horse?
I think a lot of people think Fear of missing out is a bad thing. I can say from personal experience yes I caught the fear of missing out bug at first it’s started to fade now that I’ve finished about all the goals I had on older cards. FOMO actually helped me put rocket jets on my back and powered thru every 1st edition wotc holo except base set which is unlimited. I’m very very happy to have bought as fast as I did. If I joined today I’d be stuck missing abunch of cards or be way further behind on my collection goals due to paying double to triple plus on what I ended up paying. Long story short fear of missing out can be used as a positive thing if you make good decisions and are happy with your purchases
i’m not upset lol i own almost all the cards on this thread in psa 10 (of course no t17 unfort), some in multiple copies. Just setting up a thread to share my observations and get perspectives, as well as to encourage thinking / discussing / sharing views / knowledge sharing
@sgpokecollect I hear you nothing wrong with a good discussion. My comment isn’t directed at anyone it’s just a fact I noticed. Not sure who else noticed. But yes Fear or Missing out is a real thing. But it can be positive if you buy like crazy on good purchases and you’re happy with it :-). Just figured I’d throw that out there. I’m very happy I bought as fast as I did and originally caught the fear of missing out bug myself haha
Good to see some rationality here. Yeah either the T17 is extremely overvalued at current (already seeing signs of the hype die down). Or everything else is massively undervalued. I’m betting on the former.
I love math. And if you go off box price even the “overpriced cards” are still way too cheap. But hey that’s just me. I’m sure a lot of what’s going on is everyone is kool with a price increase but everyone was probably hoping it didn’t happen until they finished collecting progress haha. Which I can definitely understand. I’ve had to pay double to triple for a few sets I was finishing but it’s not nearly as bad as if I had to start today or a year or five years from now. Either way really I don’t care too much what prices do unless the hobby fell to pieces. If they went down it would be temporary and we could buy like crazy if you have the money to spend. Or they continue to go up and your collection is worth more and more. Honestly it’s a win win so no one should really be all that upset about prices on ungraded cards PSa cards or booster box prices etc
That’s a thread I made last year talking about this topic - how sometimes the price of a card doesn’t make sense in relation to supply and demand. Essentially, my thesis is that if the price of a card truly does not make sense in relation to supply and demand then we can expect there to be a correction over time. I believe sometimes it’s possible to identify which cards may see their prices rise and fall relative to one another by using our knowledge and some logic.
In the thread, I use the example of some Jungle holos and how it didn’t make sense that a PSA 10 1st edition Kangaskhan sold for far more than a Clefable (it had for some time) given the fact that the populations of the cards were similar and I doubted that a Jungle Kangkashan was a much more desirable card than a Jungle Clefable.
Some people said my thesis was nonsense because the market price is the market price and that clearly there was something I was missing… but since I made that post, Clefable has actually sold for a higher price than Kangaskhan.
Don’t get me wrong, all prices are fundamentally based on the principles of supply and demand but there are also strange factors at play when it comes to items with such a low supply. That is, there’s a lot more variance in the bargaining. And price momentum plays a large role.
Now, in the case of the T17 I do think there are supply *and* demand factors that are not merely “irrational” that make it an expensive card. It’s essentially tied for being the lowest pop card in a popular set *and* I am willing to believe that it’s a desirable card that even some non-set completionists may have an interest in obtaining.
I’m also willing to believe that there’s a chance that T17 won’t continue to be several times more expensive than other low pop Neo cards like Slowking and Ampharos.
Someone offered $4500 for Feraligatr? I actually sold mines for a bit less about 2 weeks ago. Maybe I should’ve held out for $6000 lol, but I’m not like that. These cards really don’t have any kind of market value. As soon as you think you got a good price someone offers even more a week later. It’s no wonder why people are so reluctant to sell and holding cards.
Something I didn’t see mentioned was the fact that Typhlosion is also “the Charizard of Gen 2”. Charizard has always been an outlier when it comes to price points and populations and I think the Typhlosion rookie card is just following suit. We all #18 aint got anything on #17.
Full disclosure - I am a fan of Gen 2 over Gen 1 and am trying to maintain unbiased opinion.
I have no doubt that there is some sort of spillover between Charizard hype simply transferring a little bit to Typholosion because as the Gen 2 fire starter people see it as “the Charizard of Gen 2.”
Having said that… I wouldn’t get carried away with this. Typhlosion / T17 doesn’t hold a candle to Charizard / Base Zard when it comes to popularity.
But the thing Typhlosion does have going for it in relation to Charizard is rarity.
FWIW, I had lost all touch with pokemon from 1999 until a few months ago. So never heard of any of the pokemon except the original 151. When I was looking at cards to buy, the T17 stood out to me purely on the basis of the art. The illustration is totally bad@ss in my opinion. I do think the cart art for T17 is “iconic”
