Mine just sold for $1200.
Wow, sounds like someone just got a check from the government for a specific amount… 
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I am both stunned and not stunned by that price.
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These are strange times. I payed less than 1200 USD for a 1st edition PSA9 thick stamp Blastoise around this time last year. I know which card I would rather have… And it is not just this hard to grade Typhlosion that has spiked in price recently, many of the other popular 1st edition 9’s are fast approaching 1st edition base PSA9 prices. I saw a Lugia selling for around 700 USD last week. It seems crazy to me, but I guess it means 1st edition base is undervalued at the moment?
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I feel like the 1st edition base supply is much more readily available than PSA 9 or 10 copies for some of these 1st edition Neo sets. People are trying to secure obscure cards since the 1st edition base supply always has copies on the market.
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I am quickly beginning to believe that prices like these are not sustainable. 1st ed base is the bellwether for the hobby and when something doesn’t smell right when you compare prices to 1st ed base there’s bound to be some sort of correction.
I honestly think people that have seen nothing but price rises are beginning to think that Pokemon is invincible to market forces. It’s not.
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Comparing this card to 1st Ed base is a waste of time. It’s one of the most difficult cards to grade. More difficult than any card in pretty much any wotc set, including 1st Ed base set.
Inherent Reality: Increased cost of sealed product + decreased availability + one of the hardest cards to grade = obvious increase.
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Yes, but the Unseen Market Forces are Reviving Price Legends
I think if this was really the driving force you’d see a parallel trend with other difficult-to-grade PSA 9s. So far a proportional effect remains to be seen. Maybe it’s a sign of what’s to come though
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BRB, time to buy all the PSA 9 yanmas on eBay before they are $500
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Already on it 
Probably not a desirable as a gen2 starter evolution though…
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Same thing for Neo Rev Ampharos.
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Not only is it scarce in high grade. It’s also desirable to own (in any decent grade) because the art on the card is really awesome.
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Should be noted that a PSA 9 1st Ed. Neo Genesis Slowking just sold for over $300 at auction. That’s obviously not to the extent of the Typhlosion 17, but Slowking was regularly a $50 card up until recently.
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I saw that Slowking auction too! Coincidentally, both Typhlosion17 and Slowking were actually playable back in the day. Same goes for Neo revelation Ampharos. I played all three in decks haha. I still have two 1st edition Slowkings and 2 1st edition Typhlosions that are very far from being in mint condition because I played them in decks. Is the 120hp Feraligatr considered hard to grade as well? I rarely see it on ebay. That card will be, by a substantial margin, the most played Neo era holo together with Slowking.
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Hard to keep track of all these record 9 prices… looks like I was right even without knowing it though 
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Definitely right for the most part but the others just haven’t hit their increase quite like the T17 has. I’ve been trying to keep up on the hard to grade cards and analyze all of WOTC 1st edition to see which cards have the lowest pop % of 9+10. T17 is of course the lowest with slowking second and actually metal energy very low as well, which a 10 just came to market and sold for over $2000…
Who knows but there has to be a slow down at some point I would think. Seems like every time a card hits the market it goes for some record price. Tough to keep track of it all.
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It’s hard to know what to make of all this. Some examples of weird things:
- Is it rational for the price of T17 to go from $150 to $700+ in under a year? The PSA 9 has 130 pop, which is not particularly low, and a 5x increase in a year is usually more reflective of speculation rather than actual asset value increases (e.g. Bitcoin)
- The Slowking auction that’s been referenced hit $300 while there were two BIN options available at $200 (these two were snapped up before the end of the auction but they had been sitting there for a while before the auction went up, i.e. potential bidders might have seen that the auction was at $300 so snapped up the BINs)
- Umbreon and Espeon, that have relatively high pops and are not too difficult to grade, regularly went for ~$200 up until a month or two ago. Then a single Umbreon auction hit $341 and it seems to now sell for $350+. Does that make sense for a pop 200 card?
For full disclosure, I have all of these cards in relatively high grades (most acquired just before this most recent spike) so I’m not complaining haha. But just mindful of the causes of what we’re seeing - whether it’s some form of market manipulation, a rapid acceleration in people’s appreciation of the Neo sets or indicative of the illiquidity of Pokemon cards as an asset class, particularly those of relatively lower pop. And does this rapid price rise for some cards suggest they have the furthest to fall in a market correction (which is usually the case in other asset classes). Curious to hear thoughts!
P.S. firebirder31’s analysis on 9+10 pop percentage seems like a great explanation for some cards (Slowking and T17) but doesn’t explain the rises in price for Umbreon, Espeon, Lugia etc.
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@merov1, actually Lugia is quite low as well, almost the same as Slowking. Add to that god tier popularity on amazing artwork and you can see why its going up. Should be noted that Lugia numbers are likely also affected by popularity as more lower grade examples are submitted since they have inherit value just being Lugia. Same could be said for Espeon and Umbreon but those cards are clearly being carried by popularity rather than “difficulty to grade”. Popularity snatches those cards from the market as people just love them. Yanma and Smearagle aren’t quite as loved and likely only targeted by set collectors.
9+10% POP
T17: 30.36%
Slowking: 34.10%
Lugia: 34.61%
Metal Energy: 38.57%
Yanma: 50.72%
Umbreon: 78.32%
Espeon: 78.75%
Quick snapshot of the difference of some of these cards. Shouldn’t say all this cause I still need a Lugia! haha
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my view… pokemon prices have a long way to go still so I would expect to see only more of this over the long-term. I may be jaded or biased given my experience collecting magic the gathering cards for several decades, but the prices for those cards hit levels I would have never dreamed. pokemon is a good 5-6 years behind magic. it’s all about the income levels of the core fan base going up as they age. Most people hit peak earnings in their 40s. so the “fat part of the curve” is not even quite there for pokemon. and it may be a very long, very fat curve. Pokemon has mass market appeal (men and women) unlike any other TCG. It’s still insanely popular with young kids today. this year may be a bit funny given everything going on in the broader world. but long-term I am pretty bullish having seen this happen with both silver age comic books and magic cards in my life, both of which have followed the exact same logic and general timeline of the aging in of the core fan base to their peak earnings. of course no one knows and I could be wrong. I am certainly placing my bets
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