Anyone notice the trend of people , ranging from casual to high end collectors starting to aggressivly look for sealed product ?
casual collectors are looking for packs and blisters and the higher end collectors add dumping their high end PSA cards (IE Gold Star Rayquaza PSA 10) for sealed booster boxes. WOTC of course.
I’ve known the million reasons why sealed product is worth collecting, and how it can be valued more due to scarcity , but just pointing out how people have jumped on this trend these past few months , social media probably being such a big influence ? People love riding waves
It’s the safer investment you can make. Sealed product has always been in high demand, so no I haven’t really noticed this new trend.
The card you mentioned reached such a high peak that I would not blame any collector for cashing out. You’re talking $6-7k here… but it would only take so many flippers to bring that price down quite a bit. You just a few of them will regrade some 9s and be happy to take $4-5k for it. lol
Also to note, sealed product with booster packs go up in price if the cards in the relevant sets go up, NOT the other way around (logic: you can always open up sealed product to try to get the expensive card in the set).
Not only that, but even if cards do drop in price, the boxes usually remain stable. A good example would be Base Unlimited where the top cards in PSA 10 dropped a fair bit, yet the boxes have gone up in price.
OP, I think in this current market where the pricing for singles is all over the place thanks to too much flipping and people dumping cards at auction, it’s merely safer to put your cash into something stable like a sealed booster box. There’s actually very very few cards I consider to be a stable investment(IE Base 1st Edition Charizard PSA 10).
So maybe you’re right and this is a trend where people go the safe route. It’s a big risk buying some high end cards for top dollar, even with the recent deals/steals that have been going on the past couple of months.
Definitely agree with that aspect, thanks for the insight. I mentioned that I understood the benefits of collecting sealed product (ie quantity available can only go down, correlations with upside of individual cards etc) but merely wanted to offer food for thought as to why all of a sudden this has become a predominant trend. I have come across many collectors that spend 4 to 5 digits a month on the hobby all of a sudden diverting their efforts towards sealed product, whereas before it wasn’t such a priority. I do agree that a lot of boxes seem to be pretty stable, you never hear about a certain box being in a “bubble,” or all of a sudden a price drop in one.
I do find these trends somewhat fascinating and its interesting to hear other peoples’ perspectives.
The only time a sealed products price can really suffer (besides a general downturn hobby wide) is when a mass of stock or supply is discovered/brought onto the market.
Eventually pretty much all sealed product will be open. It’s just not a long term collectible. Take early baseball. It’s just more fun to open them for enthusiasts/collectors and sellers, in time, can raise more from the sum of their parts.
Sealed seems to be safe and i guess it is in a way one last chance to claim a piece of orginal, unopened history, but I wouldn’t underestimate the potential of a psa 10. This is the case especially when you get to a point in the market where sealed product becomes almost non-existent. Look at 1st edition base.
