Rudy recently made a video on the ultramodern Pokemon market. I love to see his interest and commentary, but I am not excited for the MTG whales to swoop in and reduce supply of SW/SH Era booster boxes. 
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I donāt have the time to watch right now, mind summarising his perspective?
Sure.
For context, Rudy is a well-respected member of the MTG community. He is phenomenally wealthy and has made a career of selling sealed MTG products. You may know him from the āBathroom of XY-Era Productā meme.
Here are his main points:
- Ultramodern Pokemon boxes are performing unusually well for their age when compared to other CCGs/TCGs
- He does not suspect future massive reprints of SW/SH Era product
- He believes that a financial opportunity may exist given the incredible success of alt arts
- He suspects that arbitrage may exist at scale (e.g., opening hundreds of booster boxes and making a profit from selling the singles) because of the prices of certain alt arts (however, I would disagree knowing how hard some of the pulls are)
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I donāt think he knows how hard they are to pull - and not just an alternate art, but any individual card. Though logically speaking, heās right - if prices on singles continue to increase, it may seem more appealing to just buy a box.
But thatās for the average, unthinking consumer, which granted may be most of the market. However, at a certain point it doesnāt make sense to open either because the pull rates are terrible.
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I donāt think he is very respected at all in the MTG community.
Pretty much only in the financial part of it, which is an overall very small portion
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He has a following that dwarfs almost everyone else in the community. Gotta think someone likes him at least
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Rudy is very knowledgeable but Iām pretty skeptical of his advice or perspective on Pokemon. Heās had a history of showing he doesnāt really know what heās doing with pokemon.
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My thoughts while watching:
- bold assumption that ~year old sets will not be reprinted (he even said astral radiance, which is like <6 months old?? why is that off the table for a reprint?)
- im not sure why everyone wants to hoard sealed boxes; imo, the opportunity is in the single cards (however, that window has already kinda passed at this moment if u do not own the cards)
- most of the cards that are playable (in terms of ultra rares) have special arts; this could be elevating prices more
- i think singles prices arenāt as directly correlated to box prices when a) the chase cards are incredibly difficult to pull and b) the sets are literally still being printed bc most of them came out ~1 year ago. there may be a ton of sealed product, so boxes wont necessarily increase, but the card may not decrease in price bc itās impossible to pull
- i dont think the arbitrage opportunity is there bc as just mentioned, youāre not gonna open two boxes and pull a $200 chase card; youāre gonna open 2 cases and pull the one thatās not $200 and itās probably gonna have poor QC. not to mention, im pretty sure the bulk english market is dead rn
All in all, I canāt really agree that thereās āhuge opportunityā in buying ultramodern booster boxes. Thereās certainly opportunity in ultra modern, but im not sure itās in english sealed lol. There also seems to be a ton of people holding product, who Iād assume will likely start cashing out once the price starts rising. If youāre able to buy pallets of boxes from distribution, there may be some flippability on the horizon, but unless youāre able to scale in a meaningful way, I donāt rly agree (especially considering there seems to be so much scamming/ buyer nonsense in sealed english boxes).
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I think this might be the most important point of them all. Selling booster boxes is an absolute nightmare in 2022 because of reseal anxiety among inexperienced buyers.
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Im watching the video know and itās already showing his lack of knowledge in Pokemon. āI dont see any reprints comingā
Ultra prism, shining legends, hidden fates etb reprints well after people thought those sets were done getting reprinted.
He doesnāt seem to take into account the huge volume of modern thats getting printing. He seems to be extrapolating recent value and advice gives off very ātiming the marketā vibes. This is the same guy that seemed surprise when his sealed product didnāt really appreciate for a couple years than started raising in value a few years after it was printed. He isnāt very involved in Pokemon and it shows in this video.
I love Rudy and have watched a fair bit of his videos but i am never taking Pokemon advice from him lol
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Iām a big fan of Rudyās TCG market centric content and Iāll wait to listen to this video until my commute to work Monday morning. I think investing into any set thats going to be in standard for another rotation is incredibly risky though.
IMO the time to āinvestā in a setās booster box is right before/right after it rotates out of standard. While that seems like obvious advice, alot of people are ignorant to that fact and load up on cases of Lost Origin, Brilliant Stars, Silver Tempest, etc etc. Most of the time, itās going to be an absolute minimum of 2 years before you see any worthwhile financial movement or any semblance of box scarcity. Aka its dead money that could better be used on more prudent TCG āinvestmentsā or moves.
Full disclosure, I recently picked up a case of SWSH base set for a $1,000. Super unsexy set but its about to rotate out of standard, its almost 3 years old, and there arent a ton of boxes or cases available at a reasonable price anymore. Iām not huge into holding modern sealed product but when it checks those boxes for me, it screams opportunity.
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The buyouts (or ābuyoutsā) he talks about are real and Iāve mentioned them here before. It could be āpure collector interestā, sure, but looking at the buy orders Iād wager the trend leans towards a slow, controlled buyout. Regardless the reason, lack of singles supply = higher singles prices which eventually = more sealed will be open/higher sealed prices.
Theoretically, if the prices of these cards reach high enough levels and boxes stay stagnant, it WILL become profitable to open booster boxes and sell the singles. At that point, either the box prices adjust up or the singles prices adjust down, with demand for the singles ultimately deciding that battle. This is basically what Rudy says here.
The best time to buy was yesterday and the second best time to buy is now. Modern booster boxes wonāt sit at $100 forever even with the high supply, and Iād argue with the pervasive post-2020 investment culture, along with extreme market manipulation in Japan and the seemingly never-ending alt art hype train, these boxes wonāt stay this price for long. Especially if their chase card supply is drying up rapidly.
His argument for the graded card market also makes sense to me. PSA 10 alts still command a premium over raw despite being very easy grades. As long as this market inefficiency exists, there will be those who take advantage of this disparity to make quick money, maybe to pay off bills or maybe to fund other purchases. This type of behavior was discussed in this thread, and I think itās potential impact on the market shouldnāt be discounted or ignored.
Overall I have always found modern product speculation silly, mostly because the cost of entry comparative to the current and/or prospective value of the product is best spent somewhere else. The alt arts are beautiful, but for the price of some of them Iād much rather buy rarer vintage. Instead of modern booster boxes, Iād rather spend my money on vintage collections. The latter have more value imo, and are things I can actually enjoy. And Iād enjoy alt arts, but Iād enjoy so many other cards more. So I donāt really fear modern investing or speculation, because if prices get too expensive for me (which they pretty much are already) Iām perfectly alright with looking elsewhere for enjoyment.
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Fazool is right actually. As an mtg person originally my impression of him is extremely cringe
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I didnāt realize his 350k subs was more than Tolarian Community Colleges 750k, or Command Zones 575k or that it dwarfed the many of other channels with hundreds of thousands of subs
Either way, I have participated in the magic community for a very long time and play weekly with lots of people. The only times I really hear Rudy brought up itās from people that are annoyed with him. The only thing he talks about in magic is financials, and his āinvestmentā community are about as enjoyable as NFT bros to talk to
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Had seen quite a few videos with Rudy and Tolarian but had no idea they had 750k followers. Thank you for informing me.
How much of a problem is this really?
It would be nice to know, quantitatively, how much higher the buyer fraud rate is for ultramodern sealed English compared to the rest of the market.
Over the last few days I made my first sales in over a year. I sold 6 booster boxes of Evolving Skies to 6 different buyers (the boxes came from the same case Iāve been holding since the second reprint).
I am genuinely concerned that Iāll get a stupid message from one of those buyers in the next week, filled with accusations and paranoia, and buyers remorse.
This concern is one of the things holding me back from going deeper into ultramodern sealed.
I just wish I knew how common this actually is. Like 1%, or 5% of buyers, or is it even higher?
I assume Rudy deals with this a lot at his volume level. It must be infrequent enough that he doesnāt let it stop him.
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I wouldnāt be able to tell you the actual rate. I would ask large consigners like @TCAGaming or @smpratte who have plenty of history selling booster boxes before and after the boom.
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I stopped accepting English Modern boxes because the fraud rate is so high. This is not an exaggeration; there has never been a category of pokemon with more speculation that English modern sealed. Just the other day in the Charizard UPC thread, there were reviews on Target claiming the packs were re-sealed. The reverse scam of saying something is re-sealed when a toxic buyer doesnāt get the hits they want is insane.
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Primarily Rudy is entertainment. I think a lot of people forget that. Itās also why I can watch a video he makes on basically every topic. Just like how maxmoefoe can make a white bread opening watchable.
Rudy has the occasional video where he talks about really interesting concepts in the intersection of collecting and investing. The so-called āwhiteboardā videos. I think thatās where he is best
But yeah I guess my point us you should primarily watch his videos for entertainment and any actual useful nugget of wisdom is a bonus
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I almost wish that eBay would just expand their authenticity guarantee service to sealed booster boxes. Like for every box above $200 or $300 or whatever.
It has been their solution to buyer fraud in the singles market. If the reverse scams are this bad in the modern sealed English market then maybe it is time for eBay to start middling those too.
One shouldnāt have to feel like they are rolling dice every time they sell something.