With some recent surges of PSA 9 1st edition WOTC holos, it got me thinking about which card is top dog in this category. Of course there are clear top cards for PSA 10 set collectors (Yanma, Typhlo 17, Ampharos rev, Slowking, etc.) due to difficulty to grade. However, the trend doesn’t seem to translate to PSA 9 cards, at least not yet, and the desirbilty factor of favorite pokemon outweighs difficulty to grade in certain instances. Espeons, Umbreons, Tyranitars come to mind.
Of course this is excluding base set as it is it’s own category and doesn’t fit with these other WOTCs.
Question is, what do you think are the highest priced/prized cards for this category? It seems like Typhlosion 17 is hyped right now and has taken the lead with sales of 700+ for a PSA 9 set card. Not sure if that is true for any other WOTC holo. Will be interesting to see the growth of certain cards as 10s become out of reach for many collectors.
Typhlosion 17 and Neo gen Lugia seem to be the biggest boys today. Although there’s no stability in 9 prices right now because everything has been changing in the last 6 months. If you were to ask prior to this shift, it was basically only about popularity of the pokemon. Some cards that come to mind:
-neo lugia/hooh-neo rev legendary dogs-any charizord-any espeon/umbreon holo-blaine’s arcanine, light arcanine
-all skyridge holos
most of these hit over $100. Nearly all other 9s could be found under $50. Today is a different story
Neo shinings obviously. I also think prices of 9’s mainly are driven by popularity as mentioned above. Other top cards would then be the jungle eevolutions, legendary birds from fossil and gym series, the three dragonites, dark blastoise, dark raichu, neo pichu and rockets mewtwo. Getting any of these for under 100 USD right now would be nice.
Are we taking errors into consideration? Cosmos foil Fossil Holos, “double holo” Neo Rev Ho-Oh, Non-Holo Dark Dragonite and corrected Blaine’s Charizard would be up there I guess, even if not quite in the Lugia tier.
Sorry, meant to exclude the obviously more rare and higher priced options (shinning and crystals). No errors either. Let’s just keep it to regular, 1st edition WOTC holos (and I guess e-series as well) that all have similar odds of pulling from a pack.
Interesting to see the eevolutions from jungle and fossil dragonite mentioned. These are probably 200 or so but how many are in the class with Typhlosion 17 (besides zards) at 500+ or even 700+? That is the top tier right now. While Jolteon, Vaporeon, etc are high, they are still less than 50% of typhlosion.
Maybe there is a lot of hype involved with 9s to get a price spike like this?
I don’t think hype is the drive behind this price increase. I understand the increase in price for PSA 10s. However, the potential buyer pool also decreases as a result. Booster boxes and packs have also seen a significant increase in price, such that opening packs is also not worth the risk. Raw, mint cards become harder to find everyday. I don’t have the funds (student life) to spend 1k+ on a card. And why should I, if I can get 3 or 4 PSA 9’s for the price of one PSA 10, while the difference in appearance of the cards is often negligible. A PSA 9 is still a mint copy and in reach for many collectors.
It’s not hype. The only thing that was keeping 9s consistently low was that people would open sealed product and keep/profit from 10s and dump the 9s to recover some of the cost. PSA 9s were abundant and sold at unsustainable prices. People aren’t opening the same volume of sealed product today and sealed prices have gone up. If you buy 3 unweighed (lol) 1st ed Jungle packs at $100 each, your expected outcome is 1 holo that will grade PSA 9. You can’t sustain a $50 PSA 9 market under these conditions. Maybe if more quantity of the existing supply was available the market could maintain these lower prices. But since only a small percentage of the total pop is available at any given moment and the cost to keep the fresh 9s flowing is incredibly unsustainable, something has to give.
Compound that with the fact that PSA 10s are also rising. When price differentials between PSA 9 and 10 look like $50 vs $1000 for jungle cards and $100 vs $10,000 for t17, again, something has to give.
Ignoring the 1st Edition part, Prerelease Clefable is hands down the top PSA 9 WotC card, with 254 graded in total there have so far been no 10s and only 9 9s. eBay user slick50190 sold 2 different PSA 9 Prerelease Clefables for $1,526 and $1,646 in August and September last year.
I’m a 9 collector and I like what I’m seeing with the 9’s. This isn’t the last of it either. Expedition and Aquapolis have been stagnant for a while now. Base 2 won’t be a meme too long from now.
i think psa 9 carries more risk because it has much higher pops and more susceptible to market movements. additionally, psa 9 may be more ‘liquid’ because of the lower price point, but that’s relative. when you talk about collecting, rarity matters, a lot. i don’t think the price on a card matters that much since you generally have 100 copies or less of any given wotc era psa 10 holo cards.
I think the more money you spend in general takes on more risk. PSA 9 prices don’t get as far away from the price of raw cards in the same condition as PSA 10s do. Definitely more susceptible though.
I came soooooo close to winning one of those. Those cards sold for bargain basement price. It’s a 3k card all day in my mind based on rarity and scarcity. Still wish I had been able to grab it, but missing that allowed me to make a bunch of other big purchases, so all is well in the end I suppose.
I often wondered if skyridge holos are under rated or if the packs are just extremely over rated. I am no Pokemon expert but the numbers never added up to me.
$700+ a pack and the top Chase card can be had for what…4k?
Even could even go with the highly printed team rocket 1st booster pack for $100 or so, top Chase card is over 1k.
I know there is no reward without some risk. But the ratios do not add up to me.
I just see a much higher demand for the limited supply packs than people actually wanting the cards within them
There are a few factors that make comparison between skyridge and older sets unfeasible.
1)no 1st ed print
2)eseries are easier to grade than older wotc sets
3)there are a LOT of holos and the crystals are not any rarer than the secret rares
4)the interest for skyridge isnt as generally as base, jungle, fossil. In general I’d say it’s a small but disproportionately loud group of people with interest in the set.
Overall there’s a lot of weird things about the set and the prices reflect that but in terms of pricing, it is what it is and I think in this case the market knows best
Sealed product is extremely expensive but also consider the latent supply available in binders that were opened back in the day. These were opened at the end of the pokemon boom so many just sat in binders and weren’t ravaged at the school playground like all my jungle and fossil cards were.