Hi everyone! I was curious to find out more about the recent explosion in the typhlosion 1st ed card. Did the price explode so quickly because people caught on to how hard to grade it is or is it people who grew up with the gen 2 starters wanting to buy it back ? (Like a lot of us with Charizard obviously)
If so, would it be smart to either invest in gen 3 starters or even in Greninja who’s been the most popular pokemon since 2016 ? Or does it not work like that anymore since the modern product is much more available?
Sorry if it’s a 2 question post. (Also apologies for any mistakes english is my second language)
T17 has been a very hard card to grade as it had print lines straight out of the factory, so there are only 9 PSA 10s copies of a 1st ed T17 if I recall correctly.
Furthermore, quite recently, TCA Gaming set a new record for a PSA 10 graded copy, as he bought one for $10k, which I do think brought the card into the spotlight.
Soon after, the prices for most graded copies of T17 jumped with a few PSA 9 sales going around the $1k range. That generated a lot of hype, and here we are.
So to recap: hard card to grade and the highly graded ones sold for record prices which generated a lot of sudden interest.
For your second question, in general, modern cards and sealed products will have very slow growth as their printruns are huge and everyone else is already doing it.
Just like with any price explosion, the growth was not organic. And it certainly wasn’t because people suddenly wanted to buy the Gen 2 starters out of nostalgia, otherwise they would have settled for the other Typhlosion from the set, which is cheaper and has Sugimori artwork.
I might sound a bit too harsh, but I think that many people underestimate the possibility of extensive market manipulation in the Pokemon market. It’s extremely easy to push the price for one card up to extreme amounts in a very short period of time, if you have some capital to spend and knowledge of the hobby. Take T17 for example. The card has always been hard to grade but wasn’t that expensive. All it takes is for someone to check the pop report, choose the card with the lowest PSA 10 count, put it up for sale for an exorbitant amount, have an accomplice who then buys the card, and suddenly you have a registered sale for $15k (which in this hobby is all it takes to change the market value of a card, because the supply is low). And instead of being skeptical about a card suddenly increasing by 500% in a short period of time,everyone is just wondering how they could have missed the hidden potential of a card and promises to themselves to buy the card at the next chance before it gets even more expensive.
All I can say is, don’t be swayed by big numbers. Don’t be tempted to spent insane amounts of money on a card that apparently skyrocketed just to cash in. And don’t confuse the innocence of your childhood memories with the cold financial reality that people are making a fortune with Pokemon and that some of them will use their existing capital to push prices up and rely on your FOMO to make money. You never know if the sale was legit or just market manipulation, so you don’t want to be they guy who spends 15k on the card and then doesn’t find another buyer. Buy what you really like, not what seems to be the next hot thing, because chances are that the next hot thing was artificially manufactured.