Hello all. It has been a long time since I’ve posted, I hope everyone here is well.
I was a pretty serious collector 4-5 years ago and essentially gave it up due to the following:
New sets were being released every 12 weeks, each with what felt like 20 chase cards and the cost to keep up wasn’t worth the amount of enjoyment I was getting any longer.
Being in Australia our money became more and more worthless alongside Gerry Harvey’s GST on imports. Links to point above.
Anyway every now and then I have a bit of a look on eBay and am legitimately shocked at some of the sale prices of things such as base set Charizard, jungle sets etc etc. It actually seems ridiculous after being out of the circle for what didn’t feel like that long (Jesus I’m getting old).
My question is what happened? Have things just gradually got to this point? Has everyone been using their jobkeeper money to buy the hell out of Pokemon cards? Are a group of people just shilling each other?
One last question, is @pokemonsyndicate ingtons still running rampant and grading every stoisemuss he can find?
Haha thanks. I assume that means he is no longer spamming this board repeatedly. @pokemonsyndicate was a pretty full on member a few years back, if he still lurks or receives notifications, I hope he Bursts in here to tell me about, the things.
Part of it is the price gap between sealed product and mint cards closing. A noticeable spike did occur around three months ago, with some cards increasing by 200% to 500% overnight. Before that, prices had been steadily increasing but nothing like we saw back around March-April.
Personally I think sustained interest will continue to drive prices up for as long as Pokemon stays relevant.
To keep it brief
There was a spike in 2016 (around the time of Pokémon Go and the $20k Bitcoin). Then this year we saw another spike during the Covid19 outbreak.
Congrats! You’re all caught up!
I’m in a similar position to you - I came back after a few years away and within a couple of weeks prices just exploded. Figures. I feel like part of it is people with more time to kill stumbling across Pokemon, and coming into the market.
From roughly July 2019 to December prices increased, steadily, around 5% per month if you check eBay.
During a close gap of time between March and April (Coronavirus situation worldwide and most countries quarantined, people spending money at home or finding their collections and coming back), which felt like it was literally overnight, and due to PSA being closed (Yes, they closed due to covid for a couple weeks); eBay went Dry and everything was selling at whatever it was getting posted; cards like Gold Stars, Jungle, Fossil, Team Rockets, Skyridge; Aquapolis, Ex 2003/2007 and Base Set saw a 200/300% increase in a short span of time.
Basically Pokemon just continued to grow lol. Imo one of the reasons for the huge price jump in vintage cards in the last 1-2 years is that a lot of youtubers like TCAgaming have been opening a bunch of old product on camera. Recently, prices have jumped a lot probably due to the COVID-19 situation. People have/had a lot of free time to put into hobbies the last few months. Demand for old product is probably at an all time high and it will just continue to grow while the supply diminishes rapidly.
As for pokemonsyndicate, I’m not sure what happened with him (or her?) I don’t know if he maybe said he was leaving the hobby or something, but he hasn’t been on here in a long time.
Pokemon collecting is hitting a new level of popularity (demand) as people from multiple generations and other hobbies (MtG) pile in. Youtube influencers, COVID, and continued multimedia success (video games, shows) are all factors. Add that to the limited supply of vintage cards and a PSA backlog and you get the current price environment
@jonandek, officially entered the hobby and crushed the game. He has a strong position on every vintage WOTC card and will likely have a position on all of the following chase cards post-WOTC. Soon all prices will be determined by him alone! (Lololol I’m kidding. However, you should totally check out his collection. It is super impressive especially considering he started January of this year. )
Objective factors: The market spiked in 2016 (Pokemon Go) and again in 2020 (pandemic). So if you haven’t seen prices since before Pokemon Go, it’s going to look like a different world.
Subjective factors: Pokemon sustaining its popularity over time has trickle effects - more people entering the hobby, more time for money to be accumulated by people who started collecting cards a long time ago, more interest from people who didn’t grow up with Pokemon as putting money into a more established hobby, supply of vintage stuff continues to dwindle, etc.
The first question has already been answered, but in short: more and more Pokémon collectors are coming back for the nostalgia, and everyone seems to have more and more money… We saw a spike of returning collectors in 2016 when Pokémon GO was released, and it’s been on a rise since. And there was definitely a huge spike (just search the recent T17 Typhlosion threads to get an idea) a few months back, as was already mentioned in the comments above. Prices are pretty crazy in general these days, although you can still buy most bulk for normal going prices.
As for PokeSynd:
I do miss him sometimes though. It was fun hearing him talk about his bestingtons noraritans.
But I’ve seen some posts on IG after he left the forum, and he was indeed shit-talking about Scott, Gary, and E4 in general… Haven’t heard anything from him anymore in the past two years. Regardless, he was a fun dude to have around back then, and definitely eccentric.
Although we still have more than enough chaos on the forum these days tbh.
@quuador, I miss pokemonsyndicate too! Lol. Of course, it’s easy for me to say this because I was never a target / never got into any arguments with him. Personally, my interactions with him were perfectly pleasant.
But yeah, his posts about his “precious no raritans” always gave me a good laugh.
)
