What would it take for Pokémon cards to plummet in value and experience a “Pokénomic crash”?
I only have one foot in the investing side of the hobby, but I feel very confident that sealed products are a low-risk investment. But lately, I’ve been reading a lot of comments advising against Pokémon cards as an investment, citing that the value could “disappear overnight.”
Popycock I say.
For what it’s worth, the majority of my savings are in low-risk ETFs. 1-2% of my savings are in Pokémon. But it’s been on my mind lately and I thought I would open the discussion to you guys and ask what kind of event would have to occur to actually destabilize Pokémon cards as a collectibles asset?
There’s likely an ageing bubble of older collectors who will eventually cash out by dying or selling up in retirement. There’s no guarantee their kids will collect and if they just want the money they’ll sell them for a loss.
Pokemon is certain to be a thing that will be around forever but will future generations be as feverish for it as the current fans?
I’d say that’s unlikely if they can’t get their hands on the cards to start a collection. I’ve read quite a few stories of young kids staring at empty shelves being disappointed there’s no stock. Eventually that desire will be replaced by another object. If that repeats enough then a generation of collectors will skip pokemon tcg.
I’d say it’s very unlikely cards will become worthless but I could totally see them becoming worth less than today.
Well you’d need to either have a massive increase in supply, or a massive reduction in demand.
For a theoretical increase in supply, I’ll say through some licensing weirdness, all cards can be reprinted that are indistinguishable from their older counterparts.
For a theoretical decrease in demand, I’ll say we lose all the stonkers due another shiny object, and even some of the pre-covid demand is siphoned off to life events.
I’m very confident that sealed with never go to $0 or that value could completely disappear overnight, but I’ll continue to scream from the rooftops that sealed generally isn’t a safe bet to expect to boom in price. Treating it as a slow-growing, stable investment is a much healthier/reasonable approach.
This most recent boom will eventually come down to some degree (extent unknown), like what happened in 2020/2021, and will burn many people who buy at the top, but I don’t expect prices to crash too significantly where they get anywhere close to $0 or even MSRP.
Data being revealed that proves Pokemon are real and have been having inhumane experiments done on them to use for their game algorithms. Short of that, its doubtful pokemon will go to 0 anytime soon.
If you mean in a longer trajectory, pokemon has done great with subsequent releases keeping it relevant that dont feel like cheap knockoffs due to the amount of legacy content, but as with all things it only takes about 40-60 years for it to be out of production and then values would plummet as it is forgotten about and moved on from.
I’ve been wondering what will happen when those of us who grew up playing Red/Blue/Yellow retire and later on, die. When our generation is gone, so is the emotional and sentimental attachment to Gen I.
Values will never disappear “overnight.” Outside of a worldwide catastrophe, Pokemon isn’t going anywhere. In fact, as we’ve seen, a moderate worldwide catastrophe usually just sends card values up.
If Pokemon is going to go away, it will be a slow decline. People are often focused on the highly unlikely possibility of a short-term 85-90% value drop and discount the relatively more likely possibility of a 85-90% decline over 25 years. What could cause this? Perhaps a steady decline in Pokemon popularity, starting with the video games and moving into the TCG. Maybe Pokemon exhausts the “uniqueness” of special art cards and shiny sets and they all end up blurring together after the 8th shiny reprint art set and the 6th set with an Umbreon special art. Maybe Pokemon fails to connect with a younger generation which gets interested in different characters and video games. Maybe the gargantuan print numbers of modern Pokemon finally catch up to themselves and all the people who have been hoarding modern Pokemon for investment see zero returns and cut their losses, further depressing prices. Maybe after 10 years of prices staying stagnant or going down, the discourse around Pokemon shifts and it stops being viewed as an investment vehicle and more as a hobby from a bygone era.
I’d place the likelihood of this happening at maybe 1-2%. However, people who think that Pokemon is bulletproof because we’ve had a strong 5 year run are deluding themselves. Just because you can’t think of a scenario that would cause Pokemon to catastrophically crash overnight doesn’t mean Pokemon can’t go down significantly over time.
The potential crisis I’ve always been most worried about is that counterfeiters pop up who can produce product virtually indistinguishable from the real thing. This would be challenging (apparently extremely challenging, since it doesn’t seem to have happened yet after all these years), but it is possible.
As the total value of Pokemon cards increases, the incentive to perform this scam also increases.
Anyways for the pokemon economy to collapse game freak and/or creatures would have to go out of business. At this point game freak’s ONLY asset is pokemon which makes it more likely than creatures. With no more games releasing there are no new mons to make cards of.
One angle I find interesting is the effect of international relations, many of which have never been better than they are today (and never for this long,) all of which will sour at some undetermined point in the future, with devastating effect upon multilateral efforts.