Hi, very hard to find value on these cards, as very few sold, and shall not ask for a specific card, Can somebody help me with the value of Staff-card against without staff-stamped?
Talking about this Tidal wave, Tropical wind, Festivals…
Depends on the year honestly cuz of how many of each are distributed (more or less depending).
Some of the lower end of these cards, reference Ebay comp’s and see if you can find any, but generally for the higher end stamps or anything rare that gets traded/bought, follow the smprattism sentiment (paraphrased): if its not on the open market its always just an agreement between the buyer and seller.
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The 2004 and 2007 are very hard to find, that year had less contenders and was smaller in general, therefore less cards exists.
Some cards are generally more popular than others, the 2016 Champions Festival has great art and is in high demand fetching a higher price because of that. Also some years staff got 1 or 2 coppies and others they got handed out a lot more, that also reflects in price. I don’t really know what years they handed out more, probably more recent.
I think like many other cards these increased a lot, but more recently than the more known stuff. So you won’t find that many recent sales to give you a “market value”.
Great cards to hunt, have fun!
I just noticed how over the last two years, the interest/goals have shifted with availability: The majority of people just want the art, so when Staff cards from 2013-2019 (excluding the more popular 2016) are like 500$ + ungraded, they bought the unstamped (just the year-stamped) english cards until those were over 100$ or more depending on the year. Now, people start to collect any language just to have the artwork, until eventually those run out since the unstamped sets are still limited to competitors of the world championships.
The difference in rarity and significance of placement stamps to staff and staff to ungraded isn’t well reflected in the price at all in my opinion, but it takes more time for 250$ top 16 cards to be 2000$+ than for 50$ unstamped cards to be 250$. They’re just in a weird limbo right now, their rarity doesn’t help with establishing “market price” for each specific year, like @nikhil said.
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Newer festivals are easier to track, the older ones being rarer (at least on eBay). The most expensive one seems to be the one with the gen 1 starters, although the Eevee and Pikachu one (2019) seems to be pricier as well, specially considering how recent it is.
Tropical cards come up less often raw. The 2010 Tidal Wave sold recently for 1000, up from ~500. Not sure if the price will stick, although keep in mind it was the last artwork done by Kizuki in the “old” style, so while it’s relatively more common it’s still a very interesting card.
Something that surprised me was the 2012 Beach that sold recently for 750, I’m surprised as the artwork is very non appealing (might be just because I hate those monkeys), although the card itself seemed to be in a pretty good shape. Either the market is moving fast, or I still don’t have a good grasp on it, as I’m not entirely sure why this went over the 2008 Wind that only sold for 550 (was listed at 750). If I hadn’t spend my funds for March I would’ve sent an offer of at least 600, or 650, or even bought it at the listed price if best offer was not enabled.
Even a very evidently creased 2011 Beach got sold 400 or 450 iirc. I’m hopeful on the future of these cards, as even though they are not as exclusive as the placement stamps they feel more “collectable” (at least to me) as a set, while getting a top 16 or 32 is just kind of “incomplete”.
As you can see I track mostly raw because I’ve found graded pricing starts to get into the territory of whatever a particular collector felt like paying that day.
Sorry for the kinda incoherent ramble btw! Just had a stream of thoughts as I’ve been watching these cards closely for the past couple months. These are just my observations! Hopefully someone can correct me if I got anything wrong.
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The Tropical Beach cards are very playable, so there’s demand from players on that front as well. You see playsets on the Japanse market sell for over 2k USD sometimes. That also means good condition copies are hard to find, even though this was the one of the most widely distributed cards. Behind the 2004 and 2007 copies, I’d say these two are the hardest to acquire.
Yeah I was aware of their playability, but I thought them being rotated out of standard would stop playability from being such a major factor on the price. Afaik expanded is not nearly as popular, but I may well be wrong.
I agree with the acquisition difficulty, at least in good condition. Raws pop up more frequently than others like the old Tidal Waves, but I haven’t seen many graded ones, and the raws are played or outright damaged way more often than any other championship promo.
I’m not very well versed on the specifics, but apparently they’re a staple card, in a staple deck in the expanded format. Not to say all of the demand for the Tropical Beach cards come from players — but I know PTCGO versions of the card also sell for quite a bit. So it just adds to the overall demand for these cards, which I think explains why they might sell for more than other more “scarce” cards.
I would consider tropical beaches to be extremely playable and a legacy card, because it was good enough to be used in consecutive World Championships. The fact some decks required more than 1 copy of the card; it made sense for it to be sought after for players who just wanted to play older gen decks for fun or keep it as part of their deck for nostalgia reasons. Adding also the collectors who wants the cards to complete the tropical series is what makes this card much more expensive compared to its counterparts…you have 2 places of high demand plus the release is extremely limited.
I’ve just completed the entire tropical line excluding the tropical breeze (started this journey in 2017), and I can definitely confirm pokekuma13, that 2004 and 2007 are very infrequently seen for sale, with 2011 and 2012 being next in line. 2005 was a pain to find also. The rest were relatively easier to locate.
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Did you get them graded or raw? In the past months I’ve seen more 11 and 12 than 15 and 14, for example.
To add to this a little bit, there was a period starting around March 2013 where Tropical Beach was not only very playable in Standard, but the popular opinion was to play 3-4 in most Stage 2 decks. These decks played Skyla (for Rare Candy already) to search it out, you didn’t want to prize one, and you really wanted to naturally draw into one because you didn’t mind not attacking for the first 1-2 turns.
Most players either kept their 1-2 copies from 2011/12 Worlds bags, or sold them to players looking to own 3-4. Then after the player copies, Staff copies were the most populous (they may even be more common than the player copies according to some reports). Many players even played their Top 32/16/8+ copies in decks because they needed a full set of 3-4. My friends and I even bought or borrowed French copies because we could use them in Canadian tournaments.
The effect this has on the market is probably a significantly lower amount of mint condition copies of the 2011/12 Tropical Beach, especially English/Japanese player copies and Staff copies. You may be able to find played copies that aren’t completely beat up, but the value is still quite high in this condition as they can be used currently in the Expanded format. Beach definitely isn’t the staple it used to be, but the playerbase is also roughly 2-3x as large as it was 5 years ago and the supply has never increased.
As far as your initial question @kemost , I’ve personally not seen much of a $$ difference with Staff vs no stamp. Tropical Beach may have been an outlier though because no one really cared what stamp it had, they just wanted to play it. But they seem to be distributed in similar numbers. As more players play in Worlds, they need more judges, etc.
Without source to verify, but just word of mouth, I’ve heard some years are more staff than regular and some more regular than staff. Sometimes staff get exactly 2 promos, sometimes they get a whole stack. But in general, I’ve personally not seen much of a difference in value, and would need the word of a staff member who experienced the distribution first hand to say that any one year has one version or the other being significantly rarer. The player numbers are fairly public.
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Oh I should first mention I don’t typically try for staff stamped ones, because I personally don’t find it that appealing; I went for the Japanese ones because I want them all in the same language (and the 1999 one is only in Japanese). My strategy back then was getting them graded since it was cheap, but after a year or so, I’ve noticed there’s not enough supply of graded ones to complete my collection so I just went for raw. From my recollection I got the 15 as one of the firsts, as it was relatively common and it wasn’t that popular (the worst was the 13…no one wanted that one for sure). It was so cheap that I got the PSA 10, then saw a playset sealed, and just bought it because it costed almost nothing. The 14 was rarer-ish, but I don’t think everyone appreciates psyduck turning into a boat so the price wasn’t relatively too expensive; it popped up from time to time with relatively little movement. I would say it took 0 effort to get the 15 back then, and it took a few months before I tracked a 2014 I liked.
Note that these things are very cyclical and gives you a false illusion that there’s plenty on the market sometimes…a few may pop up at a time, making you think that’s the market price and when they vanish…they may not appear for months. I fell for that trap a few times and paid the price of that mistake.
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Yeah these are important points as well. Everyone was really upset in 2013 that it wasn’t Beach again so players let their sealed packs go for $50 or so. This was the trend for a few years, you could buy a sealed pack at Worlds from players for $50-70 or so. I was buying single copies (LP to NM-) for $10-20 on eBay and TCGPlayer a year and a half ago.
And yeah to speak to several popping up, it’s probably a few backpack dealers who picked them up cheaply at Worlds and decided to sell and/or open the handful of packs they have.
EDIT: I will also add the caveat that my firsthand knowledge with this specific market and/or Worlds is 2011+, but I’ve spoken to players and judges dating back to the earlier years too. I would posit that the judge/staff to player ratio has roughly stayed the same, but years mentioned earlier like 2007 had significantly fewer attendees so who knows exactly.
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Yeah I agree with your observations, I just wanted to hear a bit more since I’ve been tracking them only for some months (and on top of that in a pretty extraordinary time for the market). I decided to get into them as, for all I know copies could stop appearing once (if) the market cools down. And yeah I agree, other than the monkey beach earlier festivals are the least appealing to me, and if this is a shared sentiment, since there’s no demand for them from the players side I guess this would make them move the least.
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@kazambolt, Yup, your statements match really close to how I purchased my cards throughout the years…champions festival was quite easy to get until covid happened, in my opinion.
@nelson, yeah, I can’t confirm anything recent however, because I feel like more and more people want to collect the full tropical set and it’s becoming much more in demand and expensive. I can say for the less desired ones, they will pop up from time to time but I have no certainty about how much the price will rise or drop…simply because I feel like the demand for these cards are significantly higher than before.
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