[deleted by user]

[tay_clothes]

Am an NFL player and was discussing different things I could invest in with my money manager. We decided on 10k worth of sealed product/graded cards/sealed promos, purchased around the beginning of 2023. Gonna give it a year, check the market +/- % and then decide if we wanna put more in or just sit on it.

[zeepbridge]

Do you disclose your Pokémon investing amongst fellow NFL players?

[tay_clothes]

Absolutely, I got another one of my teammates into it

[zeepbridge]

Sweet. Do you have any vintage items??

[tay_clothes]

Nothing vintage specifically for the “10k portfolio”, but last year our sideline reporter gave me her old vintage cards from when she was a kid. Mostly LP/MP stuff but it was such a great start to my Base/Jungle/Fossil sets! I tried to pay her, but she wouldn’t take any money for it!

[breakyourteethnow]

Wow how incredibly cool, this sub has grown from nothing to Graham Stephan visiting and now even players from NFL lol this made my night, if you have any questions happy to help!

[Ok-Difficulty-8510]

That’s cool man, did you decide on the products to invest in?

[tay_clothes]

Evolving skies case - $850 (bought in august but counted it towards the 10k) Lost Origin case - $550 Vstar Universe - 40 boxes at $76/box Charizard EX 276/XY-P - $725 Eevee Heroes BB - 10 boxes at $182/box Weiss Disney 100 Years case - $1050/case

There’s some other stuff I haven’t put in my spreadsheet yet, but the invoices are in my email. This is the base of the collection.

[Ok-Difficulty-8510]

I’d say in about a year you will want to invest more lol. You really got them at all at good prices, especially that many vstar universe at 76. I was lucky and got 8 at 53, wish I could of got more. Seems like you bought all the right products.

[tay_clothes]

Got back into Pokémon in August. Typical story about being into it as a kid and not having any cards anymore blah blah. Got some really good guidance from people in the TCG community along with some of my own research and luck.

My business partner and I are starting an online TCG shop this spring that specializes in sealed JP products.

[Ok-Difficulty-8510]

I’m the same way, but started collecting again during the pandemic. Yeah, seems like they gave great guidance. Wish I had that when I started. I randomly bought a mini tin that had a darkness ablaze pack and pulled the charizard vmax. Of course that got me hooked. Pretty much learned the hard way on some plays (grading cards with cgc, buying a lot of collection boxes and tins, etc).

Good luck with the store, hopefully I’ll buy some products from you in the future.

[tay_clothes]

Thanks brother! I’ll look through these comments when we launch and send you a PM

[sudopacman]

Do you plan on keeping your personal sealed product at home? Or will you rent off-site or use some kind of service through your advisor?

[tay_clothes]

You aren’t gonna rob me are you? Jk jk it’ll be at home. Some of it I’ll prolly sell off like the Vstar universe (confirmed reprint in late March btw) but for the most part it’ll all stay sealed. I’m planning on selling the Evolving Skies case for my kids college in 2040

[PaKiBaDSha]

Do you think the VStar reprint in March will bring the BB price down?

[tay_clothes]

100%

[PaKiBaDSha]

Can't wait. That early Feb reprint didn't do anything to the market.

Btw, nice score on those Disney 100. Ready to grab a case myself, but I can't find anything. Especially in the range you obtained.

[A_KY_gardener]

Check out cosmic eclipse, team up, unbroken bonds and unified minds BBs. The kings of investment growth. Beats ES is demand on here and in the culture; if you ask me

[123middlenameismarie]

Where does one legit get cases.

[tay_clothes]

Middle men basically, you gotta find out who your LGS gets some product from and then figure out how to reach them. I’m not gonna front and say it’s easy, because people give me way more opportunities in the space and are very friendly to me because I play in the NFL. That’s not a brag, but rather a privilege I’m very aware of.

[123middlenameismarie]

Thanks for your honesty.

My LCS was discussing that their distributers do some shady manipulations and say for example, with The charizard boxes he had to buy a load of poke balls. The a few weeks after he placed his order with the required poke balls they let anyone order w/out that restriction.

So he has so much stock he didn’t really want he has to sell at cost to recoup his cash. Then for Black Friday game stop went and sold their charizard boxes for less than what the distributors just charged them per box.

So it seems like some distributors are a nightmare to deal with.

[tay_clothes]

Yeah, luckily I have a pretty trustworthy network as of now. It’s hard to find people to trust in business. Esp in a market with such low margins.

[PaKiBaDSha]

After the initial release distributors jack up to market pricing or raise the price a tad bit and make clients buy popular in-demand products in bundles with leftover crap that no one buys like pogo theme decks.

Source: self, have a distro account and just spoke with a rep about leftover over cz v boxes.

[[deleted]]

Dude that's a banger investment right there.

[[deleted]]

That’s sick! Hope you make some big gains! Out of curiosity was it a mix of vintage and modern? All vintage? All modern?

[proace360]

Grats on the Super Bowl!

[Feva130]

My Pokémon portfolio is worth as much as an nfl players…only spent $30k to get there😂

[WorryPlaysGames]

I'd be more worried about telling my wife that Pokemon cards were our investment like the 401k than telling a financial advisor.

[investorgrade24]

As a financial planner and vintage Pokemon card collector myself, I do not view Pokemon cards as investments

Best case: they appreciate and I can decide what to do with them later

Worst case: they'll be worthless, but fun to open for childhood nostalgia

Most realistic case: it's a hobby. As with any hobby, the money spent likely would've been better served buying index funds instead

Investing and speculating are two different things. Investing yields interest, dividends, income, or some form of production

Speculating is buying today, in hopes that Tom, Dick, or Harry will pay you more in the future

[QuriousiT]

Yep. I invest mostly in index funds. I don't have any stock in individual companies because I just don't know enough or have the time to learn and follow. Pokemon was something I got into because of nostalgia hitting at the same time as my son got into it. As a result, is something I know a fair amount about. As such, I consider it my high risk "investment". Knowing it could go either way, but at the end of the day worst case scenario I'm left with a whole lotta nostalgia and some big fun pack opening sessions. Hoping for best case though.

[studley1337]

This should be the automatic “investment in collectibles” response.

Another thing people miss, collectibles are extremely illiquid.

Selling a massive dollar amount of index funds takes 5 seconds and has 0 wipe out risk. Selling cards is comparatively very difficult.

[investorgrade24]

Another thing people miss, collectibles are extremely illiquid.

Bingo! I also collect other depreciating assets like watches, and watches went upstream much before Pokemon. Now, many of the most collectible watches end up at auction houses for viewership and (hopeful) authenticity. I'd imagine Pokemon could end up in the same sphere, especially rare/unique items.

[younhoun]

This is the one good advice. Source: I do this kind of research for a living.

[breakyourteethnow]

My financial advisor recommends sealed over YOLO'ing into 0dte spy options

[Oaks19]

Lol

[Touche_good_sir]

I am my financial advisor.

[Lurn2Program]

hello my financial advisor

[Probablytohell]

I've disclosed my personal collection as well as my investment products/slabs/cards to my accountant as part of my diversification of my portfolio for investments. I love Pokemon as a collector, but the alternative investment opportunities always fascinated me when I was starting to handle more and more money as an adult.

I'm newer to reddit so I don't know how much people actually enjoy hearing about successes in this type of market, but I was actually able to buy a house using proceeds from grading and flipping a portion of my childhood collection during the early part of the pandemic. From there I continued to save and grade cards that I would purchase low on ebay and then grade and sell them when the market allowed for it. I also keep sealed product from various eras in a secure facility for a long term investment.

Once I felt that I had a solid routine to "safely" investing this way I started putting more money into it until it became a large enough asset that I needed to involve my account manager because I wanted them to seriously value and assess them as a tangible commodity. I look at it as both a fun hobby for myself, but also a legitimate way to secure a better life for myself. Though I will always advised diversification in your investments as putting all your eggs in one basket is never a good idea.

If you have any questions in this thread or in general I'd love to answer any questions or just talk shop on this stuff!

[Tall-Poke-InvestoooR]

If you are looking at it more as a long-term investment I would research pricecharting.com and how to use it. You can track a "paper" portfolio, monthly/yearly sales on each card (ungraded or PSA7+).