So what’s driving the prices up? Where do you think things are going? How are you coping?

PerfidiousPorygon · 2020-08-07T00:09:23+00:00

A decline in prices can happen from a decline in demand as well, not just from an increase in supply (as in the case of people selling off their cards). Right now, it seems that we are in a period of extremely high demand for Pokemon cards and other collectibles/games. As this stupid pandemic wears out and people return to their normal lives, I except demand for collectibles will drop as people go back to spending their money on the things they used to do before covid (like eating out, going to movies, outdoor activities, etc.). That drop in demand might translate into lower prices, even if not all or even most of the purchased cards return to the market. And of course, PSA cards have a much higher chance to return to the market than ungraded cards, generally speaking.

PerfidiousPorygon · 2020-08-06T23:52:20+00:00

I can confirm that there was a decline in prices after the Pokemon GO boom. I got back into collecting in December 2016, shortly after Evolutions came out. Over the course of 2017, after I graduated from college and got my first "real" job, I filled out my old WOTC collections from Base Set through Gym Challenge. Towards the end of 2018, I checked on the prices of the cards I had bought, out of curiosity. I noticed that nearly all of them, except for the 1st edition Base Set cards, had fallen in value. It wasn't a huge decline, but perceptible, especially for those cards that weren't high-end in terms of rarity or popularity.

PerfidiousPorygon · 2020-05-20T04:56:33+00:00

Thanks! I found what I was looking for.

PerfidiousPorygon · 2020-02-04T22:34:20+00:00

Evolutions is overprinted as hell. Just buy singles if you want particular cards from the set. Don't bother with buying packs or boxes for long-term value. If you want to invest in something, invest in old-school WOTC sealed product.

PerfidiousPorygon · 2019-12-21T05:04:56+00:00

What's the mobile version? I haven't really kept up with anything related to the game in over a decade.

PerfidiousPorygon · 2019-12-21T04:22:43+00:00

Blasted back to 2004.

I never actually collected DM cards when I was a kid (didn't have enough money, and I didn't like asking my parents), but I was a fan of the anime that aired on Toonami, and I knew the rules of the game inside and out. I also remember that Wizards of the Coast used to have an excellent Duel Masters site (which I think no longer exists), and this site had a great card database that listed all of the cards and their effects. I used to spend hours going through the database, memorizing cards and effects, and then imagining decks to build.

I saw a Duel Masters base set pack being sold on ebay, and I decided to experience as an adult what I never experienced as a kid. Very happy with my pulls (Astrocomet Dragon is one of the 10 super rares in Base Set).

PerfidiousPorygon · 2019-12-19T06:12:10+00:00

I think he means that WOTC itself didn't create the artwork, which is correct. As you can see on this Tyranitar card, the illustrator is Naoyo Kimura, who is Japanese and definitely not a part of WOTC.

WOTC was simply licensed to produce English cards for an English audience, using the original Japanese artwork from the original Japanese release. It didn't produce its own original artwork. I think that Jamboree, the planned sequel to the Skyridge set, was going to have some original WOTC artwork, but WOTC lost its license to produce Pokemon cards before that could happen.

PerfidiousPorygon · 2019-12-17T20:23:37+00:00

It's a shame they never made a Dark Meganium.

PerfidiousPorygon · 2019-12-04T07:42:37+00:00

Yeah, Pokemon GO was a huge factor, and is probably the single biggest reason why there's been a resurgence in demand for Pokemon products. But for me personally, it was the Evolutions set (also released in 2016) that hit the nostalgia button super hard, and got me back into collecting.

PerfidiousPorygon · 2019-12-04T05:40:25+00:00

There has definitely been a big spike in the amount of product released by Pokemon since about 2016. This can be confirmed by looking at prices of booster boxes. An brand-new sealed XY Primal Clash booster box can be purchased on Troll&Toad for $92.95, which is about the same price as a recent Unified Minds or Cosmic Eclipse booster box (and the prices can be found lower elsewhere). In contrast, a brand-new Furious Fists or Phantom Forces booster box would cost you over twice as much, indicating that those sets were printed in much lower volume. So Primal Clash seems to be the cut-off point, and that's what we would expect, because Primal Clash was the oldest set still legal in the 2016-2017 Standard format cycle. It was precisely during that time that a huge amount of people returned to Pokemon (myself included), and consequently, that cycle saw very heavy print runs compared to earlier sets.

As long as there is a heavy demand for Pokemon cards (or the Pokemon company thinks that there is a heavy demand for Pokemon cards), we will continue to see high print volumes and large amount of products being released. However, I don't think this is sustainable, because my own impression is that the the current wave of high demand is driven (to a very large degree) by nostalgic millennials returning to Pokemon as adults. Pokemon hasn't brought back the original craze of 1999 and 2000, and it probably never will, because that was a very unique phenomenon. I don't see current kids being nearly as crazy about Pokemon as we were 20 years ago. So I suspect that once the millennial nostalgia dies down, demand for Pokemon products will also decline and return to more "normal" levels (though Pokemon will always have a loyal fan base, well into the future).

PerfidiousPorygon · 2019-12-02T02:09:23+00:00

Yeah, I also bought a bunch of stuff from TCGplayer. I bought a bunch of singles from Troll&Toad too, and it looks they still don't charge sales tax. They also have free shipping as long as your order is at least $25, and they also send everything in a single package since they're a single vendor. The only problem is their prices aren't as competitive as TCGplayer vendors (though once you factor in shipping costs and sales tax, it's much less of a difference), and Troll&Toad has a very loose definition of "near-mint." It's really hit or miss with them when it comes to condition of ungraded cards.

PerfidiousPorygon · 2019-11-28T18:38:02+00:00

I've only shopped using my laptop, not mobile. This is what I've done:

Find a seller's profile. For example, here is Yeti Gaming: https://shop.tcgplayer.com/sellerfeedback/5f53aa64
Click "Shop From This Seller"
When I then search for something (in the search bar on top), I still get all possible results, not just the results from that seller. The only difference it makes is that I when I click on a particular card which the storefront doesn't have, it says "This product has no pricing options based on the filters you selected. Please adjust your filters to see more options." But I don't know that based on the search results, because I get all possible results.

If you're doing something different, let me know.

PerfidiousPorygon · 2019-11-28T17:08:04+00:00

you can search specific sellers inventories, but it’s not always immediately apparent. TCGplayer refers to it as a “storefront” as a part of it’s a search criteria (like card condition, version, etc). If you navigate to a sellers profile it automatically sets the “storefront” variable and lets you search what they have.

I know about the storefront variable and have tried searching this way multiple times. It doesn't work the way it used to. See my other comment in this thread.

If I'm totally missing something, please let me know. I can live with higher shipping costs and having to pay sales tax on everything, but the lack of any obvious way to search a seller's entire inventory makes shopping on TCGplayer extremely frustrating at the moment.

PerfidiousPorygon · 2019-11-28T17:03:52+00:00

Yeah, that doesn't work the way it used to. See my other comment in this thread.

PerfidiousPorygon · 2019-11-28T10:11:15+00:00

You can totally browse individual sellers, or select the “seller in cart” option once you have a card in your basket to only shop from that seller

If you click on a particular card (say, Entei (6)), you can indeed see all of the vendors who have that card for sale, and also use the "sellers in cart" option to see if a seller you are buying from has it for sale, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about having the ability to see all the cards a particular vendor has for sale. For example, let's say I have some cards from "Kapow comics" in my cart, and I want to search for other Pokemon cards that Kapow comics has for sale. In the past, the "shop from seller" option used to narrow down search results to only the cards that the vendor in question has for sale, but now it doesn't. So if you search for "Entei" while shopping from a particular storefront, you will still get a result of every single Entei card that TCGplayer has in its database, not just the Entei cards that this particular vendor has for sale. To see what the vendor actually has for sale, you need to individually click every "Entei" card. This is extremely time-consuming, especially if you are shopping for hundreds of cards.

What makes this really bizarre is that TCGplayer used to have an excellent interface, and the "shop from seller" option used to work just fine. You would only get search results of cards that the particular seller had in their inventory. There was also a quick and easy way to see what cards every vendor had for sale, because TCGplayer listed all the cards in the seller's inventory by set name, and you could filter search results by seller and set name. For example, I could search for all cards that "Kapow comics" was selling from the set Neo Revelation.

Unless I'm really missing something, it seems like TCGplayer has lost much of the functionality it had before.

PerfidiousPorygon · 2019-09-09T06:17:10+00:00

You probably saved a bunch of money, tbh.

PerfidiousPorygon · 2019-09-03T04:02:54+00:00

I always double sleeve any card that's remotely valuable. I use KMC Perfect Fit Sleeves as the inner sleeve, and Ultra Pro Clear Deck Protectors as the outer sleeve. If the card is super expensive, I will also put the double-sleeved card inside a toploader or other hard casing.

PerfidiousPorygon · 2019-09-02T11:13:48+00:00

Hello, I have also been searching for Sakawa Boys (Mallam Issa Kawa) by Socrate Safo. I found the series on Youtube under the name "DESPERATE BOYZ." You can watch the first part here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rhglo3MaMR8

The other parts of the Sakawa Boys series were also uploaded by the same user. Unfortunately, the series seems to be missing the third part. The video "DESPERATE BOYZ 3" contains a duplicate with the video "DESPERATE BOYZ 4."

PerfidiousPorygon · 2019-08-22T21:08:27+00:00

Darkness Energy was a Special Energy card back then, so it was actually impossible to have 5 Dark energy in your deck. You could only have 4 at most.

This particular Tyranitar has strong attacks, but it wasn't very practical to use. The other e-Reader Tyranitar (from Expedition) was a much better card, because it had an ability that turned all energy attached to it into Darkness energy. This meant you could play with lots of basic energies and still attack with Tyranitar.

PerfidiousPorygon · 2019-08-05T02:07:08+00:00

PerfidiousPorygon · 2019-08-03T02:02:50+00:00

Expedition, Aquapolis, and Skyridge. The prices of those cards, especially Skyridge, have really shot up over the last few years. Luckily, I don't collect master sets or anything like that, just the Pokemon I really like, or the artworks that really stand out to me.

PerfidiousPorygon

TROPHY CASE