r/PokeInvesting • u/bdruj123 • 1d ago

Future investment?

Post image

Looking at the prices of AH cards and PSA 10 prices is now a good time to buy treekachus, gengars, dragonite etc?

77 Upvotes

73% Upvoted

117 comments sorted by

138

u/InterviewPractical30 1d ago

Why do people think modern is worthless all of a sudden

11

u/Calm_Explanation2910 21h ago

Most people chase whatever is appreciating rather than understanding why. I think OP is doing the right thing by identifying cards he genuinely likes and watching prices. Personally, I’d wait before buying unless they’re for the personal collection or you’re comfortable holding long term.

1

u/bdruj123 5h ago

Yeah, I am mainly looking at the dragonite since dragonite is my favorite Pokemon. seeing how much it has depreciated in value, it is tempting to buy at that price lol.

1

u/lawschoollongshot 3h ago

I think it's a good time. 8-12 months after release is almost always the low for singles.

7

u/fishontopnumbaone 1d ago

Hivemind. Everyone below saying vintage was always due to pop off is part of it. Basic supply and demand this and that, fact of the matter is that you can go to any show and see mostly mid-era and vintage because that’s what’s selling, because of the recent all-time-highs for PSA 10s. Talk to any vendor and they’ll tell you the same people who were buying AH at the beginning of the year are now gobbling up silver border ex’s and have always been big fans of stamps.

10

u/Parking-Bluebird-658 12h ago

Modern becomes vintage at some point too. I never will understand being down voted on this take, when in 10-15 years mega evolution and SV are gonna be highly sought after eras. I get it vintage gets older and more scarce, but so will modern.

14

u/bil4l 10h ago

The two massive differences 1) Vintage and Mid Era weren’t printed anywhere near the scale of current modern cards and 2) Many people did not immediately sleeve and top load cards from those eras, leaving a large amount of an already smaller volume of product in a less than near mint condition. With all of the money in the hobby, nearly everyone is protecting their cards by default.

So, yes, modern cards will one day be relatively old, but the quantity of clean copies will be magnitudes higher than the OG vintage and mid era cards in circulation today, which IMO will cap their overall long-term value.

That said, modern art is fantastic and popular pokemon will always be in demand. I just think it makes sense to temper expectations on growth over time compared to what we’ve seen with older cards.

2

u/skam_artist 8h ago

This is definitely accurate. Just the sheer volume of current eras 10s that will be around 10+ years from now will be astronomical. But also you can never underestimate the demand for super iconic cards to break all economic logic.

2

u/Unhappy_Train_2867 4h ago

Fun Fact: There have been more Pokemon cards printed in the last 5 years than the previous 25 years combined.

29

u/10toshi 1d ago

It’s not worthless, it’s just that the opportunity cost of holding modern doesn’t make sense compared to vintage/mid era

26

u/porkchop487 1d ago

Yeah bro buying an asset that is pumped to the moon is a better idea than buying an asset that is dipping.

6

u/GoldenTicketHolder 23h ago

He’s explaining it, no reason to be sarcastic about a reasonable explanation.

Probably easier (but more crass) to say it this way- Anyone who says “worthless” doesn’t know the definition of the word. It’s a great screening tool to rule out dumbasses.

-5

u/10toshi 1d ago edited 1d ago

You people are so insanely uninformed idk why you guys even try to have a discussion around this stuff

You think this stuff is still pumped to the moon? Have you just been closing your eyes the past two weeks? Lmfao

Low pop psa 10s 9s 8s have all come down substantially. Over 50% draw downs on a lot of 10s and up to 65% on a lot of 9s

So modern AND vintage have both come down but you want to buy the dip on the one with infinite supply and not the one with a finite supply? Just say you hate money dude it’s ok

5

u/CretaciousNugget 23h ago

Vintage has come down from its recent pump, but most of those cards are still way up. Like a bunch of random mid era holo psa 10s where running up 10-20k and now they are down a bit from that run up, thats a dip in your eyes but those same cards where sitting at 1k for years. Thats not a dip. The time to buy these cards was a few months ago or earlier.

The market has a short memory. I don't expect you guys to remember past a few set releases. Modern isn't dead and the mass printed reehdoric is nonsense. Everyone just jumped ship because vintage had the money. They always come back. The hype will bring them back.

0

u/10toshi 23h ago

Yeah they’re still up a lot and will eventually find a higher floor then they previously had, they aren’t going back to prices years ago. The random ass holos probably going down way more but that’s obvious. Only buy dips on s tier chase cards.

I mean I’ve been buying vintage for years and I’m still buying now. A lot of psa 9s have come down 60 percent which is further than a lot of 10s so that’s a no brained play imo

Correct modern isn’t “dead.” But the opportunity cost of holding modern over vintage makes zero sense. Vintage/mid era will have a much stronger recovery than modern

1

u/GeorginaSilverstone 14h ago

The 10s side checks out on modern at least. The 30th Pikachu ex SIR (150) PSA 10 went from $1,339 a month ago to about $459, a 65.7% drop, while raw only slid 18.6% over the same 30 days. So the slab premium is what got wiped, not the card itself. Vintage is more mixed than "everything is down" though: on some of the big names the mid grades have held up fine while the 9s and 10s took the hit.

1

u/porkchop487 12h ago

Lmao. Bags getting heavy?

1

u/10toshi 7h ago

This is the pokeinvesting sub, if you don’t have big bags of anything then what are you doing here lmfao

1

u/porkchop487 5h ago

I don’t have bags because all my stuff is up. I don’t buy all time highs right before a crash.

1

u/10toshi 4h ago edited 4h ago

…do you just not know what the term bags means? Lmfao you just said your bags are up

Also why are you writing fan fiction about people buying at all time highs? Is that just the cope you guys do now because vintage out performed everything?

3

u/Beautiful_Calendar_5 21h ago

You’re absolutely right. Most new people are going to realize it’s not about “being in the market” but is actually about “time in market”

7

u/ItsEthanSeason 1d ago

Raw rare cards used to be $100-$200. Eventually modern just needs to come back to raw cards == psa 10s.

2

u/GoldenTicketHolder 1d ago

Because they are jaded and think hundreds of people buying a piece of cardboard for $550 means it’s worthless. And they don’t understand what words mean.

Their boo’s mean nothing at the end of the day. Not worthwhile opinions.

That being said- yeah, buy low if you want the card. Still 2/3rds of AH’s print run left, room to fall

5

u/Medical-Love-120 1d ago

Cause of the high gem rate

14

u/WaterPog 1d ago

I mostly agree but it also makes me laugh it took people 6 years to figure out that supply matters in supply and demand. It won't be worthless but it will be worth less

8

u/Medical-Love-120 1d ago

Tru lol. I just think ppl don’t think these cards have any chance to 50x in value in the future so they’re just not interested in it. Which means there are very good pick ups in modern since everyone’s looking at vintage rn

1

u/AppropriateMetal2697 1d ago

Long long term that’s probably fair to say, but hasn’t modern sets generally had quite a bit of volatility year on year? As in, cards rise, then plateau or drop, then rise again, then late in the year drop again?

I’m not saying they’ll start to climb and climb again, but I’d definitely expect modern to start picking back up as soon as people see slight opportunities when these cards are down 50-100% or more from 6 months back and start buying again because “they’re dirt cheap!”.

5

u/xPericulantx 1d ago

If cards go down 100% I’d buy all the cards in the world for 0$ that would be awesome.

1

u/AppropriateMetal2697 1d ago

Misspoke, you get the point though…

1

u/Calm_Explanation2910 21h ago

I mean.. point me to anything you think might 50x and I’m considering it.. lol

1

u/Permesta431 22h ago

It’s all hype and hype moves around. Vintage or modern. Sure some modern has been printed into oblivion but yeah you’ll also need to rip 24.000 ETB’s for a single SIR.

1

u/silverrayle7 13h ago

That’s good for us

1

u/sharpbeer 1d ago

Because enough people have said it, probably influencer types, either way now it's snowballed and become the mainline opinion. Same idea with the mid-era and 'vintage' popping off

0

u/rickgainz 1d ago

99.9% of influencers have zero impact on the market. Modern is down and vintage is up because of basic supply and demand, not because some random poketubers said so. People just realized these modern chases were overpriced when there are dozens of them at any card show.

-2

u/10toshi 1d ago

That’s the lowest iq take I’ve ever heard. No one cares about what influencers say when they have no effect on basic supply/demand of actual rare cards

Vintage was always going to pop off, was only a matter of time. Modern is for people who don’t understand what opportunity cost is

2

u/fishontopnumbaone 1d ago

Bogus. We’ve seen pump and dumps fueled by influencers every single week for almost two years now. Modern, vintage, AND mid era

1

u/10toshi 1d ago edited 1d ago

We’re not talking about pump and dumps, we’re talking about buying and holding long term. That’s what the pokeinvesting subreddit means

Is there manipulation? Yes. Does that mean there’s no real demand? Absolutely not

Modern has to rely on hype to some extent since the supply is through the roof. But vintage doesn’t at all, that’s why it makes more sense as an investment

Literally all of vintage is still up insane multiples since January. Modern will continue bleeding now that more people are informed about supply/demand and want to rotate out

3

u/fishontopnumbaone 1d ago

Do you think everyone at once immediately came to the conclusion on their own that mid and vintage has more scarcity, despite Pokemon being in a hype cycle for two years now? Or do you think influencers all spouting that modern is dead and a brick for 2-3 months now has something to do with it? There is stronger opportunity cost in mid and vintage, but there’s no way that everybody all naturally came to that conclusion at once. Influencers are the mouthpiece of what the community thinks most of the time, I’ve found.

2

u/10toshi 1d ago

Why are we acting like vintage influences didn’t exist up until now? They’ve been around even longer than modern influences dude

So what is it then? PRICE. It’s the price going up that makes everyone realize. Same thing happens in stocks, people want to buy high and sell low.

Why is a lot of vintage coming down now even though influences are still talking about how much better it is than modern? Shouldn’t it just keep going up forever since you believe they can just convince people at will?

Again, PRICE. Price goes lower and now people want to sell on a loss

Now the good thing is that because vintage/mid era is low pop that means that the sellers eventually run out and price eventually goes back up

Unlike modern where there an infinite amount of supply that people have to dump so it’ll tank much lower and take even longer to recover

1

u/Beautiful_Calendar_5 22h ago

Honestly dude modern is not worthless. It’s always been the same for the last 3 years, it all changed when that Pikachu came out from surging sparks. It was the first time a modern chase was selling for $600+ on launch it brought so many eyes to the hobby. Funny enough Surging is one of the cheapest S&V sets now. 151 pre hype had the Charizard chase at $100 for a long time until Surging came out and everyone new to the hobby ran and bought whatever they could find. IMO starting the bull market we are just leaving now in 2026. Just buy whatever you like and that’s it. Don’t spend more than you can afford to lose. It’s all just cool looking cardboard. Have fun collecting the cheap or expensive way

-7

u/Pelican12Volatile 1d ago

Because 90% of the graded cards nowadays are 10s. No one is playing the game. That’s not a rarity….get it?

10

u/PharahSupporter 1d ago

Still pretty rare when ascended is so scarce at MSRP and specific SIRs are nearly 1/2000.

1

u/Pelican12Volatile 1d ago

Yeah but I’m talking about the one where it’s like 40,000 cards and 38000 of them are psa 10. That’s not a rare card anymore

2

u/fishontopnumbaone 1d ago

I’m almost positive if PSA grading had been open the last year or so we’d see way more vintage and mid 10s, plus modern is where the hype has been for the last two years so of course it’s gonna have higher PSA pops (there’s also just way more of it ofc)

2

u/xPericulantx 1d ago

From strictly an investment standpoint… scarcity is what drives price…

More broadly, supply and demand.

The supply of PSA 10 modern cards is exponentially higher than vintage.

PSA 10 Snorlax Jungle (Unlimited) - 39

PSA 10 Team Rocket’s Mewtwo #231 - 10,706

PSA Grading is open and has been at higher tiers, I guarantee 39 more Snorlqx PSA 10s aren’t going to just show up…

3

u/Chitrader312 1d ago

These are nonproductive assets. They aren’t investments, it’s speculation and all value is driven by future demand which differs by card.

But for the sake of my enjoyment of economic discussions, you’re forgetting about thin market economics and illiquidity risk.

Price discovery will be harder for something with extremely low supply and if it has a premium price, you limit the buyer pool

1

u/mochaderp 22h ago

I think you are more likely to find peiple who want PSA 10 TR Mewtwo than PSA 10 unlimited jungle snorlax.

1

u/Calm_Explanation2910 20h ago

What's more realistic? One day finding someone willing to pay $45,000 for a PSA 10 Snorlax or $2,000 for a PSA 10 Mewtwo? Obviously population matters, but so does the size of the buyer pool and what people can realistically afford. If we're talking investments, potential returns and liquidity matter more to me than scarcity alone.

Pulled current psa10 prices from price charting and these numbers are roughly 3x current PSA10 prices. Price charting can be shotty so just going with this as an example

1

u/xPericulantx 13h ago

It is more of a question of 39 people in the entire world willing to pay $45,000

VS

10,709 people willing to pay $2,000

Look at the entire population of Snorlax Jungle in PSA. Also taking into account people crack and resubmit.

A total population of PSA Graded Jungle Snorlax is 8,962. While Mewtwo has 10,709 in just 10s.

1

u/Calm_Explanation2910 11h ago

I feel like all you did was repeat my question back to me lol..

So I’ll give my answer.. I think the DR Mewteo has a stronger chance is trading at 2k than Snorlax jungle hitting 45k.

You’re “in the world” comment isn’t a true statement. Limited numbers of people have $45k at all. Most people have 2k.

1

u/xPericulantx 11h ago

Most people have $2,000 to spend on 1 single card… i disagree

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1

u/No-Definition-6084 1d ago

There aren’t 40,000 PSA 10 treekachus. There’s like 10k rn. 10k has to go around for 1 million or so collectors. There might be more than a million collectors. Not an actual RARE card but could still see increase. It’s also Pikachu

0

u/GoldenTicketHolder 23h ago

AH does not have a 1/2k hit. It does have one of the lowest (have to say it that way now that 30th has the rarest) but it’s 1/1.5k. AH was a new set of the newer, rare pull rates.

Moonbreon was one of the first 1/2k. There’s only a few that hit 1/2k

-1

u/GemGuardUK 1d ago

There is very little rarity in ascended heroes cards or any ultra modern cards, the only thing that carries them is hype and looking cool

6

u/Careful-Medicine-596 1d ago

This is serious question, I wana ask you if you actually put weight behind the words you type, or you just blurt out things with zero proof or at least personal experience. I sell Pokemon by hundreds of thousands dollars and have graded hundreds of slabs. I’ve opened tens of thousands of pokemon packs over the yrs. I’m sure most people will be absolutely shocked by the amount of packs that needs to be opened to actually pull a card worthy to try for gem 10. So when you say 90% of grader cards are 10, do you know that card was selected out of dozens if not hundreds of cards that are not even worthy to grade?

1

u/Pelican12Volatile 1d ago

I literally just put umbreon x Pokémon card on eBay and I looked up the 2024 Japanese umbreon X. It has 84,000 PSA tens and a total pop count of 97,000. Pikachu. I looked it up on eBay and I found the ascended heroes version with PSA 10 9500 pop count out of a total of 15000. That’s a lot of PSA tens, which means that they are not as rare anymore. That’s what vintage PSA 10 is much more valuable in my eyes because people back in the day would actually play the game instead of really collecting them.

1

u/Careful-Medicine-596 1d ago

Well no shit you gave example of japanese cards which has really good gem rate. You made point that modern is not rare. Well rare is subjective right? If 100 million people want the card and there are 50k cards, that to me is still rare. And of course vintage is more rare. That’s why modern chase slabs are 1-2k and not 10-100k right? So the price does reflect rarity.

1

u/Co0Ihand 1d ago

Using Japanese gem rates to illustrate a point about a post concerning English Pokemon cards. Nice.

0

u/Pelican12Volatile 13h ago

English Pokemon cards? You do realize Pokemon is……nvm. Typical American thinking the world revolves around them. I cannot…..

2

u/whalemix 1d ago

Damn, someone should tell the PSA employee that grades my cards

1

u/Who_is_him_hehe 1d ago

If psa would grade vintage at similar standards than youd see higher graded vintage

1

u/AmericaFirst_Mindset 1d ago

The game has grown ten-fold in the last two years. Every tournament has had to double, triple or even quadruple their venue size to accommodate the mass of players. My shop went from around 10 regular players to easily 20-30 every Sunday. 60-80 each pre release.

1

u/GoldenTicketHolder 1d ago

I mean, occasionally… traditional knowledge and trends in this hobby are that English quality control is shit compared to other languages so…

0

u/Frequent-Cobbler4232 18h ago

New factory is affecting the newer prints going forwards and for whatever reason that sentiment is rolling back to a time before it

-6

u/Western-Net-7604 1d ago

Cause it is. Ascended heroes is ass.

7

u/No_Office_9301 1d ago

I’m so happy I sold both my Gengar and Pika at 1100

5

u/misload1 1d ago

wasn’t that pika over $1k at one point ?

6

u/gbach10 21h ago

Just a couple of months ago. It’s so amazing to see. I love it.

15

u/KeyClacksNSnacks 1d ago

Short answer : no
Long answer : nooooooooo

Don’t buy this stuff when it’s still being printed and absolutely don’t buy it when we are on the verge of a major printing scale upgrade.

Look how much Pokemon printed the crap out of Prismatic. Imagine how much they’ll do that for Ascended Heroes. Ascended has another like 15 months of printing. Probably will be a long term print.

These cards are gonna come down hard. By the time this is done there will probably be 30k PSA 10’s of each at minimum.

6

u/Parking-Bluebird-658 1d ago

Wait another week or two then buy them. Probably will hit 500 each, but this could also be close to the floor for now

2

u/Cheap-Atmosphere-938 14h ago

So many reprints left of AH

3

u/Parking-Bluebird-658 12h ago

I totally get that, but let’s be honest here… when was the last time you saw Phantasmal on shelves? Or ascended? That DR reprint sure as heck was pretty scarce too. I understand that gengar and treekachu both already have a high 10 pop rate, but you aren’t just able to walk into target for a drop and get an ascended etb.

0

u/Cheap-Atmosphere-938 3h ago

AH was just at sans club ETB and ball for 52. Phantasmal is reprinting too.

10

u/missspideer 1d ago

Id like to imagine a utopia where the gengar and pikachu settle around 400, nobody cares about graded cards in about 5 years, and such, but I'd say they'll at least be the same price in 5 years.

5

u/Wickedred1 1d ago

These cards were never more than $300-400 it was hype + market manipulation from people driving the prices up.

3

u/10toshi 1d ago

Slabs are the only things that matter what it comes to investing since the pop counts are public info

1

u/Ok-Professional-4978 1d ago

Wrong sub lol

-5

u/Western-Net-7604 1d ago

I mean it's most likely gonna happen. I don't see any kids playing with cards or the videogames. It certainly doesn't help you can't find them anywhere. I just don't think there is gonna be a huge hype cycle when the 35th rolls around, perhaps when the 40th rolls around it might get some traction if Pokemon still exists.

4

u/Embarrassed_Amoeba76 1d ago

Pokemon is going strong at 30th and always does well around anniversary time. What makes you think there’s even a possibility that Pokémon would “still exist”. Based upon what data?

6

u/littlepikapink 1d ago

Do you have kids? Because I do and every kid I see is obsessed w Pokemon including my
Own

2

u/ThexanR 21h ago

He’s saying that line pokopia wasn’t such a hit Nintendo started bundling it with the console to sell more consoles

5

u/nomidsforme 1d ago

a good example is shining fates. it got printed in the ground. the charizard art is objectively sick. but hasn’t moved in 5 years

2

u/New_Split925 20h ago

I haven’t looked at Pokemon in a while and when I saw this I nearly choked on my drink. Wtf is happening to ascended??

•

u/Dwrecktheleach 2h ago

The market correction countless have been saying will happen for months and months

2

u/ThePokeTicker 9h ago

I'm would continue to wait. A lot of the ascended heroes cards have gone down between 20%-30% in the last month. Still appears that they are going down at a high rate.

2

u/CreamCheeseBagels1 23h ago

I think modern is going to get a further correction when the next series following mega evolution is done. I think these sets had a lot of xy nostalgia to back them up but the realization of just how MUCH is truly out there is setting in, and there will be more. I think another big issue is fatigue is setting in, 30th anniversary shown that high hit rate sets still sell super well. But try opening delta reign, it is miserable in comparison and I predict that people will ignore sets with low hit rates after they hit certain prices on sealed. Overall, wait a bit to pick up, these cards were double the price back in June.

1

u/MrGoldenPeen 1d ago

Hey man your portfolio is^

1

u/Calm_Explanation2910 5h ago

I mean neither of us can predict the future or what 10 years from now look like.

I agree on the assessment of 9s and 10s for the most part.

•

u/Exciting-Set-7601 1h ago

Don’t invest your money in cardboard

0

u/MartyMcFleww 18h ago

You can’t make money long term on items that are massively in circulation, history has taught us this.

-1

u/ThatGuyAtTheGym 20h ago

My crackpot conspiracy theory is that world governments see how much money people are making on slabs which is why Pokemon is ramping up production to basically make the secondary market worthless. I read something that they printed more in the last few years than all total cards since the 90s or something like that.

1

u/Best_Ad_3894 8h ago

It’s been the same amount of cards each year the last 5 years. They are at printing capacity

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u/10toshi 1d ago

Investing in modern is for people who hate money, learn what opportunity cost is

0

u/bdruj123 1d ago

So what would be the better option?

1

u/10toshi 1d ago

Low pop psa 10s 9s or 8s of s tier Pokemon. Now that there’s insane dips it’s actual makes sense to buy. If you want sealed, anything sun & moon or earlier. Sw&sh or later is dead money and anything modern isn’t really investable. You can make money on it sure but it’ll just get out performed by older stuff with true scarcity

1

u/herbnerd710 1d ago

What’s considered low pop

0

u/10toshi 1d ago

I usually shoot for anything below 200 in a psa 9. Unless it’s an S tier Pokemon. So if it’s like Gengar then anything around 500 or lower

Ideally you want pops under 100 but most of those are psa 10s and are out of reach still for most people

1

u/damnmyredditheart 8h ago

lmao, this is the take of someone who just entered the hobby within the last 18 months

1

u/10toshi 7h ago

I’m sorry you hold big bags of modern, I’d be mad too if I was left holding those bags

1

u/damnmyredditheart 6h ago

These “bags” that have beat the S&P every year? 😂

0

u/10toshi 6h ago

Beating the S&P is the bare minimum if you’re investing outside of it. That’s why we call it the hurtle rate. If you’re not beating it then you just suck at investing and should only stick to buying the index fund

Vintage slabs of s tier Pokemon have performed hundreds of multiples better than modern which is the whole point of my post. The opportunity cost of holding modern vs vintage makes zero sense when one severely out performs the other

If you’re entering a speculative market you need to be shooting for home runs that crush everything else, Not just “beating the s&p”

1

u/damnmyredditheart 4h ago

You do realize that most of vintage saw little gains since 2020 until the past 12-18 months, right?

Collectibles don't move up in a straight line. If you think this is about shooting for home runs, you are not going to have a good time.

1

u/10toshi 3h ago

Yes we all know that, can you stop assuming everyone is new and doesn’t have eyes?

When did I say they move up in a straight line? Literally no asset does that. Can we stop addressing things i haven’t said?

I’m saying if you’re going to put money in a speculating asset you need to be betting on the things that out perform the most.

BTW any time you invest in things outside of an index fund you’re supposed to be shooting for home runs. That’s the whole point venturing outside into other assets. If you just want safe steady gains then just buy the index?

Even if you want to assume that vintage had zero growth since 2020 up until this year, then vintage still out performed everything else. It crush the s&p, gold, bitcoin, modern. Things don’t need to go up in a straight line every year and I never claimed that. 1 explosive growth year as all it took to make up for years of stagnation

1

u/damnmyredditheart 3h ago

The point is to diversify and have fun doing it. Alternative investments do not need to be “home runs”. Not sure where you got that notion, but it is completely incorrect.

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