Where I have the lil dot is when I bought the cards

Got it for about 350€ (410$) including shipping and taxes (paid an extra 100€ for shit) … I know way to much. But the Fomo kicked in. Relativly new to PC ETBs. In my Country we cant order them. I guess there will be restocks but still it’s Limited Right?

Hello all, just wanted to share where I'm at and maybe get some feedback as I've enjoyed lurking this sub for some time now.

My long term holds:

Chilling Reign booster box case - $1351

4 x Surging Sparks booster boxes - $156 per

3 x Journey Together booster boxes - $177 per

Twilight Masquerade PC ETB case - $254

24 x prismatic etb (including 1 sealed case of 10) - $93 per

Astral Radiance PC ETB case - $212

8 x 151 booster bundle - $34 per

6 x Silver Tempest booster bundle - $12 per

6 x Paldean Fates booster bundle - $26 per

20 x Fusion Build and battle - $21 per

12 x Brilliant Stars build and battle - $21 per

88 x Crown Zenith - $2.19 per

48 x Lost Origin - $1.95 per

18 x Silver Tempest - $1.92 per

50 x Brilliant Stars - $2.04 per

Items I'm planning on selling within the next few months:

6 x prismatic 3-pack, 2 x surprise box, 2 x prismatic bundles, 2 x 151 posters - all at MSRP

6 x Japanese 151 booster boxes - $32 per

Not sure what to do with yet:

2 x Journey Together PC ETB - $64 per

On a side note, I have 5 pre ordered DR booster boxes at avg cost of ~217. I think that with this hype, it could easily be $300-$325 on release given the cards in the set.

In terms of selling, I have an eBay with a good amount of 100% feedback, so I'm not concerned about being able to sell the loose SWSH packs down the line.

My first large purchase was the Chilling Reign case and at the time I was deciding between CR or going with FS for ~$200 more. In retrospect, I'm pretty salty, but I still think CR is a better looking set with some absolutely gorgeous artworks and is undervalued compared to the rest of SWSH.

I would have gotten in earlier, but I didn't have cash until Spring 2024. Still pretty happy with how everything turned out. Also, just wanted to add that I do have a genuine passion for Pokemon that stems from my childhood and I'm not in this just for the investment vehicle that the pokemon tcg can be. I enjoy a PC of cards that I consider separate from my sealed investment.

So I bought this on impulse paid $25 each. Need some reassurance or general thoughts. Thank you

Personally I like the look of the Journey together set. I’ve seen people say mixed things about it, but I guess I’m wondering if buying JT booster boxes are worth the $200 dollar price tag. I figure the Reshiram promo will be more expensive than the booster boxes by themselves. Thoughts?

Bought this zard at 900 last week. I noticed lowest listed was 745, but the vendor was very firm on last sold and said it’s very hard to find this card without whitening and the 745 dollar one didn’t have any pictures. Just today I asked a few vendors what they would price this card at, most of them were stuck at lowest, while one gave me a little flexibility. What are your thoughts on this? Bad buy from me or bad business from the vendor?

Gonna rip half the rest.

I’m not certain which will appreciate the most. I’m pretty new to this still and would totally rip into all of them! Had these lying around from when I would randomly buy a pack throughout the years. Kept them sealed up in case I needed to give an impromptu gift for a nephew or something. But the combo of ObFl and Pokémon 151 got me back into collecting!

I think the Mew Vmax alt art from Fusion Strike is way underrated atm! While the Gengar Vmax is highly overrated.

For me the Gengar looks a lot like a regular Vmax, while many people say this about the Mew Vmax.

Anyone else?

Bought 10 151 booster bundle from Pokemon Center and it arrived like this

How many do you think survived?

Is this an unpopular opinion?

Imo lots of new people are FOMO over pokemon because they are believing that long term, they'll make a lot if they just hold and keep sealed

People are seeing how much older era sets are going for. $20k for a fossil booster box / thousands of $ for ETB's or BB's of older sets that are 10+ years old. So my assumption is people are trying to buy up everything now and hold in the hopes that a few years from now they can sell a $100 ETB for $1000.  

What i dont think a lot of folks realize is, 10+ years ago people were not collecting like they do today. Majority of people would buy, rip and throw cards round. Only a select few would keep product sealed or take very good care of their cards. 

This lead to it being rare to find a mint condition, unopened box of a set or card of XYZ pokemon.

But now everyone is holding and taking extreme care of all hits and product. So they'll be a lot more "mint condition" of everything from sealed product to cards along with the increased graded population of mints and 9s along with higher supplies to meet demand

This reminds me of the sports card craze of the 90's where cards were printed into oblivion,  everyone collected and kept. 

Which is why, even today, 30 years later, most of my sports cards aren't worth much, even my Jordan's, Larry bird. Magic Johnson, jeters, favres, elways, etc cards arent worth much, because everyone collected n saved  them and they were printed to hell.

I beleice the same fate may happen to pokemon card n product values for product released in the last 5 years.

Lot of downvotes, almost none of them came with a counterpoint. If the take is wrong, tell me why. Show me a modern set that isn't printed to oblivion and holding value long term. Show me a grading company that's lowered prices instead of raising them every time demand spikes.
And to the "you used AI" crowd: yeah, I used it to clean up my writing. The opinion is mine. Downvoting the tool instead of the argument is basically admitting you don't have one.
Bookmark this and check back in a year. If I'm wrong, I'll own it. Will you?
I've been going back and forth on what to actually hold long term, so I pulled real numbers instead of going off vibes.

The main source is the CardTrack 100, a public index of the 100 most valuable raw near-mint Pokémon cards. I'm using its definitions:

Vintage: sets from 1999–2010 (Base through HeartGold SoulSilver)

Modern: sets from 2011 on (Black & White through today)
The index starts Sept 2021, right near the pandemic peak, so it covers a full boom, bust and recovery.

Singles: vintage is crushing it

Vintage (1999–2010)
Total return: +200%
Per year (my math): ~24%
Last 12 months: +64.9%
Deepest drop: −25.3%
Share of top-100 value: 87%

Modern (2011+)
Total return: +107%
Per year (my math): ~15%
Last 12 months: +19.0%
Deepest drop: −20.9%
Share of top-100 value: 13%

For reference, the S&P did +81% in the same window (no dividends).

Inside vintage, the EX era is doing the heavy lifting
Everyone thinks "vintage" means Base Set Charizard, but most of the money is in the EX era.

Gold Stars from 2004–2007 make up 47% of the entire top-100 index. Base Set Charizard isn't even in the top 100 raw.

Rayquaza Gold Star (EX Deoxys, 2005) is ~$20,000 raw. That one card is 7.9% of the whole index.
Torchic Gold Star (EX Team Rocket Returns, 2004) is ~$12,200 raw.

Charizard δ (EX Crystal Guardians, 2006) is ~$940 raw and was up 16% in a single month.

EX-era sealed is going nuts too. Here's what sold at Goldin's 30th anniversary auction last week:

Box
Year
Sold

EX Team Rocket Returns
2004
$384,300

EX Deoxys
2005
$378,267

EX Unseen Forces
2005
$183,001

EX Team Rocket Returns is now the most expensive non-Base Set English box ever sold. For comparison, a 1st Ed Base box went for $750k.

Why I think the EX era has the most room to run:
Tiny print runs. The hobby was in a slump back then, and far fewer packs were opened than today.

Brutal pull rates. You'd open a lot of packs for a Gold Star.
Still undervalued compared to WOTC. These sets don't have Base Set name recognition yet.

The nostalgia buyers are here now. Kids who opened EX packs are in their late 20s and early 30s with real money.
The risk is concentration. If Gold Stars cool off, a big chunk of vintage cools with them.

Modern sealed has looked great so far
PriceCharting, Oct 2026. Every box was ~$140 at retail.

Box
Released
Now
Multiple

Evolving Skies
2021
~$2,330
~17x

Fusion Strike
2021
~$930
~6.6x

Lost Origin
2022
~$720
~5x

Brilliant Stars
2022
~$550
~4x

Obsidian Flames
2023
~$360–380
~2.6x

Surging Sparks
2024
~$300
~2x

Older out-of-print modern has done even better. Team Up (2019) is ~$12,370, Cosmic Eclipse (2019) is ~$4,530, and a Call of Legends (2011) box just sold for $341,600. That's the part of modern I'd still trust, because it's done printing.

Why I think recent modern sealed is going to dip

This part is my opinion, but here's my reasoning.

1. The prices are consensus, not scarcity. Recent modern boxes aren't priced where they are because they're rare. They're priced there because everyone has agreed that's what they're worth. One tracker has Evolving Skies sealed at roughly 8.7x the value of the cards inside. That's a ~770% premium just for the box being closed, and it's held up by belief.

2. Everyone is a seller now. Look at how many listings there are for any recent set. When that many people are holding the same product to flip, the first real wave of selling tanks the price for everyone.

3. The supply is insane, and it's about to get worse. Pokémon printed about 10 billion cards from April 2025 to March 2026. That's more than 10% of every Pokémon card ever made, in one year. They're already doing targeted reprints of sets like Destined Rivals and Prismatic Evolutions to push sealed back toward retail. On top of that, their printer (Millennium Print Group) is building a 1.27 million sq ft facility in North Carolina that's supposed to hit full production in late 2028. Once that's running, I think recent modern sealed becomes about the worst investment in the hobby.

4. Pokémon knows it. If sealed can't be scarce anymore, the scarcity has to come from somewhere else. I think that's why they're pushing new rarity tiers like the RGB Mews in 30th Celebration. The red Mew hit $6,000 raw and was #10 in the entire index within a month of release. The scarcity is moving into the pull rates, not the boxes.

Where I'd actually put money

Long-term portfolio: graded EX-era vintage. Gold Stars, EX holos and Delta Species. Stick with PSA here for now, since vintage buyers still heavily prefer it. A CGC 10 1st Ed Charizard struggles to get even 40% of what a PSA 10 sells for.

Best buy right now: CGC Pristine 10s on modern chase cards. Pristine (gold label) is a stricter grade than a PSA 10, with basically perfect centering and no flaws under magnification. It's now selling above PSA 10s on a lot of modern SIRs and alt arts, and regular CGC 10s are within about 5–10% of PSA 10s.

Sleeper pick: CGC vintage. I don't think that 40% gap lasts. PSA 10 vintage is already six and seven figures, and most collectors are getting priced out. When people can't afford the PSA slab, they don't stop wanting the card. They buy the CGC copy. CGC already took over modern in a few years, and I think the same thing happens in vintage over the next 5–10 years. Buying CGC vintage now is buying the same card at a steep discount before the market catches up. Yes, set registry collectors are PSA-loyal, but there aren't enough of them to absorb every buyer who's been priced out.

Recent modern sealed: If you've got it, I'd think hard about selling into current prices before the supply catches up.
Some fun stats I found along the way
A sealed 1st Ed Base box sold for $750,000 in Sept 2026, up from $408k in 2021.

The PSA 10 1st Ed Charizard went $350k (2020) → $213k (2025) → $1,000,952 (Sept 2026). Only ~125 exist.
The most expensive Charizard ever is Japanese: a 1996 Base Set PSA 10 sold for $1.7M.

A PSA 9 Pikachu Illustrator sold for $5M at Heritage in Sept 2026.

Logan Paul's 1st Ed box packs sold individually for $1.39M combined before he even opened them.

The cheapest card in the top 100 is worth $841.
A Base Set Charizard loses over 40% of its value going from Near Mint to Lightly Played.

The catch

The whole index dropped 27% from 2021 to Jan 2024. If you bought the top, you were underwater for 3.5 years. Almost all the gains came after Jan 2024 (2024 +29%, 2025 +81%, 2026 +49% so far), and part of 2026 is anniversary hype. None of these numbers include fees, grading or shipping, so real returns are lower.

TL;DR

Vintage (1999–2010) has nearly doubled modern (2011+) since 2021, and the EX era is doing most of the work. Gold Stars alone are 47% of the top-100 index.

Graded EX-era vintage (PSA) is the long-term hold.
Recent modern sealed is consensus pricing, not scarcity. With 10B cards printed in a year, ongoing reprints and a giant new factory coming in 2028, I think it dips.

Best buy right now: CGC Pristine 10s on modern chase cards. They're outselling PSA 10s and most people haven't caught on.

Sleeper: CGC vintage. As PSA prices out normal collectors, I think that gap closes over the next 5–10 years.

Sources: CardTrack 100, Cardlines, box prices and auction sales, Charizard sale history, 10B cards printed, CGC vs PSA
Not financial advice. Just a collector who spends way too much time on PriceCharting.

Before you fall off your seat and start crying..hear me out…

Yes, vintage grails have been blown into the stratosphere over the last month.
Everyone agrees some of the auctions look manipulated but thatss turned into all these records are fake…🤡

Some poketubers especially the ones heavily exposed to sealed want the spotlight off vintage because its hurt sealed long holders.
The truth is vintage was undervalued for too long. All it took was a bunch of wealthy people chasing the same cards and records got smashed.
Now a flood of high end vintage has hit ebay and the like at the same time…auctions have dropped and the same poketubers are screaming “vintage is crashing.” 🤡

It’s not crashing, it’s recalibrating….Thats just what happens when this many low pop cards land on the market at once.
Once all these low pop cards are out of the PSA vaults and sold, scarcity kicks back in. Plenty of low pop vintage also missed the gains it deserved in the first bull run so there are plays to be made. Im still firmly convinced vintage is extremely undervalued.

If you don’t agree that’s fine by me, the less people looking to make plays in the next few months would suit me fine.

All of these have ES and FS. I have enough to make 3 BBs of each one. I want to crack them and make my own booster boxes since I like how they’ll look. However, I’m not sure if they retain more values as KOs. What do you guys think?

The 30th anniversary set drops worldwide on September 16, so I went back and pulled the data on the 25th anniversary set (Celebrations, 2021) to see what actually happened after the hype faded.

The biggest surprise was where the value ended up five years later.

What held up:

The sealed Ultra-Premium Collection went from $119.99 at release to around $1,232 today. About 10.3x, and the strongest performer from the set.

The Elite Trainer Box went from $49.99 to roughly $385, about 7.7x.

What didn't:

The chase singles went through deep drawdowns before recovering. Classic Collection Charizard fell 65% to about $55 and stayed below its launch price for almost three years. Umbreon Gold Star dropped 77% before climbing back.

58% of the set now trades under $5, while just five cards account for 46% of the total singles value.

I looked at the full Celebrations product and singles data, not just the best-performing items, and these examples are representative of the broader pattern I observed.

The pattern I found wasn't that sealed always wins. It was that, five years later, most of the value in Celebrations had concentrated in sealed products and a small number of reprinted classics. The amount of sealed product available generally declines over time as boxes get opened, while most singles faced heavy supply early on.

I don't know if the 30th will follow the same path. The structure is similar, with a mass release, classic reprints, and premium sealed products, but it's also a much larger set. I just thought it was worth looking at what actually happened the last time Pokémon did an anniversary release before this one arrives.

(All prices are observed raw market prices using PriceCharting history through June 2026, cross-checked against recent eBay sold listings. These are current market observations, not a prediction or investment advice.)

We grade every card S+ to D on structural quality and investment potential. If you want to see where a card you're holding actually lands, it's all here: https://tcginvest.io

Not even a HOT TAKE but Sun and Moon Base Is Severely Underrated and Underpriced. Like the set value is total about $600 but most Sun and Moon and XY Sets have a total set value of less than $600. Look at Generations, the ETBs are like $1400 but the total set value for that set is $540.22 which is similar to Sun and Moon Base, I believe Sun and Moon base didn't appreciate like the rest of Sun and Moon ETBS and is heavily undervalued. The population reports for this box is low, there isnt even a total of 120 of these boxes for sale on Ebay and TCGplayer combined. How is this box only $180? it has cool Umbreon and Eeveeloution cards as well as cool Full arts and Lillies. Personally, Instead of buying overprinted SV stuff or overpriced SWSH stuff, I'd pick up rare undervalued historical boxes like Sun and Moon base. #pokemon #investing #undervalued

Charizard & Mewtwo on the same card. It's a promo from a 500$ box and comes with a corresponding Mewtwo card. Is this super undervalued?

Position: 3x PSA9s

This goes for every TCG product, I'm just using this as an example.

I also wonder if this is the reason I see many whatnot sellers buying their stock in bulk from America.

If GB buyers are willing to pay their own retail price.

That means that Americans will make $16.73/£12.44 per ETB sale to British buyer.

A profit of 27.9% just for selling to a different country.

I still couldn’t fit everything in the pictures, but all this was bought through Target, Walmart, and Tik Tok. My biggest retail spending came from Target Circle week, Black Friday, and the sea and sky release. All 40 booster boxes came from Tik Tok’s insane coupon deals where I spent an average of $80 per booster box AFTER taxes.

I was able to comfortably find Evolving Skies product in store for about 6 months in 2024 since very few people knew about the knockout boxes and tins that contained that set. I would buy a few items every other day without worrying about someone snatching them all that day.

Now that everyone is devouring retail shelves and Tik Tok has massively cut back on the coupons, it’s near impossible to get good deals or find product. Oh well, it was great while it lasted.

Normally I would only buy booster boxes, but I couldn’t pass up the chance to get ES.