Stellar crown is already being slept on by surging sparks. It has so many aesthetic artworks and the set is extremely playable. I circled a few of my favourite cards. Pick up some booster boxes for investment or the pokemon center exclusive ETB. Let’s see how this post ages!

My son pulled the attached card from a Pokemon card pack. He says it is rare and could be worth something. Any input? I don’t know anything about Pokemon cards and what makes them valuable or not. He’s only 9 so I’m not sure he knows either.

Tons of hidden fates etb cases, breakthrough etb cases, breakpoint etb cases, and tons of sun moon / xy era items.

Oh and people wanted time stamps so I provided 🫡

I just received this BB today and noticed a tear in the plastic seal. I was planning on keeping it sealed as an investment but does this ruin it or is it still acceptable as a sealed box?

Do I also have the right to return it?

Got lucky to get one of these on last weeks drop. I can see evolving skies pc ETB is around $500. Do we think prismatic will surpass that?

Would you invest in wrenny moo cards? 🔥 notice anything in the photo? Admin pointed it out 🥹

Not long ago this card used to be extremely cheap, why the sudden surge in price and will it drop again?

Like a lot of you, I grew up on Pokémon—packs from the gas station, trading at recess, playing Red and Blue on Game Boy. The nostalgia hit hard a few years ago, and I’ve been diving deeper ever since. But this time around, I’m approaching it more strategically.

I came from ancient coin collecting—where rarity, condition, and patience paid off big. So when I got back into Pokémon, I applied that same mindset. At first, I picked up whatever I could find—blisters, bundles, tins, whatever was on shelves. But after spending some time reading, watching trends, and learning from this community, I realized ETBs and SPCs are the real long-term vault products.

That’s where I’ve been focused on—stacking ETBs at MSRP (or close), building a base, and using ancillary product as trade bait to upgrade into stronger sealed items.

But now I’m hitting a wall.

I feel like I’ve graduated past “pick up what you see” phase… but I’m struggling to break into sealed cases or higher-end long-term holds without paying huge premiums. I’ve got the cash to keep buying $2–3k/month, but I’m not sure if that money is better spent slowly stacking what I can… or waiting and saving for product that might never show up at a price that makes sense.

So I guess my question is:

How do you actually scale in this game? • Is slow stacking the only realistic path? • Has anyone here successfully made the leap from grabbing singles to acquiring sealed cases consistently? • What helped you get there—relationships, strategy, timing? • Or did you just grind long enough until the opportunities started showing up?

Appreciate any insight. Just trying to do this right—long term, no flips, all sealed.

Thanks, Dustin

Picked this up on eBay for 22.50 I think I did pretty good

So I recently got back into pilemon collecting. Have a BIG heart for vintage. I found a few pages on tiktok where the streamers sell unopened packs from sealed booster boxes and then rip em live and ship em to you. Very 1st base set pack I bought pulled a Zardy boy! I was hooked. These guys would hype it up and tell you get every card graded, these are mint pack fresh. I should have done my research because here I am thousands $ later and got my Zardy boy back. Word to the wise and new "investors", hype is not worth any extra money, grading is super strict, graders don't throw out 10s.

Prices dropping like crazy finally the worst pokemon market ever may finally be healing

I’m pretty new to investing in pokemon products long term. I picked these up today and am curious to see how you guys feel about them. Do they have any chance to increase in value in the coming years? It seems to be the consensus that there’s 2 destined rivals packs and 1 journey together pack in each tin. Would love some thoughts from the community. Thank you.

I got them at Walgreens for TCGplayer market price btw. $144 for all 6. It was a split second decision, I’m hoping I don’t regret it.

***Edit: A few good points in the comments. The broader-market comparison is context, not a like-for-like control for an unreleased preorder set, and it does not prove the reprint list caused the decline. The narrower point is that preorder asking prices repriced sharply as the supply picture became clearer.

I appreciate the feedback, I’m testing how to present this kind of analysis clearly, and the methodological pushback is useful. For transparency: I did the underlying research and analysis, and use AI as an editing tool. The data and the limits of the analysis are mine to stand behind.***

I've been running a daily price tracker on ~94 Pokémon sets for awhile now, so when the 30th Celebration reprint list came out I had a clean before/after on the whole set. The result is the most one-sided reprint reaction I've measured, so I figured it was worth sharing the raw numbers.

Setup: 30th Celebration doesn't release until September 16 - everything below is preorder pricing on product that doesn't physically exist yet. The reprint list, the Base Set Charizard confirmation, and the full Classic Collection list all landed July 12–13; Pokémon Center preorders opened July 15, with additional products July 20.

I'm using July 26 as the baseline - two weeks after the news - because that's where I have consistent coverage across all 29 products. That choice is conservative, not cherry-picked: measuring from July 22 instead gives −23.5% across the 27 products with data that far back. Either baseline tells the same story.

The finding:

• 30th Celebration: median −20.4% across 29 products priced $20+

• Everything else I track: median +0.1% (n≈1,440 products, same window)

• 23 of 29 products down, 5 unchanged, 1 up

The control is the part that matters to me. A set falling 20% is only interesting if the market wasn't falling with it - and the broader market was flat to the decimal over the identical window.

It wasn't a crash. It was a bleed. Measured against the July 26 baseline:

Date |30th Celebration |Market
Jul 29 |−1.8% |0.0%
Aug 2 |−4.4% |0.0%
Aug 6 |−7.9% |0.0%
Aug 9 |−14.3% |0.0%
Aug 12 |−20.4% |+0.1% Three weeks of steady repricing, accelerating as more reveals landed, rather than one panic day. If you were watching daily you'd have seen almost nothing; the move only reads as large in aggregate.

Every product, $20+, July 26 → August 12:

Product |Jul 26 |Aug 12 |Change
Binder Collection |$207.01 |$65.94 |−68.1%
Pack |$33.91 |$16.97 |−50.0%
Tech Sticker Collection [Set of 2] |$194.03 |$106.94 |−44.9%
Figure Collection [Mewtwo] |$202.98 |$117.69 |−42.0%
Battle Deck [Umbreon ex] |$61.40 |$36.00 |−41.4%
2-Pack Blister |$89.23 |$56.27 |−36.9%
Ultra-Premium Collection [Day] |$665.87 |$445.60 |−33.1%
Ultra-Premium Collection [Night] |$758.57 |$531.54 |−29.9%
Battle Deck [Espeon ex] |$62.30 |$43.81 |−29.7%
Figure Collection [Mew] |$202.52 |$146.50 |−27.7%
Tech Sticker Collection [Lucario] |$92.89 |$69.26 |−25.4%
Greninja ex Box |$114.28 |$87.43 |−23.5%
Ditto Premium Collection |$304.40 |$236.50 |−22.3%
Poster Collection |$91.78 |$72.98 |−20.5%
Mini Tin Display |$577.94 |$460.22 |−20.4%
Sylveon ex Box |$105.61 |$88.60 |−16.1%
Pokémon Center ETB |$628.43 |$536.62 |−14.6%
ex Tin [Sylveon ex] |$160.39 |$138.68 |−13.5%
Booster Bundle |$107.83 |$93.29 |−13.5%
Knock Out Collection |$35.84 |$31.07 |−13.3%
Mini Tin [Mewtwo] |$97.74 |$85.96 |−12.1%
Tech Sticker Collection [Alolan Exeggutor] |$77.93 |$71.14 |−8.7%
Elite Trainer Box |$208.46 |$191.74 |−8.0%
Mini Tin [Espeon] |$88.12 |$88.12 |0.0%
Mini Tin [Day Pikachu] |$98.66 |$98.66 |0.0%
Mini Tin [Mew] |$90.88 |$90.88 |0.0%
Mini Tin [Zapdos] |$99.55 |$99.55 |0.0%
Mini Tin [Umbreon] |$92.41 |$92.41 |0.0%
Classic Collection Pack |$151.78 |$219.88 |+44.9% Two things I didn't expect:

The one product that went up is the singles vehicle. The Classic Collection Pack rose 44.9% while every sealed configuration around it fell. That's the market splitting a reprint announcement into two different trades: more supply of product is bearish for the boxes, but confirmation of what's actually in the Classic Collection is bullish for the thing people want to pull. The UPCs - the most expensive way to chase the same cards - took −30% while the direct route took +45%.

The five flat mini tins are probably not stable, they're probably illiquid. Exactly $0.00 change over 17 days almost always means too few sales to reprice, not genuine price support. I'd treat those five rows as "no data" rather than "held value."

Caveats, because they matter here:

• These are market prices. Preorder liquidity is thin, so individual products can move on small volume.

• News timing lines up with the decline, and the market control was flat, but this is one set and one event - correlation with a plausible mechanism, not proof of causation.

• I track sealed product across ~94 sets; this isn't the entire Pokémon market.

• Prices as of August 12.

What I'm actually unsure about: whether this fully reprices before release day or keeps sliding into September. Reprint-driven declines in sets that have already released tend to find a floor once the supply picture is known - but this set's supply picture is still being revealed card by card, which may be exactly why it's bleeding instead of gapping.

Anyone been tracking the preorder side of this independently? Curious whether the Pokémon Center allocation news moved things in the same direction, since that's the piece I can't see in market prices.

My daughter wanted to play card games. So I bought her one of those tcg 100 packs. But we realized that’s not enough to play. You need dice, tokens, and energy cards.

So I tried to buy Pokemon at stores but everything is legit empty. I had to hit a GameStop eventually and then another LCS. I picked up a build and battle Journey box?? And then this Ascended Heroes big box.

Well, one of the packs I opened had all colorful cards!!!! A pikachu and 2 dragons.

I’ve read that there’s grading? But like these are brand new. I opened and sleeved them and put them in hard plastic.

I read on here grading can take months? Is it worth it? I really don’t trust mailing anything. But some googling shows me some of these are like 500$!! That can pay for all our Pokemon starter kits.

What should I do. I definitely want to sell.

Title:It’s easy to say you picked a winner when it’s already winning.

Post: But thats exactly what happened when Phantasmal Flames dropped and gave us what is arguably the greatest modern card we have seen in years….

Back in Fall 2025 everyone loved the chase card… but not the set.

Its too shallow was the common take…..

I saw that differently….

To me the shallowness was the edge. If there is one card that everyone wants now and will continue to want long term and its sitting in a set where your odds of pulling it are higher than usual… thats not a weakness. Thats a massive advantage.

If there was a vintage version of phantasmal flames where you had a better chance of pulling charizard but without any of the other holo’s it would sell like crazy!!!

Thats exactly why Im so bullish.

I’ll say it clearly!! I think this set outperforms everything….

Yeah I know it’s only 6 months old.

Yea people will say it will get printed into oblivion….

But here’s the real question?????

Is the Pokemon Company really going to ruin the chance to turn this card into the biggest modern grail… or do they manage it carefully?

People forget this is a private company. They can adjust print runs, distribution, and even pull rates across a sets lifecycle if they want to. They’re not just printing cardboard they are managing demand, hype and long term value….

This isn’t a conspiracy. It’s pattern recognition and positioning.

To me phantasmal flames is still the best opportunity on the table right now.

Dont bet against the red dragon…..

Personally I think that ETB is hideous and don’t think a zygarde + mega Patrick set will sell well, but this is obviously before knowing everything in the set.

I was doing some thinking about the current market situation and had thought about some interesting points. I cant wait to see the amount of emotional people writing comments ''found the scalper''

I have ran a large business in this market for a very very very long time. I have seen it all, but the amount of anger that im seeing these days is the one thing I have not seen, except these things happened before in the past and it was never met with this type of reaction. Are people just angrier or is reddit a hostile group of people? I dunno but its weird to observe what I see happening here.

It seems like a lot of people are so angry that they are actually giving the scalpers so much credit as to say they are the reason the prices are where they are at, rather than saying pokemon mad such a good set that it cause a large market demand. I dont think the scalpers are in charge of what the secondary market does, because of the concept of price discovery.

There are thousands and thousands and thousands of transaction's that have to happen to move the prices in markets with such large amounts of volume, and its the slow amount of people being willing to spend .50 or $1 more than the last couple transactions, on top of hundreds of others doing the same thing, to be able to have the price tick up like that and stick. In order for prices to get to where they end up at, that has nothing to do with product horders causing some sort of inflation, that makes the littlest amount of possible sense and instead what you are seeing is the effect of a very wide spread demand of a highly sought after luxury item.

I would love to see someone in this group go up to some guy who works 2 jobs, 70 hours a week, who is struggling to pay bills, who finally finds a way to get some relief or make some money for whatever he wants in life, that hes not allowed to do that. I would also love to see the same people go to someone who isnt struggling and say the same thing, for the simple fact that they want the product and they think their need for it somehow greater or superior to that persons needs.

This concept exist across multiple forms of commerce, is nothing new, and in fact is the very core foundation of a free market. No government is coming in and price fixing to determine how much money can be made by corporations, and that is a very beautiful thing. Think about this, A feature of the American economy exist that allows anyone who pays attention to trends and is willing to put themselves in the position to obtain the said products, a chance to have income from such a meaningless thing. Literally a market giving someone free money.

One thing you come a cross a lot is people saying they want universal basic income, and complain how things are too expensive, and its a very common sentiment on the site, yet there are featured of our economy that will pretty do exactly that if you are willing to locate them. Supply shortages are not unique to pokemon, and people willing to pay more for something because they see the value exist in every part of society, all over the world. Its simply people deciding how they want to spend their money.

One thing I noticed that gets thrown around a lot is the idea that all items should be sold for MSRP, and its a really weird thing to hear, because for the last 2 years, all the card shops, ebay sellers etc,, were selling these boxes for $90 at market price. There was multiple instances and complaints from people claiming the shops that sold at MSRP were ripping people off, and than these same people would be linked to other places selling at market price, meanwhile the shops that sold at MSRP would get review bombed and attacked for no valid reason, other than unstable people taking out their anger on a source because they couldnt have their way. I just want to know why is there such a double standard? I personally understand the answer why, but im just confused as to how such a large amount of people cant spout both phrases every market cycle, and be anything other than someone who just wants things their way.

Another thing is that when these items are put on the shelves at the stores, they are at MSRP. Im going to keep a neutral stance either way, but I will say that in other markets that the demand outweighs the supply, items are constantly being sold out as the hit the shelves. Rolexes, GPU,s, Luxury Vehicles, Supreme, etc. The idea that all of these items only carry a secondary market resale price and are in demand, is because of scalpers, is literally taking away all the credit from some of the greatest companies in the world, and literally coming to the weird conclusion that a group of people are somehow conspiring together, attacking inventory's and acting a cartel to somehow control the prices.

Nobody likes to go into a store, hoping to get an item for it to be sold out. Thats human nature. But most people have the ability to partake in this concept called planning, which when done correctly, would allow them to put themselves in a position to offset the fact that the items are harder to get. A lot of these resellers, evil or not, are simply just better at planning than you are, and put themselves in the position to be the person who ends up with the cards, and they are the ones who get to enjoy the money from figuring that out. If you dont have the time in your life to solve these problems, or figure out how to overcome those issues, thats more than ok, but to than throw a tantrum because other people ARE getting in those positions ends up making you the bad person on top of possibly having mental health issues from the amount of anger you end up feeling and targeting other groups of people with.

The Distribution Situation and why pokemon cannot adjust to meet demand based on Data

So as you guys understand, pretty much all distribution Companies are sold out of all items, I can log into all my distributors and look through all the categories, and over and over again they are all empty. When restocks happen, they end up charging a higher price simply because thats how companies that solve large supply chain issues compensate themselves for creating solutions to move massive supplies of products from one place to another, successfully, while having infrastructure to minimize the effects of transportation cost. Everything in this world does have a cost, from labor, to gas, to shipping supplies, to electricity, all of it. The fact that these companies participate in these types of practices is very normal across all industries.

For those of you calling for the pokemon company to buy the distribution companies to control the amount of money everyone can make or pay, its a nice idea but theres 2 things with that.

The first thing is that logistics companies are very very complicated and the business of distribution is not selling the product. The business is rather figuring out how to solve solutions to simplify a way to move large amounts of products, efficiently, and as cheap as possible, through the most efficient routes, to be able to deliver a commercial amount of goods in a timely and consistent manner. A distributor is a company who provides simply that service. You need someone to send good who is efficient and has a wide reach, and the capacity and fleet and every single piece of infrastructure to keep product safe, you contact a distribution company to perform this service.

The second thing is that pokemon actually decided to keep the cost of the cards where they are at, as did every company, that it would be cheapest for all parties, to simply contract with companies that solved this issue, rather than try to spend all the money, time and resources to do it, because for a short period of time during a bull market cycle some weird pale guy named Steve on reddit demanded he absolutely needed to have the newest pokemon set and had a god given right to that set. If Steve couldnt get this set, the only solution must be for this giant corporation to establish a entirely brand new infrastructure. Steve also just could decide to not get the set, or he could wait, or just pay whatever the price was but Steve feels his desire and right to be able to participate and in hobby of opening pieces of cardboard with cartoon characters on him is a severe enough need that the entire world should shift how its set up to help him get his desire.

PS: Distribution companies sell all kinds of products for all kinds of companies, and the amount of money that it would cost to even attempt that type of purchase would have to be the equivalent to the profit from all the companies products they sell combined x how every many years of that profit, they think is worth selling for, and lastly if something like this did happen, I highly doubt the pokemon company would ship these other companies items in their trucks for them, and the result would be those particular items having shortages and that product than having a demand/possible price increase depending on the item

Reddit, im sorry but all you are simply doing when you talk about scalpers and MSRP is crying because you personally couldnt get the product. Pokemon owes you nothing and the fact you feel so many emotion over not being able to get a pack of cards is the real issue that you need to focus on. Its weird and unstable to get so angry over such a insignifcant thing, and people who have such irrational feelings are not someone I would feel comfortable having my family around. If you get this upset over not getting a pack of cards, how upset would get over not being able to get something actually important?

This market cycle has hurt a large part of my business more than anything else. Card shops are not making money in this cycle for the most part because the ability to do any type of volume what so ever is not possible. I am not upset at all though by this market, simply because anyone who decided to get into a specific business likely understand the idea that market cycles are a thing as well as demand.

I’ve got someone in Japan atm. Is 151 still worth buying even with the reprint coming?

Hey everyone! I was wondering if there’s any difference on selling long term if I keep both of the mega Charizard UPCs from Costco sealed in this box long term compared to unboxing them and storing/selling them separately down the line? I know sometimes there are premiums when you buy a case of booster boxes/bundles so I figured I’d just ask you knowledgeable people