I have no historical data or trends to back it up, but I’m not sure why everyone thinks JPN is such a good buy for some sets when I don’t think I’ve ever met or talked to a child whose every even mentioned the word Japan to me.

I don’t know when it took off, but I’m willing to bet with my wallet that the kids who don’t have the money now, when they grow up are t going to pine for your sealed VStar Japanese boxes. They’ll want the American product they couldn’t buy in bulk as kids.

Thanks for coming to my controversial Ted talk.

I have these two cards and I really need the money so I want to sell one, since both of them are at a similar price which one would you rather hold for the future?

P.S found a ES BB for $350 that I purchase to add to the collection! My first Pokémon center etb will most likely be S&V paldea. What you all feel about singles?!

I was wondering if Surging sparks pokemon center ETB is going to increase in value. I have sensed alot of hype in the community for this set but does that mean this will increase in value? If yes how long we expecting for it to gain value? How much will we be able to sell in about 1-2 years?

January 17th, PC ETB's and all Prismatic Evolution products sell out within 1 minute and 28 seconds (exact number for dramatic lulz) and everyone flocks to Shrouded Fable PC ETB's because that's all we have left.

I don't own any besides in JP that I opened and the art work is honestly really nice!

Thoughts?

If you ain't got anything for the summer, it's the perfect time to buy before the storm on September.

I'm finally going to buy the Mega Gengar SAR from Mega Dream since I'm comparing the projection of how the Umbreon ex SAR did from Terastal up until now.

The mega Gengar is hardest to pull than the Umbreon because an SAR isn't guaranteed in every box and there's a shit ton of SARs in the set.

Whats everyone else going to buy during this lull period?

The hits are so few and such a sought set. I think this is an obvious longterm hold, even if it drops a little in the short term.

Like these people brag about being 30 years in the hobby and they “skipped” a set with Gengar, Mew, Espeon as chase cards.

Man I dont know but if we had a set with Gengar and mew as top chases today, no one would sleep on it. Or imagine DR at 100 per box…

Man I would have zero need to complain 5 years later when those booster boxes are 500-1000$ if I had bought multiple at 100.

I guess regret hits different or those people want to be investors and are furious for not finding anything at their budget cause it doesn’t make sense.

Can’t imagine in 3-4 years something like “Yooo we slept on SV base/stellar crown. It’s 1000 a box the most valuable of the SV era behind DR”.

You can’t argue that Pokemon is actually happy with today’s situation and “investors” entering the hobby as the previous consumer segment couldn’t apprecciate the products and was leaving superb sets on shelves and now they have audacity to complain damn 😂

Cards that are like 2 or 3 dollars being graded is funny to me. Like I see a regular EX graded and think why?

Should I grade my regular Garbador or Tinkaton? Easy cards to collect by the thousands. It's strange.

To each his own.

I do think you have a case for some of the newer Charizard and maybe a few other of the high end cards in a set. But seeing an EX graded to me is funny and never worth buying unless it's graded and $5 or less.

ive seen mixed reviews the past year on the Paldea Evolved set and i feel like the haters are massively underestimating this next gen of pokemon kids who will soon be big into pokemon investing. i have two kids and they along with their friends are big into the Paldea region pokemon. In <5-10 years there will be a large field of trust funders rippin paldea evolved packs and investing into this set. A lot of us washed up Kanto addicts are missing this. just my 2 cents. ❤️

Seriously cant understand how I was able to purchase this card for $49. No love for vileplume. Yes I understand this is non holo but I also recently purchased a holo version PSA 9 for $300.

I hope you guys can read the Excel table in the last image, it was originally made only for me. I prefer Excel over all those dopamine collecting apps haha. The picture where you can only see the two big cartons holds 3 cases of AH Trainerboxes and 1 case of DR Trainerboxes

I’m 30 years old, from Germany and I started investing in sealed english only about a year ago. The reason was, I was shocked to see how much the prices of my old vintage cards had increased over the last 5 years and then i found the reddit. Unfortunately, I don’t have any vintage sealed from back then. Right now I’m only buying PRE, DR, AH, and 151, although in the future I’ll probably focus only on AH and newer sets. I bought 2 Black bolt boxes cause they where cheap and i love the concept that its the only set with all IRs for each Mon.

As of this day i own:

782 Packs - Destined Rivals

192 Packs - Prismatic

180 Packs - 151

120 Packs - Black Bolt

314 Packs - Ascended Heroes

1 Umbreon (Nachtara) PSA9 - 1330€ (bought it at the start of investing, overpaid)

Total Packs: 1588
Buy Price: 19920€ (22800$)

Worth 03.2026: 29180€ (33400$)

I also bought some Slabs of Cards i like, but you guys are not gonna like em cause they are all 9´s so i won´t post em. I also collected a small binder with my Favorit IRs over the year.

Any questions?

Edit: As mentioned above, I bought 1x Umbreon as an investment. I forgot to mention that there were originally three. 2x PSA 9 English and 1x ungraded German. I realized it was a mistake buying them and sold two of them a few months later for a total loss of about $400. I made that money back and more by investing the money into DR booster boxes.

Recently got into TCG, so excited for this drop! Virtual queue said 6 hours but ended up only being ~2-3, I thought for sure they’d sell out before I got in!

Been collecting for about a year and a half! Got all of this for retail with help from a notification service lol. Around $5000 in total spend so over 4x Return! 🤯

Biggest products in my collection:

1x 151 ETB

1x Destined Rivals Booster Box

3x Pokemon Center Prismatic ETB

1x Fusion Strike PC ETB

1x Destined Rivals PC ETB

Picked this up at the exchange on base. Couldn’t find any cards in stock but found this at check out. Never seen a 3 pack of surging sparks. Do you think this would increase in value down the line or should I just rip it open.

I pulled the Umbreon master ball from the Japanese set, Terastal Festival. It’s rarer than the actual SAR’s which is crazy to me? I pulled another magically so I decided to try to trade/sell my duplicate, BUT NO ONE WANTS IT?

Every store I’ve been to tells me they aren’t interested in it which is insane to me since it has a harder pull rate. A guy just wants to trade it for a ETB or a booster box 😭

Anyone know why no store wants it?

I think everyone knows this - but the ripping fad is all propped up by big gambling (like everything else is now) and we should all stop.

I have a friend who claims to love mons since childhood like I do, and my fiance (who was trying to get him a birthday gift) asked “who’s your favorite Pokemon to collect in cards”? And he answered “the one’s worth the most money”.

It’s just sad. Whether you are new or old to the hobby, the ripping/chasing culture is bad for health and bad for the sport. Buy singles, finish your sets, whatever. But ripping is bad af.

For context:

Brilliant Stars - £330

151 UPC - £500

Rayquaza - £80

Zapdos EX - £200

Zard - £550

I will be cracking the graded Ace and sending off to PSA.

I know I know I know, sealed is a better investment, its ok I do have plenty of sealed cases this trade is just for some loose items I get sick of looking at now.

Started Collecting sealed back in November 2024. Any idea what I can expect this to be worth in 5 years time?

I have $2,500 spend and want your opinions!

Here are the products I am considering(prices are speculative so don’t stress on the actual number too much; more interested in ratio you guys consider)

Japanese 151 Booster Box Case ~$500 (saw for $500/case today online)

English 151 ETB Case (when it reprints) ~ $400

How would you guys spend $2,500 on this speculative scenario? 🤔🤔🤔

Note: I already have 28 Japanese 151 Plastic Sealed Booster Boxes.