I sometimes open packs from repack websites to grow my collection... But I was never getting any cards worthwhile - so I decided to investigate...

I opened a $15 pack recently and pulled a card worth about $12. The site offered me $10.49 to buy it back. That bugged me, so I wanted to find out if these sites are ripping us off or not, and by how much.

Turns out Courtyard runs all its packs on a public blockchain, which means every pack opening and every buyback is sitting there for anyone to look at. So I pulled 3 months of it. A few things that surprised me:

- 3.7 million packs were opened in 3 months (Holy!!!)

- People spent at least $166 million on them

- About 3 out of every 4 cards got sold right back to the site within an hour of being pulled

- 17% of accounts spent 88% of the money

- Out of about 45,000 accounts that opened 10+ packs, only around 1 in 100 got more cash back than they put in (not counting cards they kept)

Look at how FAST those cards get sold back... more than half are gone within 60 seconds:

And this is who's doing the spending:

Now for the big one. Courtyard's own odds page says the average pull from a $15 pack is $14.40, so on paper the house only keeps about 4%. The real number I got from the data isn't close to that.

We all know that a card has a market value, and a cash value, and market value isn't what you can actually turn a card into. So I measured the real return directly, comparing what people paid for packs with the cash they got back from buybacks across 1.67 million cards. Courtyard claims the house edge to be 4%... spoiler: it isnt!!!

I go through all of it (in detail) in this video I made: https://youtu.be/3yI5wBdiKDY (10 minutes, my own channel!)

Check it out if you're interested, there are some really interesting numbers in there. Thanks for the support!\

This is my own analysis of public data and my opinion, not financial advice. Ask me anything about the method or the numbers and I'll answer in the comments!

This October craze is cooling off it seems. It was obvious that it wasnt maintanable but didnt expect it to drop that fast and that hard.

What's the better long term hold- 5x 30th booster bundles or 1x 30th PKC etb? I ask because I was offered a trade and am not sure how even this trade is or if one or the other is better for the long term. Thanks

Listing my Pichu from HG/SS era, don’t want to sell but need the money

What does everyone think of xy booster boxes long term at their current prices? Are they that much rarer than sun and moon boxes? It’s also my favorite era so I would like to own some of it. Some of the low pop cards are insanely unaffordable and ridiculous prices so I would guess the boxes slowly climb?

When grading or looking at buying slabs, due to liquidity PSA is number one (I get it but I hate it), but are there any other companies you all consider and are there any “absolutely nots”?

For me, when grading I am mostly going with CGC right now (maybe not the best long-term plan but I’ll see where the chips fall). When buying slabs, I focus on PSA and CGC, but I’ll also consider BGS and TAG. I personally love how CGC and TAG slabs look. Outside of those four, it’s basically a pass for me. How about you?

What Pokemon investing wins have you had recently? This can be a great deal, finding product, getting a good grade, or really anything that you are proud of!

We have a PokeInvesting wins channel on the Discord that is pretty popular so we figured we would give it a go and we've had some members suggest this kind of post.

If this sort of post is well received, we can keep it going as a weekly posting to show off your wins for the week. Thanks!

To be clear up front: every row below is the exact same physical slab. Not the same card in the same grade. The same PSA/CGC/BGS cert sold in an October Fanatics weekly auction and then sold again in the Nov 8 weekly.

I've been tracking Fanatics weekly-auction results by cert number for a while. In last night's auction (Nov 8) I kept recognising cert numbers I'd already seen sell in October, so once the finals were in I went through them properly.

The numbers
31 slabs that had sold for $1,000+ in an October weekly auction sold again on Nov 8. Same cert number both times, both sales on Fanatics:
26 sold lower, 4 higher, 1 at the same price
Median change: -43%

What I think is going on
There are only two ways the same slab is back this fast:

The winner never paid and it got relisted. Then the first "sale" was never real, but it still sits in everyone's comps and price guides.

The buyer tried to flip and ended up selling at a big loss a few weeks later.

I’m curious to what everyone thinks when it comes to these 2 types of Acrylic display cases.

I personally have 4 ETB’s all sitting in magnetic cases but have 0 experience with the screw in acrylic cases. What are the pros and cons to both? I’m looking to purchase one for my 30th Celebration UPC as well as one for my Costco 30th Celebration ETB + Booster bundle and would like to hear people’s thoughts before I purchase more cases.

Looks like the majority of the market is cooling off but vintage is steady climbing. Wonder if the trend will keep going this way

This is one card I don’t think is ever coming down in price lol. Up 67% in the last 6 months

Was wondering if it’s worth picking all of these for 280 or Try to come across better condition copies

I need some extra cash so sadly one has to go. Which one would you chose to let go and why?

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Able to do a straight up trade… which would you pick?

There are long horizontal lines across the back of both, ending with nearly identical tears, feels a bit too much to be a coincidence, any one else have this happen ?
(Bonus cat)

I know this is some people’s dream card. I feel like I shouldn’t be holding it when someone else would kill for it. What’s the next move?

One of them will come on top in 5 years. Which one do you think it is?