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I need to explain to you just how dire America's Pokémon card crisis is
- cung 6y agoAnybody else get the feeling that this is just pokemon marketing? I think the biggest clue is that Youtubers who talk about brands only for money, such as Logan Paul, are suddenly head over heals about Pokemon™ trading cards.
- theklub 6y agoCould be funded by someone, but really many collectible markets are insane right now, MTG, even basketball cards are going for insane prices.
- lotsofpulp 6y agoUnless there is a central exchange showing it’s a deep, liquid market, I assume this is irrational exuberance for a small number of people which makes for good clickbait.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- vageli 6y agoThe article mentions that card grading services themselves have stated that demand for their services is unprecedented. > At the time of this writing, PSA was receiving more cards every five days (over 500,000 per business week) than what we used to receive every three months. Of course, the number of cards submitted for grading is not an indicator of market depth, but clearly something is going on.
- Red_Leaves_Flyy 6y agoI wonder if people are counterfeiting the cards. If they stay away from the high value cards and stick with middle of the road they could probably make a fortune before anyone notices.
- cehrlich 6y agoIn Europe there is cardmarket.com which exposes a lot of transaction data. However sales of the most high end MtG stuff are usually done elsewhere to save on transaction fees etc.
- ageitgey 6y agoIt's not a fake craze totally pumped up by marketing, if that's what you mean. Pokemon cards are definitely at a fever pitch right now. Just go to your local Walmart and watch people camping out for them every week. My theory is that people like Logan Paul are involved with them because they are currently hot and zooming up in price, not the reverse. But I guess them being involved amplifies the hype and keeps the hype train rolling, so who knows where it begins and ends.
- tigger0jk 6y agoPeople are excited to watch card pack openings, more content creators start making that content since it's popular, demand for old sealed product goes up driving price increases which also makes it more exciting, not to mention the increase in content introduces a broader audience, and then again more people interested leads to more content and demand and price increases. It's a feedback loop, hard to say exactly what got it going, how big it can get, and what happens when it slows or stops, but for now you can enjoy the mania. Matt Levine might credit this to his "boredom markets hypothesis" during the pandemic. If you can't go out to a bar or a movie or a casino, then speculating on stocks or crypto or Pokemon cards is more fun compared to the now more limited options you have available, so more people will do that. https://archive.is/X8qY6 https://archive.is/X8qY6
- sanqui 6y agoThe Pokémon Company doesn't make any money from 10, 20 years old Pokémon cards old on Ebay, the kinds the article is talking about. As far as I know trading card game makers even ban older cards from tournaments in order to sell a steady flow of new cards. So they have no stake in their value.
- dageshi 6y agohttps://youtu.be/VIgcpbN7xfM?t=4597 https://youtu.be/VIgcpbN7xfM?t=4597 I don't think it's marketing. It seems like the people who were scalping sneakers/graphics cards/ps5's have added to the already existing lunatics who are into Pokemon.
- itronitron 6y agoIt's more of a guilty pleasure for some and an easy gift. They're fairly high quality and easy to store so they accumulate over time. Three years ago, one of my online gamer friends was sorting and organizing their older brother's pokemon card collection and the final count was well over 5,000 cards. They were in the process of building a website to sell them off but I think the brother got back from college and shut it down. Hopefully they are getting them graded.
- egypturnash 6y agoLately I have been feeling like the economy just broke on a fundamental level over the past year. The vast amount of money sloshing around NFTs are a symptom. And this? This is another symptom. The niche industry of "grading trading cards for collectible value" is completely overflowing. Prices for this service are skyrocketing because the demand far outstrips the availability. Meanwhile we still don't have a minimum wage that is anything like livable. $15/h was proposed as a sensible raise ten years ago from the current federal minimum of $7 and inflation has not stopped in the intervening time - online inflation calculators say the modern number would be $18.22.
- ed312 6y agoThe reality is basic unskilled labor is worth about as much as it has been. At the same time, multiple new industries have sprung up and computer/ai-aided workers are vastly more productive than ever. I think a higher minimum wage could be a good "forcing function" to eliminate more low-skill jobs. The problem is, the general population is always going to have some proportion of people who can not or will not do higher skilled work. Also, normalizing WFH/remote work might help to let folks diffuse to lower cost of living areas.
- usrusr 6y agoHow many people would Google actually need to supply humanity with targeted ads? I suspect that ultimately, most are just there to out-innovate would be upstarts that might, perhaps, take some of their pie. But this doesn't have to go on forever, there already is the precedent of Google not dying at all from utterly failing with their Facebook counter. And that's just one example. I believe that the "productivity crisis" is actually much deeper than it seems because so many parts are glossed over by zero sum games taking up some of the overcapacity.
- lumost 6y agoIf double click/search is a true monopoly google may not need any further work to sustain itself and could push new costs to their customers. I won’t venture a head count figure for google without R&D but it’s probably a tiny fraction of current head count.
- drivers99 6y agoWhen I read about the grading companies, it makes me wonder about processes that could be improved and how I would go about it. It says they hired efficiency experts ; it would be interesting to hear from them. I’m more into buying comics (for reading, not profit) but there is a book coming out called Overstreet Guide to Grading Comics that sounds interesting. (Overstreet also publishes a famous annual price guide for comics.) The craze for buying new cards makes me think of a cautionary tale. In the 90s certain old, rare issues were going for tens of thousands (current day, a few can go for millions). People started buying new comics thinking those would be worth something someday too. Customers, comics, stores, all expanded greatly before collapsing. Because the companies were printing and selling millions of copies they were not rare at all! https://comicbooked.com/comic-book/ https://comicbooked.com/comic-book/ So the important thing is, are they printing more and more cards to meet demand? (I actually don’t know; do any of you know?) If so, there’s going to be a collapse. Actually the article pointed out how massively the production of graded cards is increasing, so there you have it. If those are new cards getting graded, I guess that will collapse at least.
- patentatt 6y agoIt does seem like something a high resolution camera and some neural nets could do, right? Or conversely just put standardized images up on a website and have the public sort them (like hot or not). I’d bet it would become a fun thing for card aficionados to do even.
- mschuster91 6y ago> A collector I know has begun to simply buy Top Loaders from Chinese wholesale websites and sell those on eBay rather than deal with Pokémon cards at all. Just like in every gold rush, the ones who will end up with the most profit are the ones selling the shovels.
- cinntaile 6y agoThis is commonly claimed but is there any data to support this thesis?
- JamisonM 6y agoJoseph Francis Ladue founded Dawson City and became a very rich man by expoiting the gold rush that way instead of mining (he ended up making some money directly from mining stakes as well in the end though). I believe his reputation and life story are certainly one of the foundations of that popular idea. I don't know of any empirical studies of commerce in the Yukon gold rush that demonstrated that the merchants were the fattest of the fat cats in the the whole scenario though. Lots of stories of scammer and schemers making big bucks too, but again, who really knows? Very few legitimately struck it rich on gold, that's for sure.
- 55555 6y agoYour intuition is correct. Look up the market cap of gold and then look up the market cap of shovels.
- fzil 6y agobut that only makes sense if the only thing you did with shovel was dig for gold...
- 55555 6y agoBut the market cap of gold is vastly more. What you're saying is that the market cap for shovels would be the upper bound of the real number we are looking for, as there are other uses. So we can simply be more sure that gold has returned more economic value to those who obtained it than those who created shovels. The truth is, what I said doesnt make any sense at all. I never thought it did. But thinking about it for a few seconds makes it obvious that it's unlikely selling shovels is actually a better business than digging gold. The major gas companies make more money than the companies who build rigs. Selling shovels is a lower variance method of capitalizing off a gold rush. I prefer to do both. Most every successful startup is essentially someone digging for gold in a new gold rush. Rarely are they selling shovels. Digging for gold or oil is kind of a misnomer as the important thing in both cases would be owning land with the appropriate land rights. The common saying is misleading. It should be, "you're unlikely to lose your shirt, will have a higher likelihood of success and stability, and an overall easier time selling shovels in a gold rush, but with lower overall gain than the outlier winner gold miners" but that doesnt quite roll off the tongue.
- stunt 6y agoAt this point it doesn't take much capital to pump anything up. I think the vast majority of early NFT adopters were just colluding with one another. The old product promotion tactics don't work anymore. Creating hype via social network is the new model that works much better.
- rdtwo 6y agoKind of on collusion but not very organizes. And not enough to meet the legal definition
- carlsborg 6y agoI don’t know if a headline like this is appropriate when parts of the world are reeling from a genuine dire crisis.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- aphextron 6y agoIt's a canary in the coalmine for the entire US economy. We're going full Zimbabwe at this rate.
- vsskanth 6y agoCould somebody link me to a resource that explains the economics behind these collectibles ? (NFTs, trading cards etc. not art or rare items of historical significance) Whatever I read either concludes scam or a store of value, but doesn't seem to explain the large amounts of money sloshing around in these.
- chrisseaton 6y agoPeople do think these cards are art and they are of historical interest to them.
- vsskanth 6y agoFair enough
- Ekaros 6y agoFOMO is a big thing. They have appreciated so everyone thinks they keep doing that. Nostalgia is factor too and people who were interested in these in childhood now have extra cash. Now I wonder pull of some of these for current and next generation and how will that affect the prices in long term, probably there won't be enough pressure to keep thing going at some point. I should probably check some graphs of low to medium end classic car pricing by decade... Just to see how future might look like.
- 88 6y agoPresumably the main reason to get a card graded is if you intend to sell it? Does that not mean there’s an almighty supply shock coming to these markets?
- dehrmann 6y agoMy guess is only on for high grades. For good, but not great grades, I'd expect you can get a good enough idea from a high-resolution photo, and you're better off rolling the dice, knowing you're not getting a gem mint, anyway. The other reason to get it graded is it marks that it might be valuable for when you die and family is going through your stuff. I'd also expect CGC-graded cards to be worth less. I sold all my MTG cards except one (unfortunately, I sold the Beta Chaos Orb), but when I saw the price ($200-ish) of the one I kept, figured I'd get it graded in case I want to sell it. There were two grading companies, BGS and PSA that have been around forever, and I went with the cheapest for grading one card. I didn't recognize the name CGC. The article says they've only been grading cards for a year, and I wouldn't be surprised if people value BGS and PSA-graded cards more.
- jointpdf 6y agoBeing a chronic procrastinator and lazy gift planner, a few years ago I was searching for a last-minute Christmas gift for my nephews. I retrieved my old Pokémon card collection from the closet, wrapped it up, and called it a day. I felt mildly bad for not being more thoughtful at the time, but now it appears that I gifted them tens of thousands of dollars in value. Many of them were the rare 1st edition / shadowless versions. Someone please tell me where to pick up my Uncle of the Year award.
- goldenkey 6y agoYou don't become Uncle of the Year until you send the article to your nephews.../withholds award
- setgree 6y agoI gave all my Pokémon and Magic the Gathering cards to my little cousins a few years ago. BRB just sending this article to their parents on the off-chance that there is real money sitting there... And for what it’s worth, when people wonder what inflation looks like in 2021, as far as I’m concerned, it’s this.
- everyone 6y agoJust out of curiosity what about 'Magic the gathering' cards? I found a load of them from when I was a kid. They are in good condition, I have unopened booster packs too. Would now be a good time to sell them? Also could I just sell the lot for a reasonable price and not have to go through them all? Thanks!
- CapricornNoble 6y ago>>>Also could I just sell the lot for a reasonable price and not have to go through them all? I wouldn't recommend that. If you sell them as "bulk", you might get something like $10 for 10,000 cards. Buried in those 10,000 cards you probably have several cards that are worth $20-$100 each. This was my exact scenario over the past 2 years. I took a trip stateside in 2019 and got back into Magic (my cards were at my mother's house) after a 15-year hiatus. I started playing in 1994/95, so I had a pile of now-kinda-rare cards that were worth FAR more than I ever expected. But I've had to dig through my boxes and figure out what I had. Instead of selling them all off, I mostly trade them to local players/collectors in exchange for large quantities of lesser-valued but still useful cards for making EDH decks. I'm keeping my most valuable card though, the $800 Nether Void. I recommend using the mobile app "Delver Lens" to scan your cards rapidly, which I think can export the card list as a CSV format. Then try to import that CSV list into a good card management site. I use Deckstats.net, which will display prices for your collection pulled from 3 different websites. This should make it slightly less laborious to sort your stuff as well as establish a ballpark value.
- NanoWar 6y agoAn overview of most valuable cards would have been nice, but apparently you can't get a rating anyways. How do Pokémon cards compare to other card games, like e. g. Magic or Yigioh?
- dehrmann 6y agoThis trend in trading card prices is the same trend that's driving bitcoin right now: people who are bored and have some extra cash to spend on something that seems to be appreciating.
- cs702 6y agoWe're living through our 21st century version of Dutch Tulipmania, it seems. Like every other asset perceived to be rare, Pokémon cards have shot up in price lately. Some cards are now selling for more than the median price of a house. And yes, you read that right: 1 rare Pokémon card > 1 median house. Naturally, people are raiding their closets hoping to find cards they can cash out, and the companies that grade and certify cards as authentic are overwhelmed with demand. But holy mackerel, I'm not doing the OP justice: > I had a First Edition Charizard, one of the most sought-after cards of all time, when I was 10. I sold it on eBay when I was 11, for $150. It was a huge sum of money at the time. One of these sold for more than $300,000 a few months ago. Like many other people, I have spent much of the last few months digging through my old cards, identifying which ones are valuable, and selling them on eBay. > Over the last few months, as people have been raiding their closets for their old Pokémon card collections, they’ve been mailing their cards to get graded at one of the three major companies that does this. The companies are Professional Sports Authenticator (PSA), Certified Guaranty Company (CGC), and Beckett Grading Services (BGS). > Under the weight of the resurgent Pokémon card hobby, each [of the grading companies] has been completely crushed by demand and COVID-related backlogs, to the point that, from the outside, it seems as though they are barely functioning (It’s not just Pokémon cards, there has also been a resurgence in sports card, Magic card, and Yu-gi-oh! card collecting).* Go and read the whole thing.
- vmception 6y agoCommodities price bubbles are the worst examples of irrational exuberance. I would say stick with equities bubbles, like South Sea, 1920s, 1990s tech bubble if one wishes for a cautionary tale or any level of introspection. Both the Tulip bubble and the Beanie Baby bubble were rational reactions to data. Although not cited as such, there is no introspective possibility for anyone researching markets and learning how to deploy their own capital while writing those off as irrational.
- rdtwo 6y agoI mean what’s wrong with beanie babies? If you didn’t hold you made out like a bandit
- eightysixfour 6y agoThis feels like a very machine learnable problem, has anyone tried grading cards/coins via ML?
- rdtwo 6y agoI think it would be easy but you need cash and reputation behind the service to create legitimacy.
- austhrow743 6y agoLooks like it’s time to go dig through my mothers garage.