Awesome thread, I play a lot of MTG and I can't believe how hot the Pokemon market has gotten again recently lol, along with a lot of other TCGs right now. It's damn near impossible to find anything besides a few lose booster packs of Pokemon (and sometimes Magic) on store shelves right now.
Just a tip for those looking for an expected value of their cards and are familiar with what set is what. There are websites out there that track the value of cards, such as one called PikaStocks which just launched really really recently that you can search the average TCG values on and gives you a decent ballpark range of what the value is of those cards. The Magic version of the website MTGStocks is really popular but I'd recommend it to people as well as checking eBay sold listing to help so Finale isn't swamped going through everyone's collections hahah.
I am only just learning about this. I'm playing around with it now. This is really slick!
I'm sure they're still working on it but I notice it's not perfect at returning results. Seems like using the search function often takes you to the wrong card (especially if it's a card with multiple prints) but navigating through the set list is really solid. This is very impressive. Do you know who's behind it? Is it affiliated with TCGplayer beyond the links?
This would be a gamechanger for this thread as you already suggested.
At first glance, PikaStocks' number seem very ... odd. For example, they assign
1st Edition Neo Discovery Espeon an average of $1400, a market average of $74, and a 'Europe average' of €3,50. None of these numbers make any sense, especially in the context of each other. They put the
Unlimited print of the same card on a much more stable graph showing a steady $100+ average and market price, but that would make the Unlimited print more expensive than that $74 'market average' of the 1st Edition print, which again makes no sense. Their FAQ states they get their data from TCGplayer and Cardmarket, but
Cardmarket's graph for this same card shows the average sale price consistently hovering around €20, with one random €200 spike likely caused by the sale of a graded card. I'm not sure how this translates to a $1400 average, or a €3,50 'Europe average', or a steady $100+ market average.
I'm not sure what exact data they have access too, and it is not immediately apparent to me how they're sorting through the many additional variables at play here. What's included? What's not? Why? Does this include graded cards? If so, do they distinguish between grades? For raw cards, do they distinguish between different conditions of the card and their varying sale prices? Do they exclude non-English cards from the data? Is this an issue with the quality or amount of data they have access too?
It is quite possible I incidentally picked an outlier, or that these numbers will simply even out as they add more data points, but I felt it relevant to mention regardless.
I personally suspect this kind of site works much better for games like Magic, in which card value is almost entirely tied to playability instead of condition or collectability. Graded cards are a near non-factor in Magic. Condition is far less important than playability. Few Magic players truly collect Magic cards or sets. The game is different, and the culture and community around it are different, which makes the market different. The vast majority of the Magic market is determined by playability alone. If a card is good in a popular deck, it goes up. If a card works well with a newly revealed card from an upcoming set, it goes up. When a card rotates out of a format, it goes down. When a card gets banned from a format, it goes down. When playable cards get large reprints, their prices drop across all prints. Playability is everything. This makes the Magic market much simpler and easier to track.
The Pokémon market is a different beast entirely, with many more factors to consider. Playability is literally a non-factor for the most desirable cards. You can't play Base Set Charizard in any official format. It wasn't even that good back when it
was playable in an official format. Collectors make up the vast majority of the Pokémon Market, and collectors are more complicated than players. They introduce many more (and more subjective) price-influencing factors to consider, and these factors make the market much harder to track, explain, or pin down. Collectors collect many different things for different reasons, and cards can sell for a premium for no discernable reason other than a specific collector deciding the premium is worth paying to secure a specific card. Condition plays a significantly larger role, and thus has a far greater effect on pricing. The importance of condition in turn increases demand for cards graded by third parties, and the presence of graded cards, the differences between grades, and preferences for certain grading companies further impact pricing. Subjective factors such as nostalgia and (character) popularity have a significant impact on prices too. Base Set Charizard isn't any rarer than any other Base Set Holo card. Its value is derived not from rarity or playability, but from subjective and volatile factors such as popularity and nostalgia. Rarity does play a role, but equal rarity does not translate to equal value, and rarity is not necessarily more important than popularity. Collectors chase specific prints, and each print of a card or set has a different value influenced by rarity, popularity, distribution method, etc. When playability is a non-factor and collectability is everything, reprints no longer bring down prices. Being tied to such a large property so many have strong nostalgia for also leads to non-TCG events affecting the TCG market as people are driven to revisit the property. Pokémon Go; Quarantine; Logan Paul opening a Base Set box; The market spike itself attracting 'investors'. Events like these can bring an influx of new or returning collectors, creating volatile spikes in demand that games like Magic are unlikely to experience. All of these factors make the Pokémon market much harder to accurately track via sites like these, as simply looking at mass data collected from card sales will show a large range of prices influenced by many different factors, and controlling for all these factors behind the scenes requires a lot of work. In addition, data gathered exclusively from mass marketplaces such as TCGplayer and Cardmarket probably does not accurately reflect the full scope of the Pokémon market, as a significant part of the market for older and more valuable cards takes place outside those platforms.
Apologies for the long post. I just kept typing and I couldn't stop. It's entirely possible I'm wrong on this and that nothing I said makes sense, as I typed this up while half asleep.
