Depending on the pack art, a “heavy pack” (high likelihood of containing a holographic card) of 1999 Pokemon Base Set is about $2000 USD while a “light pack” (low likelihood of containing a holographic card) of 1999 Pokemon Base Set is about a few hundred USD. Condition is obviously extremely important in card value which sealed packs may have a high likelihood of being in near mint condition (especially given Pokemon cards have round corners not square corners). The interesting part is many WOTC era Base Set non-holographic cards that are rare, uncommon and common cards can be bought for less than a US dollar in reputable locales. Frequently these can be had for about two for a dollar. Many of these cards are in near mint (NM) or lightly played (LP) conditions. I am talking about the likes of Pikachu, Charmander, Squirtle, Bulbasaur, Chameleon, Ivysaur, Haunter, Gastly, rare trainer and similar cards from other WOTC sets including Gym Heroes, Gym Challenge, the Neo series and e-series.
The reality is it will take on average around 48 packs to get a Base Set English version holographic Charizard, since around 1 in every 3 packs in that set contains a holographic card, that’s about 16 heavy packs and 32 light packs. Even at the low estimate of 50,000 worth of packs on average to pull a Base Set Charizard, one may most likely barely break-even on expected average value even if one is able to pull a card that is graded as a “10” by a certain popular grading service, which is about a less than 1% population of all graded versions of that particular card from the said popular grading service. Minus all the transaction fees with grading and other potential costs, cash flow issues, opportunity cost and how long and how difficult it might take to sell, there may not be that many people with that much cash who are willing to buy that many packs or a high value Charizard card. The other potentially concerning factor is many people probably don’t have the knowledge, the experience and the dedication to keep cards/sealed products in temperature controlled environments in the long run. These cards likely weren’t meant to be long-term investment grade assets when they were first created. Given the fractional system for high-end cards/sealed products are not necessarily very mature and liquid, putting that much resources into cards investing may not be the most sound financial decision from a cash flow management standpoint.
As for the “heavy packs”…..I will not comment further on this at this time except to say I may have discussed how technology is changing this industry in my previous post(s). Frankly, even if one pulls the best regular cards from a light pack Base Set, that card at ungraded condition is probably around 20 USD at near mint. All this is to say the economics even from a gambler’s mentality standpoint probably does not make sense since what can be pulled from a light pack can probably be purchased as single cards at much less than the cost of the sealed pack. I live in America which means I have the rights to exercise reasonable free speech as permitted by the law. All posted content(s) on this website are my opinions only which means they should not be taken as advice of any kind. I am a non-celebrity, non-public figure posting anonymously for my own entertainment on a website that is not affiliated with any individual(s), organization(s) and/or any entity/entities.
Here is what I wrote previous on this and similar topics:
At the time when Pokemon 1st Edition English version 36-pack Booster Boxes first came out in 1999, they were retailing approximately $150 a box. The secondary market of a 1st Edition English version Charizard card, the best card in the set, was approximately $50 dollars on the secondary market. That means for the cost of the box, one could buy three of the Charizard cards at the time of first release for the price of the booster box. The box now cost about $500,000 and it takes approximately 48 packs to pull that Charizard card from those booster boxes meaning it will on average take more than one box to pull the best card hence pulling the Charizard is not even certain for such a high price box now. Less than 1% of all graded versions of that card by a certain popular grading company graded a “10.” A graded “10” sells for around $800,000 and a “9” is about $100,000. All posted contents are my opinions only which means they should not be taken as advice of any kind.
If I were a new card collector and knowing what I know now, I would probably make Pikachu cards the staple of my collection. I would probably also buy some other cards that will make up a much smaller percentage of my collection to better diversify my alternative assets investment portfolio. I personally believe Pikachu cards have a higher upside than many other cards. When the Pikachu English version Base Set cards first came out it was probably worth a penny per card for many collectors at the time if anyone even bothered buying it as a single since they were common, non-holographic cards and much easier to pull than certain holographic cards. At about $4+ USD in raw, ungraded card format currently, the same card has increased around 40,000%. Charizard cards in the English version Base Set were rare, holographic cards. Approximately 1 in 3 English Base Set packs contained a holographic card and approximately every 40+ packs had a Charizard card. At the time those packs were selling at around $3.50 USD a pack. Base Set Charizard English cards at the time when they first came out were commanding around $50+ USD on the secondary markets. They are currently around $400 USD. Let’s just say it’s about a 700% increase which sounds impressive. However, when you consider that took 20+ years to get there and S&P 500 index grew by about 750% in the same period when its component stocks are much more liquid, you may think differently.
What about graded versions of these that got a “10” score? For simplicity sake, let’s just say the market value of an English version Base Set Pikachu cards in that graded condition is about $1,000 USD and the Charizard is about $30,000 USD. In that case, the Pikachu card is around 100,000% increase and the Charizard card is about a 58,000% increase. When you look even deeper, you may realize less than 1% of the graded Charizard English version Base Set card submitted to a certain popular card grading company may actually get a “10” score. The difference in value between a lower score of “9” and a “10” can be very significant for that card. The English version Base Set Pikachu card may have a much higher percentage of a “10” score under likely similar circumstances as described above. The above also does not account for how much more liquid the Pikachu versus the Charizard card per the above is due to price differences. The cost difference to grade a 50,000+ USD card versus a $1,000+ USD card can also be incredibly large. The print run difference between 1st edition base set and base set may or may not be as large as some people think. In summation, I believe Pikachu cards at least some of its WOTC cards may carry a much higher “time value premium”, even when they are risk/liquid adjusted, than cards of most other Pokemon.
To better understand why Pokemon cards have high potentials, you just have to look at the coin and banknotes and the sports cards markets, more specifically, baseball cards market. If you ever attended a coin and banknotes show, scanned the room for who most of the attendees attending these shows are, you will probably understand what I am talking about. This is even more pronounced before the pandemic. It all make sense since these types of investments require high levels of disposal income, extensive knowledge about the subject matter, in the field experience and strategic patience to buy cards for often large sums of money, hold them for years then sell these assets when they want to. With that, they can dictate which attributes in these assets are the most desirable traits such as a specific originating locale or era and those who want to make money from the market will simply have to tailor to these people’s needs.
The average age of Pokemon card collectors are still quite young, completely reasonable given the age of the franchise and its initial likely target audience’s ages. Demographic groups of stakeholders matters in almost everything including in investing. Yes, one Pokemon card owned by a very famous person with a large social media presence did break sales record(s) recently, however, if you read articles about the highest valued cards ever sold, you probably already know most of these are sports cards. Like generational wealth, baseball cards are frequently passed down from generation to generation. I believe one of the biggest issues with sports cards is its volatility, more so with cards of currently active athletes than retired athletes. The problem is athletes are human-beings who live in real life unlike Pokemon characters. That means will most likely create volatility in card is one of the greatest-of-all-times (GOAT or at the very minimum a once in a generation talent and/or there is something special about the card itself that was later discovered that had nothing to do with the behaviors of the athlete. As mentioned earlier, I prefer to invest in lower valued versions of alternative assets that have all the right attributes because it allows me to free up cash by diversifying my risk into numerous smaller investments while keeping my portfolio liquid at the same time aiming for a higher expected value.
At the end of the day, rational people will benchmark assets one way or another. Metrics like multipliers and ratios will likely be employed. If I am significantly above average in identifying value than others and presuming multipliers are relatively within ballpark, why would I want to tie up that much cash in one single high value asset that will take time to sell when I can spread the risk among my portfolio and possibly get a higher premium due to the card’s lower cost of acquisition and higher liquidity. For purchases on cards of athletes I invest in, I tend to stick to rookie cards, cards in good condition because of the lower price differential on lower valued cards at the time of acquisition, numbered cards, autographed cards, patch cards, and/or all of the above like numbered RPA cards. As long as the prices are properly adjusted, I am typically okay with differences among similar cards such as on card vs sticker autographs and professional vs. amateur level uniforms. After all, these differences do not change the core essence of the investment’s attributes, only its desirability of the baseline value which will affect the multiplier. All of the abovementioned attributes make a card more rare and scarce provided you have reasonable trust in the issuing entity and the industry and the world have not fundamentally changed at the macro level.
Wait, investing in sports cards sounds like a lot of work, why don’t I just stick with Pokemon cards since they are way more stable and also grows pretty fast! There is a reason why investors prefer to diversify their portfolios. Sports cards have higher alphas but also have higher betas, translation, higher risk and higher returns. With Pokemon cards, you mostly only have to worry about systemic or market risk once you come up with a prudent collecting strategy. In some sense, the cards of desirable Pokemon characters like Pikachu and Charizard, mostly introduced in the mid to late 1990s and the early 2000 during the Wizards of the Coast era are kind of fungible in that you mostly can’t go wrong buying them because the storylines are already fundamentally set and its future storyline is not too difficult to predict ballpark wise. Hence regardless of the cards of the sets you buy for some of these Pokemon characters, the baseline values will likely be perceived as the same by bellwether investors, attribute differences like artworks are just multipliers to the equation.
With sports cards, because there are millions of athletes in all different kinds of sports who played in different eras, in different leagues and who played with different levels of completion, investing in these is more like buying a house with each having distinct characteristics like its location, neighborhood median income level, local economy etc and all these things constant evolve over time. This is precisely why English Pokemon holographic cards, especially the vintage ones cost more. Not just because of the language or potential market size difference, but mostly due to pull rate of holographic cards where the Japanese vintage packs essentially guaranteed one holo card per pack whereas the English version packs did not. Hence because the GOAT of a sport is literally just one person or a handful of people at the most, a title that take frequently decades of work to achieve and is often only publicly recognized and granted with consensus years later.
One would argue identifying a potential GOAT who likely had to be benchmarked against hundreds of thousands of contemporaries and predecessors in the few popular sports that actually have a large sports cards collecting fan base, the premium for the massive amount of effort and resources that are poured into this search is akin to finding a specific atom with just the right amount of electrons, protons and neutrons in whatever its required final form be it ionization, fusion or whatever else in a forest in the dark racing against time and with a copious amount of other hunters now that they smelled the money from a potentially $100 billion dollar future industry, have to be huge for all this expenditure to be worth it. Most people like winners and matters with certain desirable attributes, some people are actually willing to pay for these features.
The animation and TCG aspect of the Pokemon franchise will likely prevent it from issuing true rookie cards, numbered cards, memorabilia cards including autographed cards any time soon, things that are highly valued in sports cards collecting. One thing that could be a Pokemon card trend in the future is collecting the cards of a Pokemon’s first introduction or appearance in the TCG. This concept is currently not valued in the Pokemon TCG world with the first edition labels on certain Wizards of the Coast sets being the closest concept. This concept could take off some time in the future, however, given most of the super popular Pokemon’s were introduced during the WOTC era and they had 1st edition labels back then, the ceiling on this concept taking off is probably mild at best. Yes, timing is more important in sports cards investing and it requires up to date information and data to make the most optimal decisions, kind of like what a short term investor or a day trader need to do to be successful in their craft.
Determining what cards to invest in is a complicated process involving doing a ton of research and analysis on on the athletes featured on the cards themselves including their current and future on the field performance and off the field marketability as celebrities. My goal is to buy future GOATs cards before they evolve into their final form of greatness. This means I need to know what are the important aspects of their roles as professionals, what their personal career and life goals are and do they have what it takes to get there. Winning is not really about luck or having some type of super natural abilities, while both will probably help immensely, for the common person it basically comes down to do you understand the groups who will be in some way transacting with these assets. It’s mostly about understanding the group think strategy dictated in various ways by the opinion leader(s) now and potential ones in the future in a timely and relevant manner frequently requires predicting or forecasting. To move the market, pure independent and critical thinking alone will not work. What will work is movement by the masses based on some type of a robustly or even widely believed plausible built logic that at least initially makes sense and the concepts can be refined in the future if necessary, and a call for action from the bellweathers will lead to action. There is a reason why the term bellwether is frequently referred to in investing, a sheep that is both empowered and emasculated, an interesting dichotomy that makes you wonder if things really appear as it seems.”