u/Specialist-Equal660

GameStop pre-selling the 30th Anniversary line at 3x MSRP. The Ultra-Premium Collection at $599.99 against a $179.99 MSRP, ETBs at $149.99 against $49.99, with a max buy limit of 2 and requiring down payments. The usual take is, "GameStop became the scalper."

I think that framing misses what's actually happening, because the open market is already above GameStop. TCGplayer pre-order asks for the UPC are sitting around $1,480 right now. Those are asking prices on a box that doesn't ship until November, not sales, so call it a ceiling. But even the cheapest listings are nowhere near $180.

So why would anyone pay 3x or 8x for an unopened box? Because of what happened last time.

I posted the Celebrations numbers here a few days ago: the 25th Anniversary UPC went from $119.99 at retail to around $1,232 today, about 10x, in just under 5 years. The ETB did about 7.7x. Everyone who missed that run remembers missing it. That FOMO feeling is giving companies leverage to increase their asking prices.

That's what $600 at GameStop actually is. It's not a random markup, it's the Celebrations trajectory priced in before release day. GameStop knows it, the pre-order flippers know it, and the buyers paying it know it too.

Whether that's smart is a different question, and there's a real counterargument: the 30th is expected to have a much larger print run than Celebrations, and paying 3x retail up front eats most of the upside that made Celebrations sealed work in the first place. If you buy at $600, you need the 10x story to repeat with a much bigger supply just to get the same multiple.

The part I find genuinely new is that none of this used to happen before release. Price discovery started when packs got opened. This time, the market settled on a price two months early, and the printed MSRP was irrelevant before a single box existed.

Curious where people land: is $600 pricing in history, or are people paying for a rerun that a bigger print run can't deliver?

(Numbers: leaked GameStop sheet + Pokémon.com/distributor MSRPs, Kotaku's markup reporting, TCGplayer listings July 3, Celebrations history via PriceCharting through June 2026.)

We grade every card S+ to D on structural quality and investment potential. If you want to see where a card you're holding actually lands, it's all here: https://tcginvest.io

I pulled 180 days of actual PSA sold prices across 1,959 liquid graded cards to check (each one needed at least 3 real PSA 10 sales, 3 real PSA 9 sales, and a $5+ raw price, so no thin one-offs). The median modern PSA 9 clears about $10 over its raw copy. The median vintage 9 clears about $84.

The data is consistent with a simple explanation: modern alt arts and SIRs are pulled pristine, in huge numbers, and graded immediately, so PSA 9s are abundant and the raw copies are already near mint. Anyone who wants the card can buy a sharp raw for almost the same money. The premium that used to attach to "graded" now attaches mostly to "perfect": the median PSA 10 sells for 5.4x its own PSA 9.

The timing makes it worse. PSA just paused all four Value tiers, so the cheapest slot is now Regular at $79.99 a card. The 90% figure is measured against the old ~$19 fee. At today's ~$80 entry point, the economics are even less favorable.

To be clear about what this is and is not. It is about financial value, the slab versus the raw card plus fee. If you grade to authenticate, protect, or consign to PWCC, none of this applies and you should keep doing it. But if you are grading a modern card to make it worth more, you are betting almost entirely on the 10.

One thing from the last time I posted something like this: a bunch of skilled graders pushed back with "I make good money at this, your stat is misleading." Fair, and it is genuinely not a contradiction. This measures what a PSA 9 is worth on the open market versus the raw card plus the fee, the baseline a random 9 sells into. It is not measuring your pregrading edge or your gem rate. If you can read centering and surface well enough to hit 10s consistently, you beat that baseline, because the value is in the 10, which is the whole point. The number is for the person who assumes a 9 is a safe floor, not the person skilled enough to avoid landing one.

Easy to verify: pull any modern Special Illustration Rare's PSA 9 sold median and compare it to the raw card plus a realistic grading fee.

The hobby keeps arguing about a bubble: that nothing since 2021 is really rare, that a wave of supply is coming, that modern is a junk-wax era waiting to happen. It's a fair worry. But it's also testable, because we don't have to guess what happens when a Pokémon bubble bursts. The last one already burst, so I went and measured what came back.

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I took 10,639 cards that were valuable PSA 10s in 2021 (real English PSA 10 sold prices, one grade, each printing tracked on its own, nothing blended across language or condition) and checked each against what it sells for now. 69.2% have recovered to their 2021 level or higher, 30.8% are still underwater five years on. But that average hides the interesting part: which cards came back, and which stayed stuck. So I tested every obvious answer one at a time.

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Rarity first, the thing everyone reaches for. Hold it constant and look inside each tier and the same rarity label gives opposite outcomes: a Rare Ultra recovered 89% of the time or 35%, depending on something that has nothing to do with the word "Ultra." Then price: raise the floor to $25, $50, $100 and the gap doesn't close, it holds firm. Then popularity, the chase mons: that one's partly right, a Charizard or an Eeveelution recovered better in both eras. But it turned out to be half the story, not the whole thing.

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The variable that actually survived was when the card was printed:

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- Vintage (1999 to 2010): 77% recovered

- Middle era (2011 to 2016): 73%

- Late pre-boom (2017 to 2019): 59%

- Boom-era (2020 to 2021): 31%

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A gentle drift down through the pre-boom years, then a cliff at the boom. Year by year it's even cleaner: 2017 was 53%, 2018 was 60%, 2019 was 62%, then 2020 dropped to 24% and 2021 to 36%. And it's not just old Base Set padding the top: even the newest pre-boom sets (Sun & Moon, 2017 to 2019) recovered 59%, nearly double the boom era's 31%.

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The way I read it: a card came back if its demand existed before the bubble. Either the card itself predates the boom (it had already found its real level by 2019, so the mania was just a spike on top of a floor that was still there afterward), or the Pokémon is a permanent chase whose demand predates every boom. That's why a chase card printed during the boom still behaved more like an old card than its boom-era neighbors. The cards that stayed dead were the ones with neither, a new card and an ordinary subject, whose whole demand was manufactured inside the mania and vanished with it.

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So characterizing the last burst, not predicting the next: what clawed back wasn't the rarest, the priciest, or the most hyped. It was the cards whose demand existed before the mania, old cards and the handful of Pokémon people never stop wanting. Curious whether this matches what you've all seen. Anyone been sitting on a 2020 to 2021 chase card that's still nowhere near where it was, or an older one that quietly came all the way back?

The hobby is arguing about a bubble again: that nothing made since 2021 is really rare, that a wave of supply is coming, that modern is a junk-wax era waiting to happen. It's a fair worry. But it's also a testable one, because we don't have to guess what happens when a Pokémon bubble bursts. The last one already burst, so I measured what came back.

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The method first, because it's the reason you can trust the answer. I used PSA 10 sold-price history from PriceCharting: actual completed sales, one specific grade, English only, each printing tracked separately (normal, reverse-holo and 1st-edition versions never blended into each other). No Cardmarket "Price Trend," which averages every language and condition into one figure that describes nothing real. Included: every card whose PSA 10 averaged at least $25 across all of 2021, the cards that actually mattered at the top. I used the full-year 2021 average on purpose, not the all-time high, so I'm not committing the circular error of "cards that peaked in 2021 are below their peak." 10,639 cards, 10,555 of them with a current 2026 price. Recovered = current PSA 10 price at or above its 2021 average.

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69.2% recovered, 30.8% still underwater. Then I sorted recovered-vs-underwater by one variable at a time to see which trait actually separated survivors from stuck.

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Candidate 1, rarity. Hold rarity constant and look inside each tier. Same label, opposite outcome:

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Pre-boom vs boom-era recovery, by rarity:

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Rare Holo: 87% vs 37%

Rare Ultra: 89% vs 35%

Rare Rainbow: 96% vs 21%

Rare Secret: 71% vs 2%

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A Rare Ultra recovered 89% or 35% depending on something that has nothing to do with the word "Ultra." Rarity isn't the driver.

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Candidate 2, price. Raise the floor and re-check:

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- At $25 raw: 73% pre-boom vs 31% boom-era

- At $50: 77% vs 25%

- At $100: 79% vs 27%

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The gap holds firm. Honest note: above $250 the boom-era sample shrinks to 32 cards and the gap narrows, but at 32 cards that's noise, not a reversal. Through the dense range, price is ruled out.

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Candidate 3, popularity. This one is partly right. Split by perennial chase Pokémon (Charizard, Pikachu, the Eeveelutions, Rayquaza, Mewtwo, Lugia, Gengar and a few others) vs everything else: a chase boom-era card recovered 75% of the time vs 28% for an ordinary one. Popularity clearly helps. (That boom-era chase cell is 63 cards: directional, not gospel. But the same direction shows in the much larger pre-boom row, which is why I trust the pattern.) So "which Pokémon" isn't ruled out. It's the second half of the answer.

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The variable that survived: print era, the set release year.

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Recovery by print era, with sample size:

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Vintage (1999 to 2010): 77%, n=5,446

Middle era (2011 to 2016): 73%, n=2,711

Late pre-boom (2017 to 2019): 59%, n=1,525

Boom-era (2020 to 2021): 31%, n=957

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Year by year: 2017 was 53%, 2018 was 60%, 2019 was 62%, then 2020 was 24% and 2021 was 36%. Even the newest pre-boom sets (Sun & Moon) recovered 59%, nearly double the boom era. And I ran all four variables jointly in one model: print era stayed by far the strongest signal (a boom-era card had less than one-eighth the recovery odds of a pre-boom card, holding price, rarity and popularity constant), while price on its own carried no independent power once era was in. One-at-a-time and all-at-once agree.

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The reading: a card recovered if its demand existed before the bubble. Either the card predates the boom (it found its real level by 2019, so the mania was a spike on top of a floor that was still there afterward), or the Pokémon is a permanent chase (its demand predates all booms). The cards that stayed dead had neither, new card plus ordinary subject, demand manufactured inside the mania and gone with it. That boom-era-plus-ordinary group recovered 28%, which is almost exactly the hobby's own "nothing since 2021 is really rare" thesis, measured.

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Observationally, characterizing what the last burst did, not predicting the next one: when a Pokémon bubble corrects, the cards that historically clawed back shared one trait, demand that existed before the hype. The cards that didn't were the ones the hype created. Not rarity, not grade, not price.

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Happy to get into the method or any specific card in the comments. And if you want to find the best Pokémon cards to invest in, the site weighs release era alongside grade, rarity and real sold prices on any card, free: tcginvest.io

"Just buy from Europe" is one of those things the hobby treats as obviously true and never actually checks. So I checked it, against every card where I have a trustworthy sold price on both sides.

The catch most of these comparisons get wrong, and the first thing people rightly attack: they screenshot a Cardmarket asking price next to a US sold price. That is meaningless. An asking price is what someone hopes to get, a sold price is what a card actually traded for. When I first ran it that way it looked like a coin flip, because a few overpriced European listings drag the asking numbers around.

So I threw the asking prices out and compared realized to realized. Cardmarket's 30-day sold average against PriceCharting's 180-day US sold median, converted at the day's exchange rate, only cards with real sales volume behind them, about 2,800 of them.

One thing I want to be clear about up front, because it kills the obvious objection: this is an English card against the same English card. The "Japanese is cheaper" thing is a totally different print and language. Here it is the exact same English card priced in two marketplaces, so there is no language or print difference doing the work. One object, priced twice.

Europe is cheaper on 77% of cards. The median card sells for 28% less. A third are at least 40% cheaper, the same card same condition for 60 cents on the dollar. The gap is widest in the EX, DP and HGSS era (a 38% median) and tightest on modern cards (15%), which makes sense, modern was printed and distributed globally from day one so the two markets never drifted as far apart.

A few real ones, all heavily traded cards (60+ recorded US sales each over 180 days), Cardmarket 30-day average vs US sold median:

- Gengar ex (Temporal Forces): around 25.72 EUR vs 55.78 USD, 47% less

- Rayquaza VMAX (Evolving Skies): around 39.36 EUR vs 79.00 USD, 42% less

- Pikachu (Cosmic Eclipse): around 77.14 EUR vs 148.34 USD, 40% less

- Lugia-GX (Lost Thunder): around 16.24 EUR vs 30.24 USD, 38% less

The one honest catch: if you are in Europe this is just the price, the discount is yours. If you are in the US, shipping and the odd customs charge eat into a single-card import, sometimes enough to erase the edge on a cheap card, rarely on a 75 dollar plus one. So it is not "import everything," it is "the home price is not automatically the fair price, and on a real card it is worth checking the other side before you buy."

What should I run the numbers on next? Tell me in the comments, I am always hunting for the next thing worth measuring. And if you want to find the Pokémon cards actually worth investing in right now, that is exactly what I built tcginvest.io for !

"Get it slabbed, the grade pays for itself" is probably the most repeated line in the hobby. So I decided to actually run the math on it.

I pulled every card I track that has a full graded sales history, the raw card plus its real PSA 7, 8, 9 and 10 sold prices, about 3,000 of them. Then I ran the only question that matters: if you mail it to PSA, do you actually come out ahead? Not "could you hit a 10," but the realistic mix of grades you'll really get (you usually pull a 9, sometimes an 8, occasionally a 10), each priced at what it actually sells for, minus the grading fee and the ~13% it costs to sell (assuming eBay, which is where most slabs end up).

The answer wasn't what I expected. Almost 4 in 5 cards lose money the moment you grade them. For anything printed since 2020, it's 99%.

Now, vintage is obviously the better bet on average, and you all know that. But the reason is just that vintage cards are generally more expensive, not that they're old. Once I sorted by raw price instead of by era, that got really clear: 63% of WOTC and 79% of EX era cards still lose money to grade, because plenty of vintage is cheap too. It's the price doing the work, not the age. Cards lose because they're cheap, and most cards, modern and vintage, are cheap. A flat fee just eats the whole premium.

So really there's one number that decides it, the raw price of the card in your hand:

- Under ~$30 raw: you lose almost every time (95 to 99%).

- Around $75 to 200 raw: basically a coin flip.

- Over ~$200 raw with a real PSA 10 premium: now the odds finally turn in your favor.

And being expensive isn't enough on its own. Take Moonbreon. It's a ~$1,700 raw card, and grading it leaves you about $380 worse off than just selling it raw. That's not a $380 fee, it's the gap: the PSA 10 only sells for about 2.4x the raw, so the premium doesn't cover the cost plus the fact you'll usually pull a 9. You need high raw value AND a fat PSA 10 multiple. That's why grading actually prints on a Base Set Charizard (its PSA 10 is ~19x raw) but not on this year's chase card.

I also tested the "but I'm a good grader" argument and cranked the PSA 10 hit rate way up. To be fair, modern cards gem easier than vintage, they come fresh out of packs with no wear, so a higher hit rate is genuinely realistic for modern. But even at a 1 in 3 gem rate, 77% of modern cards still lose. Gemming more doesn't save you when the premium itself is too thin.

And it just got messier this month. PSA's backlog hit about 10 million cards, so they paused all their cheap Value tiers. The cheapest tier you can even use right now is Regular at ~$80 a card with a 50 day wait. At $80 instead of the ~$25 my numbers use, the break-even shoots way up, you'd realistically want the raw card worth a few hundred dollars before slabbing even makes sense. That $80 is probably temporary (PSA expects to reopen the cheaper tiers once the backlog clears, so grading should drift back toward the ~$30 range), but even at $30 the core finding barely moves, most cards still lose.

Right now you just pay a lot more AND wait two months while the hype cools off.

TL;DR: grading isn't a default move. It pays on expensive, hard to gem trophies and quietly loses on almost everything else. If you can't sell the raw card for ~$75, it's probably not worth slabbing.

If you want to find out which cards to grade and the exact $ added value of grading your card then check out TCGinvest.io !

Full writeup with all the charts is here: https://tcginvest.io/blog/is-grading-worth-it

So I posted something here last week and someone dropped a comment I couldn't stop thinking about:

"What are the most popular Pokémon by average annual sales, and how does that act over the 30 year history of the TCG? Maybe Lugia pops every 6 years, or maybe Mankey's quietly been top 200 for 3 decades and nobody tracked it. Long term data could kind of redefine the investing side of the hobby."

And honestly he's right. I went looking for clean 30 year sales data and it just doesn't exist. Not on PriceCharting, not eBay, nowhere I'd actually trust.

But one thing does go all the way back: grading population. Basically every card anyone ever bothered to send to PSA, down to Base Set. So I figured I'd just pull all of it and group it by the actual Pokémon instead of by card.

Came out to 10,184,623 graded cards. Top of the list:

Few things that genuinely surprised me:

Charizard is just not normal. 953k graded. That's 9.4% of every graded Pokémon card in existence, and he's more than double

Pikachu at #2. I knew Zard was big but I didn't expect one Pokémon to basically be a tenth of the entire hobby.

Magikarp, of all things, is #2 in value if you rank by each Pokémon's priciest cards, even though it's graded like 12x less than Charizard. One Shining Magikarp carries the whole fish lol.

Then the flip side: Moltres, Reshiram, Machamp all get slabbed 100k+ times but their best cards are under ~$850. Turns out "graded a lot" and "worth a lot" really aren't the same thing. People grade them by the thousand which kind of makes them look hot while the prices just sit there.

The part I still can't answer is the actual time thing he asked, like does Lugia spike every 6 years. That needs decades of sales nobody has. I've only got about 5.5 years of clean price history so far. But the all time grading angle was a fun place to start.

Either way, happy to answer anything or run the numbers on a specific Pokémon if you're curious.

Drop a name, or a topic you've always wondered about (most underrated eeveelution? which cheap ones are quietly climbing? best era to buy into?), and I'll actually go dig into it and report back.

A few days ago, I posted a picture of my recent purchases on this sub. One of my top gainers so far has been Rayquaza. Someone in the comments mentioned that the card was "pumping" because of an upcoming release, and that sent me down a rabbit hole: does this pattern actually exist?

I looked at 2,008 Pokémon × set release events from 2021 to now, across 43 sets. For each new set, I took the featured Pokémon and tracked every older card of that Pokémon in the months before and after release. Each card was measured against a control card (same era, similar price, not featured in anything) so I could separate the effect from general market movement.

TL;DR: The "run-up then drop" pattern is mostly a myth. Older cards tend to keep climbing after the set releases, and the peak usually comes 1–3 months later, not at release. More importantly, which Pokémon it is matters far more than the release cycle itself.

Aggregate move vs. control:

- Before release: basically flat (+0.9%)

- Release week: +4.0%

- 1 month after: +7.9%

- 2–3 months after: +8.7% (peak)

- 6 months after: +5.0%

So there isn't really a meaningful drop-off. The "sell once it's out" idea just doesn't show up in the data. On average, the cards keep going up.

The more useful finding is how differently this plays out depending on the Pokémon (chart attached, 2–3 month window):

- Pikachu: +9.4%

- Gardevoir: +8.9%

- Gengar: +8.6%

At the other end:

- Venusaur: -9.5%

- Lugia: -8.7%

- Dragonite: -7.7%

That's a range from roughly +9% to -10%, depending almost entirely on the Pokémon. "A new set is coming" by itself tells you very little.

One result that surprised me: even Charizard, probably the most talked-about Pokémon, showed basically no lift from new sets featuring it. Across 275 events, the average effect was -2%. Essentially a flat line. I'm not totally sure why.

A few caveats before anyone yells at me:

- The daily data only covers 2024–2026, which has mostly been a bull market.

- Monthly data goes back to 2021 and includes the SWSH crash.

- Smaller samples like Lugia and Dragonite (~40 events each) have wide error bars, so treat those results as rough estimates.

- This is purely backward-looking. It's not a prediction, and I'm definitely not telling anyone to buy anything.

Posting this because the "run-up then drop" narrative gets repeated as gospel, and the numbers don't really support it. Happy to share the methodology if anyone wants to pick it apart.