Japanese Pokémon cards are in a bad way so about 9 months ago I made a video talking about the insane rise of Japanese Pokémon card prices but since then things have changed dramatically So today we're going to talk about why I think Japanese Pokémon cards have kind of fallen off and I don't think that's a hot take I think that's a take that a lot of different people share in the space the last 3 months for Pokémon cards have been really really weird last year wasn't normal either from the end of 2022 through the middle of the year uh Japanese Pokémon cards went on extremely extremely explosive ride this is a graph that shows the average price of a Japanese Pokémon card in Japan the gray bars that you see going up and down there that's volume of sales the average price in July 65,000 Yen that is a lot of money that's the average price for a card so that means all the cards went up in value the most expensive cards were obviously waiting that average up higher and then it was brought down by the cheapest cards which are probably going to be like your Commons and uncommons uh in December V Universe came out it's pretty flat there in February we first saw special art rares that was when Miriam got revealed and things kind of went into a little bit of overdrive and then March and April uh is when clay burst released the iono card that came out in clay burst really playable card beautiful card too but that wasn't the entire year the entire year looks like this it peaked in June July but from that Peak it just slowly slowly slowly went down and now we're kind of back to where we started and that's normal we can't always be in the good times sometimes you've got to be in the bad times to get to the good times you got to be in the bad times that's just how works but now things kind of feel different they feel like entirely dead it just feels like it's Jova it feels jaari let's be serious it feels jaari products back on the shelves granted not for an extended period of time if you're online often you got your alert set up you'll catch these drops you know they last for about 10 to 15 20 minutes this was unheard of all through 2023 but now in the last 2 months or so you're able to pick up booster boxes of shiny treasury X off the Pokémon Center Online Japan for retail granted it's one per person but it's better than nothing boxes are actually getting cheaper than retail price this is a tweet from Japan you want poker cart this is a popular third party store they're actually advertising that the box price for Wild Force and cyber judge the most recent sets is now below retail price it's not just the modern cards that are feeling the lows of this period either what I sometimes like to call like Vintage Modern look at this guy look at this idiot here who's that look at him what's he cooking this is from a stream in 2021 when we used to talk about this 89,00 Yen forani was massive Chase Card people wanted this card they still want this card now it's come down to 31,800 Yen you it's a fraction of its price some would say that people are just naturally spending less people don't really have that disposable income anymore others will say that Pokemon cards in general have just died and so with that interest has gone entirely I personally kind of disagree with that one I don't think Pokemon cards have died or that just card games in general are just not interesting to people anymore I think it's a combination of things and that's what we're going to dive into in a little bit but we have to start here with shiny treasure ex this is where it all begins we rewind back to about October November 2023 this is what we call a high class set traditionally when high class sets come out at the end of a year in Japan Japan exclusive Japanese Pokémon card space kind of goes into overdrive whatever interest is already there gets ramped up there's a lot of cards in it there's a lot of new rares there's a lot of playables it just ticks every box and it's really really affordable too 5,500 Yen the initial reveal pretty terrible we were like okay it's just going to be another shiny set we've seen shiny sets like this before we doing this again we're at this point of the Pokémon card cycle I think the CH fatigue is well and truly hit mascar on qual not really that interesting but the follow-up reveals were really cool this is when things kind of took a little bit of a turn the God of all s it's beautiful the Charizard it's a step up from the ruler of the black flame Charizard and seeing artr that was a huge tick too you know because art R they make you feel like you walk away with something there's some really solid value proposition there so when these got revealed the pump started a lot of collectors that have been around in this space for a couple of years at least kind of saw this coming if you were new to Pokémon cards Japanese Pokémon cards as well this would have felt a little bit unnatural but seen this happen time and time again with V-Max Climax and then vsar Universe what do I mean by pumping though what is pumping pumping has got a few different definitions simplest answer is when something is sold for more than it's intended to so the retail price for this set is 5,500 Yen I think about now it's about $40 that was the retail price the market price is where the pump starts who even knows anymore nobody even knows what the market price for anything is anymore who decides it huh where does it come from uh the market price just gets dictated by whoever you've generally got three different types of sellers the first type of seller is the free market and this is just traditionally eBay selling platforms like Facebook or you can sell over Instagram uh but for the most part eBay takes the Lion's Share you got comps buddy you got Source on that price yep eBay last sold bang the other type of seller is the third party seller so third party sites like uh jyw polart and Plaza Japan hobby gy army army all these different thirdparty sites where we often will buy Japanese Pokémon cards from are third party sellers these are traditionally based in Jaan Japan the other type of third party seller is the third party seller that is based in North America you may be familiar with Sakura's card shop poke you guys know this guy he's the Mani guy I love this graphic I feel like this graphic is amazing poke NE featured on Vice and then you've got the third type of seller not a third party seller technically kind of uh Breakers RI and shippers they have been the ey of the Pokémon card collecting world for a very very long time twitch you see your hits get pulled in real time by your favorite Creator your streamer and then send them to you whatnot platform that has gained a bit of notoriety over the last couple of years for those of you that just have no idea what a breakout or RI and shipper is let's say I have a booster box I'm going to say hey this booster box cost me $50 I'm going to sell each pack one pack is going to cost $5 there's 30 packs inside I'm going to make money off that because 30 * 5 is 150 the Box cost me 50 I walk away with $100 but beyond just the card inside you get a fun experience everybody's watching me open your pack and whenever I hit I send it to you and it's exciting maybe I don't know if it floats your bow but that is the concept of Breakers Ripp and shippers they charge a little bit more because you get a service the service being the entertainment value when those S cards got revealed uh November we started to see sold for about 70 usd plus the shipping puts it about 100 third party sellers they had to adapt to that if they didn't adapt to that they were going to be selling at a loss warning all sales final no adjustments I wonder why they said that if they didn't and they sold it at retail like Japan you want poker card did they were gone in an instant they were almost impossible to get at retail price and then you had the breakers which if you just go back and have a look you'll see are forced to match this price as well because if they don't then the whole Space starts to collapse which is kind of what happened when this fell entered the Fay Tik Tok now if you're outside of the US or you weren't really paying attention at the time you might be thinking what the does Tik Tok have to do with Japanese Pokémon cards well Tik Tok kind of broke everything because Tik Tok introduced Tik Tok shop last year and Tik Tok shop basically a platform space where you can buy anything not just Pokémon cards anything from your favorite Tik Tok Creator the Tik Tok shop did it a little bit differently maybe because it was Christmas time maybe because they were trying to get a strangle hold on the market the Tik Tok shop were offering sales and these sales weren't getting covered by the seller they were getting covered by Tik Tok so let's say a store or a seller Imports a box of shiny treasure EX for $80 and then they sell them for $90 obviously that's a profit of 10 USD in this instance if Tik Tok is covering providing a 30% discount to the buyer the buyer only pays $60 and now the store the seller listing at 90 walks away with a $30 profit instead of 10 so they're tripling their profits and this was great not just for the seller who was profiting more but for the buyer because now you're getting closer to that retail price you know the price is getting lower and lower and it's a better value proposition naturally if you were running a Tik to shop you're capitalized on this and a lot of stores started capitalizing on this this is a screenshot from suckur card shop from the 9th of December where they sold 666 units of shiny treasure EX for 74 USD what you fast forward you go a little bit further into the future to the 14th of December so this is just a week later and now you're seeing it on Tik Tok for 54 USD this was just not happening during the V-Max Climax and the visista universe era of Japanese Pokémon cards so now instead of spending 100 USD you're literally half in it this is 2 weeks after the set has come out we don't usually see this kind of thing happen until about January February March after the release so 1 2 3 4 months after When people's interest moved on to something different some people were getting targeted deals bringing the price of a booster box down to as low as 34 USD So within 2 and 1/2 weeks this set is back to retail if not below it and what this did was put a lot of pressure on traditional third party sellers that didn't have Tik Tok shop as a platform for them to sell cards they were forced to bring their prices down but they couldn't bring them down as low as the Tik Tok shop sales were so as a buyer why would you import it from Plaza Japan where the shipping costs are going to be higher it's going to take a little bit longer to get yeah it's more trusted than some random store on Tik Tok but as a buyer you're thinking about how much money you can save so if you didn't have Tik Tok shop as a platform you started to struggle and cheaper boxes as we all know means cheaper cards and that is exactly what started to happen with shiny treasure ex this is from uh an okj live stream on the 1st of December let's talk about shiny treasure EX was release date and you can see here from the chase cards in this set the prices were pretty high especially for the ionos 59,800 Yen the gardav war 20,000 yen the MU X 14,800 the others not as expensive right but up there as to be expected for launch day prices but what happened after that is crazy and that brings us to right about now this is a graph of io's tracked sales started around 60,000 like we saw so we've got evidence that is fact we've seen that right over the period of time just continued to drop and that period of time is the period of time where the booster boxes were selling for historical lows you usually don't see these prices until uh January February March like I was saying because the prices of the booster boxes simply haven't gone that low yet so why would the single cards drop this is actually a great site so you can see what's going on card stores in Japan and probably one of the biggest like card rush it tracks the price data so if the price changes you will see it and you will see when that happens so you can have a look at Poco stks doxyz and that is for the iono s from the shiny treasure ex same thing after the Charizard this happened to every single card in the set it was it was not exclusively just one card or the Chase card it was happening to Charizard as well now it's at that Flatline level that it's been for the last 2 or 3 weeks because interest is at an alltime low but Tik Tok isn't the only reason that this all happened it's a big reason I say one of the biggest reasons is because this set is just mid it's a boring set it's barely okay it's the most uninspired set Pokemon have released in the last 3 years and it's a shame really it's a shame it's such a step back and it's worse than concept and sets that we got within the last 2 years like I said that everybody loves Vmax climax why do we like Vmax climax so much because it's got cohesion there's identity there's unity in the set it makes sense if you look at V-Max climax when it comes to the rare cards the concept and the idea of this set Pokémon living their life with their trainers that's why all the art rares have a trainer on them whether it was an art rare which you were getting three of in a box or a CSR where you were usually getting just the one it felt good and there were other too that didn't match right that concept didn't didn't match that identity but that was okay because they didn't take over the set within their own little space in the set they made sense you had trainer cards because we have full art supporter cards and then you had an exclusive one too the galar friends this one was was a little bit better than the others it just stood out that little bit extra and then of course you had gold cards too because you know gold cards they look cool granted the gold cards in Vmax climax weren't amazing but they weren't gy they didn't look ugly they didn't look tacky they you have a set like V Star Universe this is what one of the best sets of all time and I think we can all agree because it takes that concept from Vmax Climax and it levels it up creatures looked at that set and said okay you guys like Vmax climax let's just take it a little bit step further let's do that ramp it up to 11 here's V Star Universe Pokémon living their daily life the theme of varar universe Pokémon just living each card illustrated by a different artist it made sense whether it was just the art rare or the S you were seeing Pokémon in their natural environment just living their best life and of course you had gold cards too but the gold cards were even better the the gold cards were phenomenal this is was this was set the precedent for what gold cards were meant to look like moving forward it was like either this or nothing give me this or give me death I don't want anything below this anymore you had trainer cards and you had two types and this was starting to to push the boundaries a little bit but you got to remember at this point in time everybody was obsessing all a lot of the world a big part of Japan rather I should say was obsessing over full art supporter cards especially ones that had women females on them was just a thing it's another topic for another day we'll get into it we'll get into it eventually but it still made sense you had the SS that were all illustrated by different artists and they all had a different vibe you go and look at cars like roxan or gardenia vigar Melanie ryhan they were just different takes on traditionally awesome cards then you had SRS like the Alis of Sparkle there they were a little bit different they looked like the traditional Sr full art supporter and then you had an expansion of the gala friends concept uh C friends and Hui friends every single kit in this set felt good it made sense then you get the shiny treasury a and yeah these cards do look cool they're basically an expansion of csrs SS Special art rares they're alternate Arts they don't have to have the same identity in cohesion because that's what makes alterate Arts cool they all different it starts to become a problem though when all the rare cards are all over the place that's a goddamn mess and I'm going to turn myself off so we can just properly let this sink in and how much of a mess art mess this entire set is you've got SS but there's only three it's just these three what were they cooking the gold cards are a Abomination and it's such a step back from the gold cards that we had in varar Universe this is probably my biggest gripe with this set is how all over the place the full art supporters are five different types of Full Art supporters five different types of Pokémon cards in the set so many rares it just it just didn't work you don't need me to point this out cuz I think we all really feel the same way about it it just didn't work nobody cared it was J because nobody cared they stopped caring I think people stopped caring because it signaled the end of an era this high class set the best set of the Year wasn't able to elevate beyond what vsar Universe gave us then the future started looking pretty grim and because of that every other card started to dip too it basically brought every other card with it that sentiment was like a plague it was like a blight spread over every other Japanese Pokémon card from 2023 and it brought everything down with it cards like the Miriam s set the standard for the year at least for Chase cards and their price came all the way down cards Beyond or before 2023 like the Lugia V alternate art at its alltime low again it's just the sentiment is in the bin you can grab this card for about 30,000 yen other SS from last year like the God of War X and this is a very playable card it's a tier one deck it has been fall of last year whether it will be post rotation we'll see card's beautiful I love the work of jurus suore you guys know I love the dude um but the value of the card it's in the bin it's close to 10,000 Yen now that's great the the most expensive card of 20 23 nothing was supposed to bring this car's value down down below 100,000 Yen between if you're buying it off mcari about the like the 75,000 85,000 Yen mark this one's crazy this was this this card was 200,000 Yen at one point 2000 Australian that's so expensive granted it's from 2019 but still that couldn't stop what was happening to every other car below 100,000 Yen as well so now it's less than ,000 AUD in the peak of Peaks the highest of highs I don't think any Japanese collector really thought like this would come down that aren't in print anymore so what did that mean well for collectors this was good we went phased people who just collect because they like collecting we're having a good time we welcomed it collectors mostly unfed it was great but the investors they're in the mud investors were having the worst time of their life the worst thing this is literally the worst thing that could have happened if you went hard on this set early thinking that it was going to go up between December and February you're going to have a terrible terrible time and for the opportunists the Pumpers well based on what happened with Vmax climax based on what happened with varar universe and even to an extent V uh shiny star V their expected return just wasn't there and so the opportunists who traditionally look at the long term they they're they're trying to forecast what's going to happen in the 3 to 6 to 12 months who are just basically infatuated with whatever's new what with whatever's hot made the decision Japanese Pokémon cards it just ain't in anymore and there was a new kid in town one piece the one piece TCG this is where you guys probably going to be like what's he cooking where's this come from one piece I know nothing about it if if you haven't heard about one piece you have been hiding this card game is a behemoth one piece is doing things that not even Japanese Pokémon cards did in their PE since its release in the West in 2022 it carved a little corner now more than ever it is taking the Lion Share of attention the one piece card game is an absolute monster if you start with opio 1 which is the first set that came out in December 2022 you go all the way back and you look at the first print of One Piece because there's different print runs the cards don't have any marked fundamental difference outside of Arata cards so cards that had changes to the wording or the ruling of them outside of that there's no way to tell whether the card is from first print or not however the underside of a booster box does literally indicate whether it's the first print or not blue bottom booster boxes of opo 1 ridiculous price and these are recent sales too I've taken these from the last week it doesn't look like it's slowing down anytime soon granted that was opo 1 and the other sets that came out throughout last year haven't done the same thing opo 1 has op2 opo 3 and opio 4 but then opio 5 which came out the exact same literally the exact same time as shiny treasur EX opio 5 this is crazy this is the fourth set that came out last year and this is the set with gear five Luffy on it so if you're a one piece fan this is like I thought this was wicked I don't know why I didn't pre-order a bunch of them remember guys we're in February so it's been barely 3 months since this set has come out opio 5 is expensive much more expensive than varar Universe ever was and V-Max Climax and shiny treasure ex even contemplated being 20 80 USD this is USD prices for a booster box the retail price is 100 so it's nearly three times retail within 3 months that is so much especially when the retail price is 100 already and yeah granted there are supply issues and supply issues always make things a lot harder all the issues that were plagu in Japanese Pokémon cards in 2021 and 2022 they are plaguing the one piece card game as well and it sucks if you're a one piece collector it's a bad time for you I feel you I feel you the TCG like whether or not a card game or a collectible card card game survives for collectors and investors rather for investors usually hinged on whether the TCG is actually good the TCG is an insanely popular and it's offering prizing to players at tournaments in ways the tcgs have never offered before this is an uncut sheet of alterate Arts from op5 and this was given to top 16 participants of Nationals across the world last I checked this sold for $445,000 Australian Pokémon doesn't come anywhere near close to that so the amount of people that are getting involved in the game and that want to keep playing it because the price support is so good super high the artwork in it I mean you just have a look there are Pokémon card artists that are drawing for One Piece TCG as well the art is out of this world the cards look phenomenal whether it's a a rare card like the SRS or these set cards or it's just like the commons uncommons and rares like they are stunning and if you're a one piece fan you are feasting like they're so good does not stop with one piece it just keeps getting better and better and better and then you got cards like this like the the defining Chase cards they're so expensive this is the Chase card from op5 Monkey D Luffy sack Mangal Luffy you probably heard it commonly referred to sold Us listings PSA 10 close to 5,000 USD raw 3,000 USD it's wild I don't think a Japanese Chase card has ever been this expensive within 3 months granted cards like Umbreon Vmax Sr from Eevee Heroes got very close the demand for One Piece it is in satiable right now it's out of this world everything about one piece is peeking right now the opportunist they're feasting right one piece is exactly what the doctor ordered especially after shiny treasury X and it really does feel like if you're an investor one piece is well and truly put Pokémon cards in the mod which is bad if you're an investor but it's great if you're a collector that brings us to now it brings us to the present cards are the most affordable they have been you can buy Chase Japanese Pokémon cards and not feel like you're breaking the bank it's like if youve got a little bit of disposable income it doesn't feel like you're overextending yourself 5,000 yen for a new release alterate R they're the cheapest have been on launch for a very very long time and cards are back on the shelves boxes packs Etc if you're in Japan so we've kind of like returned to 2021 preev Heroes Z and it's not just in Japan either it is internationally too they're offering pre-orders for the next set Crimson Haze and the sets that have just come out in January cyber judge and wild forces they're just sitting there in stock so whether you're in Japan or you're buying of a third party site you Fe them there's only really like five Japanese Pokémon cars that came out last year that are still really really expensive one of those is iono card is really playable still cheaper than it's ever been uh the other is an interesting one Pokemon 151s uh Pikachu master ball 54,8 Yen this card fluctuated I think I had I was hovering over 30,000 yen for the longest time and then I never pulled the trigger cuz I just couldn't justify it because like I said it was in that $300 Australian dollar Mark where it was like do I really want to spend $300 this month on one card these are the exception there are so many other cards Beyond just these from this year Miriam again a card that was po I'm going to say it was at 100,000 Yen at one point I remember seeing it around Japan for 70,000 Yen during worlds now it's below 50,000 yen so if you really wanted this card now is an okay time to do it but just make sure you save your pretty pennies and iono the new Chase trainer card is 34,800 Yen and dropping it's so funny that only like two of the cards I've shown here actually Pokémon cards the most expensive Pokémon card from last year outside of the Pikachu master ball is the Charizard from rule over the black flame and that's a Charizard and it's an alternate art 23,800 Yen if you ignore those cards that are like really expensive and you just look at the new cards that are coming out the other cards Beyond just the the sets one Chase card and remember having discussions with people and we used to talk about this during the streams being like there's just no way that it gets back to those levels again after L Abyss released in Japan and we saw the gutina V alternat it felt like when we're never going to see an alterate art go below 15,000 Yen at launch and now you're seeing cards like the Raging bolt iron Boulder iron leaves all of them previous sets you go back cyber judge it's affordable this this period it's gone and that's normal like I was saying at the side of the stream you can't have the good times forever it's not healthy it's not sustainable if you were there and you capitalized off that run congratulations you did well and I did too I sold a bunch of cards in Japan and I was able to sell cards in Japan and then get Chase cards Grail cards that I thought were going be Out Of Reach I remember you know I traded a lady essentially a lady in a mum for a Karen Umbreon you do that deal in a heartbe you do that deal in a second I don't think that pump hurt anybody except greedy people personally that's my hot take there's the hot take for the stream so with all that said and done does that mean this is the end does that mean it's officially Jova it's joari for Japanese Pokémon cards let's be serious guys this not the end it's the end of that run it's the end of this but it's not the end it's not like pack up your book sell everything go home you had a good run let's move on if you're a collector this is great it's probably the best time to collect Pokémon cards in the last two or three years this is a Warren Buffett quote I never thought I'd put this in a stream but hey here we go the time to get interested is when no one else is so this isn't an investors Channel but let's be serious guys let's keep let's call a spade to Spade I know for a fact that investors watch the people that like invest in Pokémon cards watch this channel why do you think I got up in the suit put the suit in the shirt it's fine I don't care I'm not going to I'm not going to hate or Diss on you guys that only watch this channel because you invest in Pokemon cards you're trying to make money the time to get interested is when no one else is if you're turned off Japanese Pokémon cards as a collector because you think that they're not worth anything anymore then you're not really a collector you're an investor so come to terms with that if you're a collector you're loving this this is great this is the best time to collect like all collectors I think most collectors now anyway are just buying singles and they're having a great old time it's awesome if you're a singles collector you are feasting Now's the Time to kind of like place your best bet anyway but I think you've got a long time to do it I don't think things are going to dramatically shift the way that they did in the last year I think it's going to be a good couple of years before that happens we are 2 years away from the 30th anniversary of Pokémon so I feel like things will get crazy again when the 30th Anniversary happens but that's a while away so if you're going to invest you kind of just have to be patient and if you're a collector lap it up embrace it these are the good times this is when all that angst those fr the frustrations that we had um when you couldn't buy booster boxes when you feel like you're getting priced out that all the fun was gone those days I feel like I can definitively say anyway those days are kind of gone they are gone if you've ever thought about collecting now's a great time to get into it whether you want to buy boxes or you want to buy singles you got a lot of options again if you're chasing Grail is going to be a little bit harder here's my hot tip for those of you that stuck around all the way to this point in the Stream my hottest hot tip is if you're chasing Grail cards but you feel like they're Out Of Reach now I'm talking Grail vintage from like you know the 2000 2010s place your bets now buy cards that you think going to go up in a couple of years now if things work in your favor sell them at that point in time in the highs and then go and get your Grail cards cuz that's what I did cards that I didn't think I was going to ever get like that Ken zon it's in my binder now made possible because of an $80 not even an $80 it was like a $50 lady full art and a man that I paid 100 AUD for so I turned $150 into a $1,500 card pretty good if you ask me but that's all she wrote collect safely everybody and thank you very much for watching my presentation
