Investing in Pokemon cards
Investing in Pokemon cards has become increasingly popular. This is all because pokemon came out with the app Pokemon GO in 2016. After this, the franchise rose in popularity and that has only increased. Since the corona in 2020, Pokemon cards are more popular than ever before, but does it still make sense to invest in Pokemon cards? That is what we are going to explore in this Pokemon blog. In fact, there are many ways to invest in Pokemon cards. Please note that we only give our opinion, not financial advice.
Why invest in Pokemon cards in 2023
By investing in Pokemon cards with the right knowledge, connections, patience and some luck, you can make a lot of money. It is important that you are a Pokemon fan or collector, though. After all, it takes you a very long time to build the right knowledge and connections. Think about you being able to start predicting what a popular Pokemon series is going to be. Take the 2021 Sword & Shield Evolving skies set, when it came out the Pokemon booster boxes of it were only around 115 euros. Meanwhile, by mid-2023, these are already toward 400 euros per box. So that means that when you sell that booster box now for 400 euros you make a profit of 285 euros per box. That’s really an extreme amount of money in a relatively short period of time. But, then again, this is immediately the best set of the entire Pokemon Sword & Shield era.
Which Pokemon cards are currently doing very well in terms of investment?
Right now, there are three things that are doing very well within the Pokemon world. The special Japanese Pokemon cards, sealed products such as booster boxes and the somewhat older cards from the Sun & Moon era and especially the alternate arts. These are all rising at a rapid pace, the Japanese hype seems to be forming its peak now.
Japanese Pokemon cards hype
Since the advent of Pokemon Scarlet & Violet, Japanese wifu (Japanese trainer cards) have had a surge. These are really substantial increases. The arrival of Miriam at Scarlet & Violet Base and Iono at Scarlet & Violet Paldea have stirred up all sorts of things. Again with the very latest set, the most expensive card is again a Japanese trainer wifu namely the Erika SAR with the Pokemon 151 set. These are rising considerably, and with the new sets coming out, they are also very expensive right away. In short, Japanese female trainers are now a real success and many people are collecting them. Check out a picture of a pair of Japanese trainer wifus below, the Misty was 80 euros recently and is already going for 1000+ euros in a PSA 10.
Furthermore, Japanese Pokemon cards have seen further increases. For example, all older special boxes go up significantly, now take the Eevee heroes special Espeon box. This one was 600 euros six months ago, now they are already going for towards 2000 euros. Not to mention all the special Japanese Pikachu promo cards. Think of the Pikachu poncho promos and much more. Prices are currently going through the roof and reaching new highs. Japanese Pokemon card collectors are currently being well rewarded for their patience. Will this hype continue? Or was it a temporary hot flash? Only time can tell us!
Sun & Moon Pokemon cards rise hard
Those who invested in the Sun & Moon era should still check out their collections and Pokemon cards. The big hits including alternate arts and tag-team GXen are soaring. For example, the Latios & Latias GX tag-team was a few 100 euros recently, but is already ticking over 1000 euros today. And so there are 10s of other examples. Did you start collecting after 2017 and into 2019? Then take a good look at your cards, or your master sets. In fact, there are real gems among them that have sometimes increased in value by more than 300%. This, of course, is because we have entered the next era the Scarlet & Violet era. Now the prices of Sun & Moon booster packs are skyrocketing and so are the rare cards. So take a look at your collection I would say. To find out how much your Pokemon cards are worth, we developed a special Pokemon Cardchecker!
Sun & Moon Latios & Latias Tag-Team GX card
Investing in sealed Pokemon products
Surely one of the very best investments you can make is simply in the dense products. When a set comes out, the products are often at their lowest, and otherwise after a year. Then everyone can pick them up cheaply, and as time withers, fewer and fewer boxes and boosters remain. As a result, they are becoming increasingly scarce, as The Pokemon Company no longer prints them. So with every booster or booster box that opens, there is one less in the world. And a lot of them open up, just think about the products you open yourself or your favorite streamer. As we mentioned above with the Evolving Skies set, all booster boxes seem to be going back to the 140/160 euros each from the Sword & Shield era. A year ago, 100 a 110 per box was still a fairly normal price that you saw regularly. What is also sometimes very smart is to wait for blackfriday. That’s when all Pokemon stores in the Netherlands hold a big sale, and you can stock up on sealed pokemon products cheaper. After this, you can let them mature nicely and in a few years you will see for yourself if they have gone up or not.
Pokemon booster boxes safely stored in an acrylic case
Should I start investing in Pokemon cards or not?
Whether you want to invest in Pokemon cards is, of course, entirely up to you. We do and just give our view and expertise on it. As you could read above, the older sets go up by themselves, but this takes a lot of time. Because take the Sun & Moon increases in recent months, those sets are often 5+ years old as well. And of course, don’t forget that many mistakes can also be made, especially when you are just new to the world of Pokemon cards. There are so many things to start paying attention to, there are so many items and cards with potential. And then on top of that, you have to start investing so many hours researching and consulting with other collectors. So it is quite a big job, but if you are a real enthusiast it is definitely possible for everyone!
Investing in graded Pokemon cards
Another part of investing in Pokemon cards are the graded Pokemon cards. And we are referring mostly to PSA and Beckett, but sometimes CGC can also provide some. When you have a Pokemon card loose, it is always worth less than a PSA 10 or Beckett 10. By getting your Pokemon cards graded at these companies and scoring the highest grade you increase the value of the card. But the card is also better protected and an expert has already determined the condition so you don’t have to do that yourself. The downside to degrees? It quickly costs like 20 euros per card and you have to wait months before they come back. Another nice plus to grading Pokemon cards is a Black label from Beckett, these are worth much more than a PSA 10. But you don’t score a blacklabel easily with Beckett, for that you have to score a 10 on all subcategories as well. So you really need a perfect card, but once you have one it does increase the value considerably! We ourselves send our cards mainly to PSA, this is the best known company and the return times are not too long. When you send your cards to PSA Cards today you will have them back in about 2 to 5 months. And then, of course, you have to hope for a lot of PSA 10s, so don’t send some randomly. But you must first learn how to determine if a ticket has potential 10!
Pokemon is the biggest anime Merchandise
Another useful thing to mention in this blog about investing is that Pokemon is the very biggest Anime Franchise. So this is the very most popular Anime worldwide with the very largest sales. Nintendo is so big, who around the world doesn’t know it? And then we have the game Pokemon Go, this game has so many players, it’s not normal anymore. And let Pokemon just release a special Pokemon GO set last year. This all plays into it, of course, and Pokemon is bigger than ever right now.
Closing
Hopefully this way we have taught you a little more about investing in Pokemon cards. Whether you ultimately decide to actually invest in Pokemon cards or not is entirely up to everyone. We can, however, recommend that you open some booster packs or look up your old collection in the attic. After all, these can already be worth quite a bit of money, but well that too is entirely up to everyone. All we do know is that more and more people are getting on the Pokemon train. Until the next blog!