Just a few weeks ago, on Sep 20th, 2026, a PSA 10 2008 holo Pokémon card was bought at auction for $6,000 USD.
Less than a month later, another PSA 10 example of this same card sold for $960,000 USD. A quick 160x price move...
(Ignoring the questions we all have about the legitimacy of this price action...) With money like this entering the Pokémon market, there's no question the Pokemon market is still booming.
A 160x price move in a matter of weeks with this $960,000 sale on Fanatics Collect demonstrates the massive demand for Pokémon cards in this on-going boom phase.
But, this market boom has played out differently from the past, and I think recognizing what has changed is important to navigating it.
For one: This boom has been long. In the past, it was common to see the boom phase come and go within a year. This was about how much time it took The Pokémon Company to ramp up their printing and deliver it to market, which inevitably cooled off the boom and transitioned us to the correction phase.
The current boom phase kicked off towards the end of 2024 and has continued for nearly 2 full years to this day.
And, throughout this long boom, we've experienced different categories of Pokémon cards booming at different times.
To understand this, let's look at the 2020 pandemic boom, which kicked off around Nov 2020. The catalyst for this boom was largely attributed to Logan Paul's initial 1st Edition Base Set booster box break, which streamed to millions and reminded many of their love for Pokémon and Pokémon cards.
The first Pokémon cards to boom in 2020 were the same 1st Edition Base Set chase cards, especially the Charizard in high PSA grades, that were featured so prominently in Logan's box break.
But vintage Pokémon cards didn't boom on their own; the modern Pokémon market quickly followed. By the end of the 2020, within a month or two of Logan's break, the latest modern set releases were sold out and reselling for huge markups.
From Nov 2020 until Nov 2021, both vintage and modern Pokemon cards were popular, and saw their prices rise. And, when the market finally crashed, both categories crashed together.
The Pokémon market was unified.
But not anymore.
Since the current boom kicked off at the end of 2024, we've seen many different categories experience a boom cycle independently of other categories.
The boom kicked off primarily with Sword & Shield era modern sealed and singles. Products like the Evolving Skies booster box received a ton of initial attention, and saw prices rise considerably. This was followed by Fusion Strike and Chilling Reign booster boxes, and continued with sharp rises for Crown Zenith.
But, as the modern Pokémon market was booming, vintage appeared dead. Back in mid-November 2024, I pointed out that:
The attention on modern Pokémon is having no effect on the demand for vintage product, including the true masterpiece-tier pieces:
Base Set booster boxes (unlimited, shadowless, and 1st edition) are flat or even down.
1st Edition Base Set Charizard in PSA 10 are in the same position, often selling for around $200,000 USD.
And, even the Illustrator Pikachu seems to be stuck selling around the same $300,000 mark!
Of course, by Sep 2026 everything had changed and Vintage was deep into it's boom, with this article opening with:
Vintage Pokémon cards have been crushing sales records:
A PSA 10 Rayquaza Gold Star just sold at auction for $1 million USD
A PSA 10 Torchic Gold Star, with more than 8 days left in the auction, has already cleared $1.3 million USD.
A PSA 9 Illustrator Pikachu just sold in a private sale, facilitated by Goldin, for $2.7 million USD.
And, today, the modern market is flat or down, especially modern slabs which have seen a significant price correction, while a new category is exploding: Low-population slabs, like the $960,000 holo I mentioned at the beginning of this article.
More money than ever before is flowing into the Pokémon market, but this money is concentrated within a only few categories at any time, instead of spreading out to life the broader Pokémon market as a whole.
Should we expect this style of category-specific boom in the future?
I have no idea. One explanation for this phenomenon is that, as the market for a collectible grows, so does the incidence of category-specific booms. The market gets so big that attention tends to concentrate.
If that's true, then this trend is just the start.
But another explanation is that a small number of individuals, with access to a massive amount of capital, enter the market and focus on a specific category, driving up prices.
This is my best explanation for the current trend of low-pop slabs being bidded up to enormous prices. It feels like the super rich have agreed that nothing matters more than the population number published by PSA...
So, the inevitable question is: What is the next category to boom?
Reply and let me know what you think.
As usual, thank you so much for reading the TCG Buyers Club newsletter. My name's Grey, I buy cardboard, and I'm on a mission to make collecting and investing in Pokémon simple.
Cheers 🍻