I'm always looking for no-brainer opportunities to buy Pokémon cards.
Those times when the downside risk barely exists, and all you see is upside.
For example, I waited for reprints to crash the price of Japanese 151 booster boxes from $200 USD to near $60. Japanese booster boxes don't get much cheaper than $60: This was a no-brainer buy.
Remember Evolving Skies? Reprints allowed me to pick up booster boxes for less than $100 USD. Back in 2021/2022, English booster boxes didn't get much cheaper than $100. Especially for the best sets. This was a no-brainer buy.
Both of these no-brainer opportunities appeared following a large wave of reprints. Nothing creates no-brainer purchasing opportunities like large reprints:
Those Japanese 151 booster boxes sell for $250 USD or more.
Evolving Skies? Nearly $2,500 USD. (Yes, I should have sold everything I owned in the universe to buy more Evolving Skies booster boxes at the time...)
The reason seems to be that the mechanisms of a large reprint trigger our psychology and cause the market to overreact. We simply aren't built to make intuitive sense of such a dramatic spike in Market Supply (the portion of the overall Stock of product that is available to buy today) that occurs when reprints hit the market.
In the end, the resulting market crash tends to overshoot the fair market price of the product, and those low points end up being strong short-term buying opportunities.
This was the scenario I watched play out that created no-brainer prices for Japanese 151 and Evolving Skies booster boxes.
But, there's still a problem with Destined Rivals booster boxes: The market price of $400 USD is still 2.5x the MSRP price of $162.
These are not no-brainer prices. These boxes are expensive.
The difference is the phase of the Collectibles Cycle we're in.
When Japanese 151 crashed, the reprints brought the entire Japanese market into the Correction Phase. All modern Japanese booster boxes saw their prices crash at the same time.
The same happened with Evolving Skies: It was one of many reprints that crashed the market for English products. This was the same crash that created the infamous $79.99 Chilling Reign and Fusion Strike booster boxes.
Today, the English Pokémon market has not crashed. Sure, prices have been trending slightly downwards, but they are still high.
The risk of my purchase is rooted in what the market does next:
If we maintain the Boom Phase for another year or more, this may be the last time we see a price as low as $400 for Destined Rivals booster boxes.
If we enter the Correction Phase, all prices will fall and Destined Rivals, with its glut of recent reprints, is primed to crash even more.
There's no question buying Destined Rivals booster boxes today is risky.
I bought them anyway.
There are a couple reasons to this decision:
I have long-term conviction in Pokémon cards,
I think Destined Rivals is one of the stronger recent sets, and
I do not need to sell over the short-term. If prices crash, I can wait.
For me, I would rather have a position in an excellent product today so I'm sure to capture the upside I anticipate. I felt it's worth risking a 50% (or more) loss in the short-term to make sure I've captured that upside.
I've often written that, if you have a long-term perspective on Pokémon cards, the kinds of short-term market movements we agonize over are irrelevant.
This is what I'm talking about.
As usual,
Thanks 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 🍻
P.S. Have you bought any Destined Rivals following this reprint? Or do you think the market will be lower in another 6 months, 1 year, more? Reply and let me know!