>>50076708hahaha, I was worried about this, but I think there is actually still room to grow. Significantly even. Sure, the sports card world is a much bigger hobby, of a much larger entertainment sector (though, pokemon and video games are no slouch in this department), with people that are willing to throw lots of money around -- but I honestly think pokemon can follow... eventually.
The sports cards that sell for big dollars are ones that were printed mostly well before 2000, and most before 1960. English pokemon has only been around since 1999. Also, the people that purchase 1930s baseball cards for hundreds of thousands aren't millennials or zoomers, it's boomers that are finally spending their cash that they've stockpiled into shit from their childhood.
Pokemon is "*just* entering the stage where millennials can spend their excess cash on it. We haven't even remotely hit the boomer-tier money spending yet which will happen in 30-40 years.
I agree that current hypermodern sets are being preserved very well. But this happened in the 90s to comic books and sports cards, which had a similar revival like pokemon is currently experiencing, leading people to preserve those items well for "investing" in the future. But after that hype died down, people became disinterested, and then sports cards that were printed later on are now expensive again as there was less interest in preserving those by GenXers.
So yes, pokemon cards still have a long way to go. English cards are 23 years old. From a collectible standpoint, that's infancy, not maturity. Your hyper modern rainbow rare probably won't hold its value, but your Misty's Gyarados 1st ed will.
