>>57759771I'm a purist collector, and either only pay retail, or what I see as being reasonable prices for cards, both in terms of packs and singles on the secondary market. The only cards I've bought recently are ETBs from the Pokémon Center, and a bunch of singles I picked up in Japan.
The problem is that we're currently living in an era of grifters and people trying to make as much money from alternatve revenue streams as possible. If you browse social media, you're never more than a few scrolls away from somebody trying to sell a get rich quick scheme, and living a jetset life.
Because everything is a grift now, everyone is trying to minmax flipping for profit. Combine that with the investor boom in Pokémon over the last five, six years or so, and I Don't think we'll ever go back to reasonable prices.
Then you add into the mix all the nostalgic middle-aged millennials that are trying to relive their childhoods, with many now in high earning positions. They're going to pay top dollar to live out the fantasies they couldn't experience as a child.
>>57759929>>57759969It's even more absurd when you consider that the 1st Edition Charizard from Base was <$400, raw, until around 2016/17. The card was iconic and well known about in 99/00, but still failed to gain financial traction after more than a decade.
Now we are in the era of more cards being printed than ever before, higher quality than Wizards slop that would have the paint layer scratch off from looking at it, and chase cards are hitting >$500 while they're still in print.
We have mass stock buyouts, so even though TPCI are printing more cards than ever before in history, the amount of available stock available is the worst its ever been. We have people fighting in car parks over cards, low availability, and retailers charging several times MSRP. Investors will say that a healthy secondary market is good for popularity, but I'd rather the hobby be quiet and stock stagnant on shelves like in the 10s
