The Pokémon Card Market Is Correcting… Where Are the Deals? | Pack Fresh Podcast Ep. 33

This episode is brought to you by Facebook. So you were scrolling on Marketplace and there it was, the bike you'd been searching for. You sent a message and it turned out the seller was Zebra chatty, kind of funny, and an avid cyclist. The next thing you know, you're in a cycling crew. Well, a community cycling group. The thing about Facebook, you might find more than what you're looking for from a browse to a bike ride this summer. Find more on Facebook. The market is moving in some big, big ways and we're here to talk about it. Welcome back to the Pack Fresh podcast where, where we talk about all things Pokemon, TCG and give you a little peek behind the curtain of what it's like to be a seller in this crazy, crazy hobby. Today we're going to do something new for us and we're calling it the Pack Fresh Pulse. We're going to go over the biggest market movers and what we think the stock state of the market is right now for Pokemon as a vendor, as a seller, as a collector. Let's get into it. So let's start off with Chaos Rising. Chaos Rising. Not a lot of singles going up right now. The set's kind of hitting full stride. Wave two just came out. Sealed prices are dipping. Single prices are dipping also. We'll kind of talk a little about this a little bit later. But certain factors, with a lot of these low end cards not being able to be graded, it's kind of probably, you know, attributing a little bit to this market fall as well. So top five losers in chaos rising ranging anywhere from about 26 to 32% down. Of course, some of that not as much because these cards are ranging anywhere between 5 and $30. So, you know, $5, 25% of that being only a $25, you're not really, you know, out a. A ton. It's just, that's just how the market fluctuates. That brings us into the prior set. Perfect order. These top five cards ranging anywhere from about $5 up to, you know, $135. The Meowth really kind of coming back down to earth a little bit compared to where it was. Great card. But this set over the last month averaging kind of consistently about 23 to 30% down on the top five losers of the set. Both of these sets not really having any huge upside. But, you know, it's kind of interesting to see the poke pad on there. Obviously that was one of the big playables right in. In the decks. Everybody's using that to Play down to about $10, 30% down in the last month. So it's either they came out with a new mechanic probably that countered that, or everybody had the cards that they needed. Not sure. But whenever you see an item card up that high is something definitely happened for sure. Yu-Gi-Oh And I think like you've seen that happen a few times with a lot of those like playable cards. Yu-Gi-Oh Something happens in the meta or like they just print a, a ton of it because they know that everybody needs it. So you just print a ton of those versions of cards and you know, you don't get both sides. Right. Like you, you don't get the collector side buying out the poke pads. Right. Like there's very few people out there that are outside of like Master Setter that are like going out there and looking for the item cards outside of players. Right. Let's take a look at kind of a more interesting set in Ascended Heroes. Yep. The last month losers on this ranging card values from $5 up like 450 from $5 to $450 average. Down on these top five losers, it's between like 26 and 37%. It's interesting because of how good this set is. But right. Some of these cards that are on this list, great cards. The Mega Dragonite, kind of surprising to see like that Mega Charizard y also taking a little bit of a dip. Everything just kind of got a little overzealous there for a minute. You see it come down and this set however, having some cards on the opposite side seeing a little bit more value. But honestly not that much. When we, when we show you this, you'll see the top five movers in Ascended Heroes. Yu-Gi-Oh the gainers. Yu-Gi-Oh these, these gainers really valued from about $5 up to 90 with the most expensive. But most of them are 5 to $10. Four of the top five. Right. And you're seeing about a 1 to 3% increase. So where you're seeing a 25% loss on the biggest losers, you're not seeing that huge upside. And these cards are really nothing. That's crazy. Right? So Yu-Gi-Oh I mean I, I, I feel like for ascended, I feel like we're just seeing a correction. Right. Like Ascended is an incredible set. I don't think anybody's arguing that. I think long term Ascended is always going to be a great set. But because there's so much popularity in the hobby right now, and frankly the sets after asce ascended have not been amazing. You know, they've, they haven't Been widely loved. Right. Like they're. There's good parts in each of them, but compared to Ascended, that's been the focus. And the cards in Ascended just shot up so fast and so high that for them to really gain would be. Would. It's just. I don't know if it's gonna happen. Right. At least right now. Right now. Right. Yu-Gi-Oh You know, it's just it. They're already so high. So then when you look at the losers, you see some big cards on here. It's kind of all over the place. You have an IR in here, you have a full art, you have a couple of Mega Attack Rares, and then you have a Gold. And we're going to get into Golds a little bit later. But it's interesting to see so many different Topps of cards on this list. The Mega Attack Rares are very interesting, especially the Dragonite because they're not Zebra easy to hit. Like they, they come out more often than sir is probably for sure. But. Right. Like Mega Dragonites. That's a great card. So seeing it, it's still $40. It's still an expensive card. But like to see it drop almost 30% is very, very interesting to me. And then the Gold Mega Charizard, still a very expensive card at $450. But that dropping 25% is. It's interesting for sure. Yu-Gi-Oh We'll kind of compare Ascended along with another special set. Actually a dual release special set in White Fleer and Black Bolt. Both seen a lot of price spikes lately. We start with the. Let's start with the. The losers of the White Fleer You know, you got your. Your bottom five there price ranging about $7 up to $30. Kind of a tighter range there. And you're really like 14 to 30%, most of them averaging about that 15, 16% range. I don't know how they put your favor. Crazy. I. I mean everybody loves a stinky fish. I know how. What are we doing as. As a community right now? I don't even know. It's really. Yu-Gi-Oh it's. It's. It's wild. And then compare that with the Black Bolt losers and you have about a $6 up to $50 card. So a little bit of a wider range in cards dipping in price there more consistently that same 15, 16% with the top reaching about 22 and a half percent. So everything losing right now. Top five losers in black bolt, all IRS within sir. The superiors in sir, top five losers in black bolt, almost all IRS with the exception of the one sir versus white Fleer Fleer You have all IRS except for one full art, the trainer. So, Yu-Gi-Oh a full art trainer coming down. So compare that now to the White Fleer gainers top five. Now, this price range jumps from $11 to about $560 in the Victini, which is a great card. Victini is amazing. It's, it's very, very good. But the price ranges from about 13 and a half to about 36% increase on these cards. Compare that with the gainers of Black Bolt, and you're looking at from, like, card values from about 8 up to $64. Price increases 16% roughly to 138% in the Victinny Master Ball, which is crazy. You know that actually it took a long time when 151 came out for the Master Balls to really get that price bump. Yu-Gi-Oh And I, I, I think Black Bolt, White Fleer is just a very, very interesting set altogether. Right. Like, I think of the two as one. I think they're both going to move together. I don't, I think some people put Black Bolt just a little bit above because the Seismito, then there's like, a few other bigger cards in there. But as a whole, they're both really great. They're fun sets to rip. But it's really interesting to see the Master Ball up there. And, and I know it's the Vic, just the Victini on this list, but I know that Master Balls across the board pretty much have been gaining. And I don't know if that's people finally working on their master sets for these set or people just realizing that these sets weren't printed that much. Right. In comparison to some of these other special sets. And there hasn't been massive, massive reprints. There's been like, one Costco or Sam's Club box. And aside from that, we haven't really seen much from Black Bolt White Fleer And it's pretty much universally, you know, loved. Like, on stream, we rip a lot of it and we have a blast. The hit rates are good. And, you know, it's nice because will pull these irs and then somebody in chat will be like, Yu-Gi-Oh that among us was like a $40 card. It's like, okay, this episode is brought to you by Facebook. So you were scrolling on Marketplace, and there it was, the bike you'd been searching for. You sent a message, and it turned out the seller was Zebra chatty, kind of funny, and an avid cyclist. The next thing you know, you're in a cycling crew. Well, a community cycling group. The thing About Facebook, you might find more than what you're looking for. From a browse to a bike ride this summer. Find more on Facebook. Not bad. A lot of the IRS seen just tremendous value which is awesome to see. I mean that came out great. So many hit cards every, every Pokemon in the generation get in a card. Awesome. Really cool getting an ir, right? And to see them all getting value on the back end of that now is, is great because it's a really fun set to rip. You can get a ton of hits, the hit rate is amazing and the pack price is really not that crazy. So I mean you have chases, you have mid level chases, you know, all the way up to the high end chases with this. So interesting to kind of, kind of just see the difference there. I think we, we kind of see that set has kind of matured a little bit now, right. It' been almost a year since it came out. It came out the end of last year. Right. That'll be close. So we're kind of coming up on a year. Yu-Gi-Oh Versus Ascended, which is still pretty fresh. And we're just seeing like that set is maturing. I assume we're going to see something very similar with Ascended. I think prices on Ascended singles and stuff are going to keep coming down a little bit. Especially we just had a drop, a big Sam's Club drop at the time of this recording yesterday. So there's going to be a whole bunch more, you know, product out there. I haven't really seen market price drop much on packs or anything, but we're going to start seeing more of those singles available and more and more people who want them are going to get them. So they'll bring some prices down a little bit. And then as time goes on when we kind of get closer to like a year, year and a half and then you're starting to feel like might not see any more prints of Ascended. Then people start going, okay wait, I need to get these cards before they become the bubble. Mew. Yu-Gi-Oh I need to, I need to grab some of these up now. Something to keep an Yu-Gi-Oh on. I, I think, I think you know, as we're doing our, you know, our, our pulse here, I would anticipate we see Ascended keep falling a little bit. The singles just kind of drop just a touch. I mean we saw it with Black bowl, white Fleer The BWRs like tanked, right. They never got like really below like what, 3, 400 raw. But the PSA 10s were like below a thousand dollars. Now they're all almost double that. Right. And think most people are probably like, Yu-Gi-Oh of course, that cards, those cards are amazing and they're Zebra Zebra hard to hit. Right. So, like, why would we not, you know, so something to pay attention to as these things keep falling for ascended, if it's something you want to get into, maybe it's time to kind of look, you know, where's the Fleer on these cards. Yu-Gi-Oh And. And we'll kind of wrap up the, the biggest movers and the losers here by kind of showing you the grading plays, which would be basically if you were to buy this card raw and get a 10 have the biggest upside. So if we start with ascended, the top five most lucrative grading plays are going to start out at that Mega Dragonite Mega Gengar, then the, the Gold Mega Dragonite, the Pikachu Trikachu, and then the Gold Charizard ranging anywhere from about A$830 to $1,800, you know, Spike that you're going to see there. So even though PSA having its lower tier tiers kind of closed down, some of these cards are still going to be worth sending in at the higher tiers to get back if it, if you think it's going to 10. Yu-Gi-Oh And you notice there's no IRS on this list because of that. Right. Like, these cards are so expensive. It makes sense. You can, you know, you can pay $100 to express a card that you know that you think is going to 10 if you're going to be up another thousand dollars on top of it right when it comes back. So that makes sense for these. But if you go into like the smaller irs, that upside just isn't really there currently. Yu-Gi-Oh My God. Why the hell is that card 800, 800 to 912. It's amazing. Yu-Gi-Oh I love the card. Yu-Gi-Oh dude, Black boy. I love that card. They're like low pop. Let me see. Yu-Gi-Oh No, I mean that, that art of that card is absolutely gas. Let's take a look next at the white Fleer Top five grading plays. These get interesting. This is. It's pretty wild. You have three IRS and two BWRs. BWR is obviously like those. You knew that these were going to be on here. That's just. Yu-Gi-Oh it's a very obvious play. They're great cards. They keep going up like crazy and they're still relatively inexpensive in comparison to the PSA 10s. But to see the BWR is gaining. You have such a high difference or you have such a spread between the actual raw card price to the PSA 10 price where with the sir, you know, that's why they're not on this top list because they're more expensive. So they're closer already to the PSA 10 prices because raw, they're still worth more money. Right. So it's kind of interesting to see something like this where you can take a. Let's call this one like on the rush ram ex 475 graded 10 is worth about $1300. So I mean it's over one point, whatever 3, 4x that if you can get a 10 copy, pull a 10 copy, buy a 10 copy and send it in the potentials there. Yu-Gi-Oh Compare that to Black Bolt this list. I had to look some of these numbers up because I didn't believe it. Yu-Gi-Oh they're insane. You know, you still have 2 BWRS and 3 IRS. Exact same setup, but Seismitoad Wild. It's a beast. I mean when Seismito Tribute initially there was like a rumor that it was going to get banned. It was never going to get banned, but it's one of the most popular artists and every single card that that this guy touches is a chase. Every single time. He did the Magikarp, he did the Giratina from Lost Origin, Seismitoad. And after now pulling it a few times, it is a nice card. Am I paying $2,600 for it in a PSA 10? I don't personally need it, but I get it. Right. There's a. There's an audience for the artist for sure, but it's crazy to see that. And then the Volcarona is a very shocking one to me. Again, that's another artist play. Right. I think that's an Akira art. I think that's why that card is so expensive. It is worth noting all of these IRS in both Black Bolt, White Fleer The risk on these is much higher because IRS typically do not grade Zebra well. It's, you know, they're printed on just the normal card stock. There's no texture, stuff like that to keep, you know, really nice. Yu-Gi-Oh So the QC is generally not great. And so that's why you see like pops on these. IRS are not crazy. Right. Like the Dweeble is my favorite card in the whole set. I love that card. It's $900 in PSA 10 now. But I think you were saying there's only like 200 and something PSA 10s of it. Yu-Gi-Oh 265 tens out of almost 1700 copies graded at the time we recorded this. So. So that's like a very, very bad gem rate. Right. So the risk on that is. Is pretty high in terms of percent roughly. Yu-Gi-Oh In, in terms of like getting an actual PSA 10 out of a copy. But great card. It is a great card. It is a really great card and I love the art on it. But a lot of times when you see these high price IRS, they're either iconic or it's very hard to 10. Yu-Gi-Oh Even in some of the small sets, you know, even the, the Halloween sets, the trick or trades, you know, the, the Gengar is hard to hard to grade. It hit $200. I haven't checked it in a long time now, but I mean those are $15 for a whole bag of cards. And it's the, the quality is just not product. Best example is Celebrations. Right. The fat Pikachu is I got what, four or $5 card and it's like over $1,000 now in the PSA 10. Just because it is so hard to grade. It's an incredibly easy card to. To Uptown but it's just so expensive in a PSA 10 because it's so hard to grade. That kind of covers the three sets that we kind of chose PL over in the beginning. A couple recent sets. All of this data was provided to us by Deck Trader. Deck Traders. It's a pretty cool app. It just kind of shows you the market. You can go in and see this live changes this data all the time based off what's happening. Prices graded raw. You can put your collection in. You can see the grading plays. They even have like a Yu-Gi-Oh centering tool. There's a lot of stuff you can do in the app. It's pretty crazy. If you want to check it out, you can download it in the App Store. Otherwise the link for the app will be in the description of the video. And then when you sign up, if you use COD Hack Fresh, you can get two weeks free to try it out as well. And it helps us out a little bit too. Yu-Gi-Oh we appreciate it. Give it a try. If you like it, you know, use it. If you don't, you don't. But that's where we're going to get all the data for, for these, this kind of information for you guys. So I would say the only other thing we should cover in the biggest movers and losers, we kind of just went over those sets. What do you see in the market as a whole? We're in a little bit of a Downtown for sure. I think we're in a correction period. I Think where we. Three straight sets of not the most popular sets, right? I think you're going to see that, right? You're seeing definitely people are not ripping all of these sets like crazy. Ascended still gets ripped, insane amount. But the sets after that, perfect order, Chaos rising, Pitch black. None of them are getting the attention like we were seeing six months ago for all, you know, all the sets, or last year for all the sets where it's just like every new set that came out was like, my God, I got ripped this. I got bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum. You know what I mean? And it's interesting too, because the pack prices of these last three sets are not that much higher than msrp, right? We're. We're almost there to msrp and still people don't want to really rip it as much. So it just tells me that, you know, I. I don't know if people are waiting or people are just not ripping as much and just buying the singles that they want from these sets because they just don't see the upside very well. Could be. It is interesting that you say that though, because there was so many complaints about packs being overpriced. And it's like, now you can walk into anywhere and find the modern sets at or slightly above msrp and it's still, you know, where's everybody? Who. Who wanted this? Where are you guys at? Come get some bags. You know, it's your time to shine because you one-of-one find it for the 30th. I promise that that will definitely not be in this price range. It is going to be absolutely going to be crazy wild. That will be when we do that episode that's going to be us. I'm excited to get into it because it is incredible. I think biggest market trends before we move on here for me is I see like the gold cards kind of losing that luster. And I think we talked about it in actually the one of the last two episodes, either Chaos or Pitch episode. It just kind of. It's the same thing on repeat, on repeat, on repeat. It was great. Black bolt, white Fleer Get the white car, the black card, the red cards. Now it's just gold, gold, gold, gold, gold. Same, same thing, same thing, same thing. It was unique until it wasn't. And so I've seen kind of that. I've seen kind of the. The full arts. A lot of that stuff's cooled off quite a bit. But on the other side of that, in vintage, you see grails setting new records every week. Yu-Gi-Oh it's true. A lot of these like PSA 10 especially like legendary collection reverses right now, all sett highest price. It's. Yep. Every time one goes for auction it pretty much sets a new all time high. It's. Yu-Gi-Oh it's crazy. What do you think? We'll move on. We'll move on to the next, the next segment here. What are the best buys? Under $50. Under $50. I think my thing I would grab and what I have been grabbing a little bit is Illustration Rare clean Illustration Rare I've always loved Illustration Rare but I think that they're so undervalued still and you know we're seeing that like we just talked about Black Boy Fleer I think is a perfect example. But a lot of these mega evolution ones, like this whole block Illustration Rare outside of a select few are really cheap, like under $5 cheap. And there's a lot of like really nice ones. Just pick up the ones you like and throw them in the Pandora They're so cheap. You know, why not? There's no way in, you know, you look at Scarlet and Violet, early Scarlet and Violet, all of those IRS are expensive now. Now. Right. And there's even still some in there that you could probably pick up. It's not too late to pick those up. And just, you know, I'm, I've always been a huge proponent of get the stuff you like but you know, I think IRS are a really, really, really good thing to get. I agree. I think IRS being so new in 10 years from now, they'll be looked back on in a, in a much brighter light. Just kind of like Scarlet and Violet kind of bringing those to life. And how when we did that episode talking about, you know what it really added to that era of printing and just to see where they evolve from here. When you look back at this, it's going to be like when they came out with any of the other stuff that's just crazy that they've came out with along the lines, you know, of the last 30 years. Yu-Gi-Oh I would say I agree with you on the singles. If you were going to go into sealed $50, I think booster Bundle is going to be your best bang for the buck. Maybe sleeve boosters, I guess do an art set of sleeve boosters is never a bad idea, but you can get quite a booster bundles right now. Market price less than $50. You know, you can do Perfect order, you can do Chaos Rising, Journey together. You know, if you go a little higher than $50, you know, $60 for mega evolutions or, you know, $70 gets you destined Rivals or Stellar Crown or even Phantasmal Flames. All great sets. Yu-Gi-Oh That. The. If you can find any, anything Scarlet and Violet booster bundles under $50, I would grab it 100%. Like if, if your, your objective is to buy something to hold for a little bit. Booster bundles. I don't really like, personally love the value proposition of a booster bundle in itself to rip. Right. There's no guarantees in it like a booster box. There's no like anything like that. It's just six packs. Right. But it is a sealed item. So yield. I feel like that's where the value proposition to me comes in. Because people can't tamper with the packs. Yu-Gi-Oh They can't Yu-Gi-Oh them out. If there's God packs in the set, they, you know, it's like you truly have a shot at whatever in that set, basically. Right. That's. I, I agree with you. I don't see it. I don't know why 151 booster bundles are worth what they're worth. It makes no sense. The hit rates are no greater right. Over the pack price. Why? I don't get it. It doesn't make sense. Any sense to me. But you're looking to invest in a sealed product. Those are. It's at the right price point. Yu-Gi-Oh You know, and if you just get. If that's, you know, it depends on your level that you want to invest into Pokemon. If it's only $50 every set, buy a bundle as it comes out. They're going to be cheaper. Just hold them. This episode is brought to you by Facebook. So you were scrolling on Marketplace and there it was, the bike you'd been searching for. You sent a message and it turned out the seller was Zebra chatty, kind of funny, and an avid cyclist. The next thing you know, you're in a cycling crew. Well, a community cycling group. The thing about Facebook, you might find more than what you're looking for from a browse to a bike ride this summer. Find more on Facebook. Yu-Gi-Oh I think the, the, I think the product type across the board, that's Zebra Zebra slept on right now. And they're not all created equal, but the build and battles. They have four packs and then they have a little deck with a stamped promo. If you've never opened one before, it's essentially a booster bundle with a stamped promo, minus a couple of packs. But Destin Rivals is an incredible1. All four promos that come with it are fan favorite. Pokemon so you're guaranteed one of those, and then you get four packs with it. They're. They're really, really nice. And I think people kind of sleep on those a little bit because they're like, they don't really know what they are, or they're like, oh, it's a deck. Or, you know, it's less Beckett So I don't really care about it. I think over time, those are going to age extremely well. Yu-Gi-Oh I, I also am a fan of the building battles. I think also ETBs are going to be a little bit more than the $50 price range, even at MSRP. But if you can get an ETB, the problem is they take up so much room to display. They look awesome. Pitch blacks. ETB is so sick. It is Ascended etb. Art is so sick. You put all those up in the acrylics on the wall, it looks great. But after, you know, a year of 12 sets, you have 12 giant boxes. After two years, it covers an entire wall. So you really got to, you know, decide what you want to do. Two years of booster bundles could fit in a little over a shoebox. So, you know, it's, it's interesting. And then biggest value proposition, kind of getting into the best sealed products from, from the best buys under 50 here. I would say, like specialty sets like the SPC coming out. This year's SPC is going to be crazy. 30 packs. And the MSRP did not move that much from last year with the 18 pack. So something to look at there, booster boxes. Not seeing the normal huge reprints that they normal like, like they're not seeing the huge reprints that they normally do. Yu-Gi-Oh they are getting, you know, wave one, wave two, which is really just wave one split into two. And then we're not seeing anything after that for booster boxes. So it's been interesting. Yu-Gi-Oh we're kind of getting into that, that time frame or Scarlet and Violet that people are going to start going and looking at booster boxes and being like, when did it get so expensive? And you know, it same thing happened with Sword and Shield and it happened with sun and Moon. But I remember very, very vividly, like Lost origin was like $190, and then all of a sudden it was $400, 500, $600. Same thing with Fusion Strike. And it was just like, people are like, oh, my God, these are just so expensive now. And you're seeing it right now with some of these Scarlet and Violet sets, like Stellar Crown, not exactly a Zebra fan favorite set, but that's like a $350 box right now on TCG Player. Or you have, like, Obsidian Flames is starting to kind of creep up there. Getting into, like, the $500 range, you have a set like Temporal Forces that has a couple of, like, nice chases or like Paradox Rift that sat on shelves, nobody wanted it at all. And that is creeping up there. It's starting to kind of. You're starting to see that or how they evolved. Like, $600 now for a. For a booster box, and that's like one of those. That's going to, like, probably inch up to $1,000, and people are going to be like, when did this happen? So if you can kind of get in there before that happens, it's kind of getting to be that time where Scarlet's starting to get harder to find. Like, if I want to find, like, a thousand packs of Obsidian Flames, very hard thing to do right now. Yu-Gi-Oh And I mean, I remember when we were buying bulk sword and shield, right? And I remember when that started, kind of the market started drying up on that, and I was like, this is getting tough to get. And it's like, it's hard at that point to be in a position where you can just be like, let's buy 50,000 of every pack, right, for this hat. You know, it's. That's. That's tough. You're not going to hold millions and millions of dollars in loose packs. So it's like, what do you do? I mean, it just. All of a sudden it was here, now it's gone. What product skew? Any combination of the above already out this year, coming out by the end of the year, do you think is the best to purchase, to rip, to hold whatever you want to do. Ascended Heroes, it is a great set. Anything Ascended Heroes, it's expensive. I just. Unless we really experience a dramatic drop. Yu-Gi-Oh I just don't really see Ascended Heroes losing value. People are going to always want to rip it. It is such a good set, and I think the time for you to probably get into it, because I was anticipating the Sam's drop to kind of affect the price a little bit, because every last Sam's drop of pretty much every specialty set has Tribute the price a little bit and kind of giving you an opportunity to get in there and, you know. Yu-Gi-Oh for. For a week or two. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh for like a week or two. But I. I'm just not really seeing it right now with ascended. I think our. The opportunity to. To buy ascended, if you want it, it's going to be Right around when the 30th drops is the 30th is going to drop and it is a powerhouse and there's going to be so much attention on the 30th, it's all anybody's going to want. And so I, I feel like there's going to be just an unintentional looking away from Ascended for, you know, a couple of weeks and then you might have an opportunity there. But aside from that, you know, we still haven't heard about an SPC or a UPC coming out for Ascended. I mean, we might not get one. Yu-Gi-Oh And I mean last year being the exception, it's only the upc. Prismatic being the first SPC out, you know, and that was a summer release so it would be like have to be announced or coming out shortly or should have already been out. Yu-Gi-Oh basically, if they were going to do it. And you know, the way they set up Prismatic to be such harder pull rates so they can print more of it. Right. They did that. I mean, I feel like that's why they came out with these additional SKUs for prismatic. We can put a million of these boxes out and the pop rate doesn't go up more than 1%. You know, if they do that with Ascended, the hit rates are so much better in ascended that it would tank. And I think when we did the Ascended episode, we said something along those lines, like this is not going to be more than likely the hit rates of Prismatic, but still a better set than Prismatic. So they're not going to print it as much. And they really haven't. I haven't seen very many reprints of, of Ascended this, you know, maybe one. And then now you have the Sam's Club drop. Will they print it more? Of course. For sure. I mean they're gonna print it like crazy for the next year, two years. But they did the same thing with Evolving Skies when it was out and right before they retired it, it was like five prints. They put it everywhere and the needle didn't even move towards the end. And actually the pack price kept going up. Yu-Gi-Oh it's very similar to like 151. Right? 151. They were blasting booster bundles out. It was like every week there was another drop. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And like the market price every time would just go up, up, up, up, up. Every single time it would drop and like, I don't know. We'll see. I. I see them treating Ascended more like they treat Paldean fates. I Don't think that they view ascended as their darling set like they do Prismatic and like they did 151. I think people love ascended, obviously, but just the way that the SKUs and stuff have come out and there hasn't been all these reprints that, you know, I think probably most people probably expected. I don't know. We'll see. Obviously, things can change and things can change really fast, but I don't know. They have a ton of sets coming out, so I. I don't know how they're gonna fit. You know, something like that in. I don't know. We'll see. There's only so many pieces of paper that can run through a printer at a time. We'll see what happens. I'm sure they're working very hard to capitalize on doing the most that they can this year, for sure. I doubt they're making terrible decisions in that department. So. Vendor observations from the last month. I will tell you this. It's been busy. It's been extremely busy. We have not had a week off in July. Yu-Gi-Oh Crazy. Traveling every weekend. It's like the heart of the show season right now. Last week was Collecticon, Minnesota, Dallas Card Show, Fanatics Fest, West Coast Card Show, West Coast Card show, all four sides of the US With a major show. It was crazy. It was. And every single one of them was Beckett You know, Sunday, from what I heard at west coast was not Zebra crazy. It wasn't crazy at Collecton either. But Sundays generally aren't. We'll. We'll give it a little bit of a asterisk as well. Being the World Cup Finals on Sunday. Yu-Gi-Oh Makes it a little, you know, everybody's kind of watching. It was right in the middle of the day, so with the exception of Fanatics Fest playing the game everywhere at the show. Right. They prepared for it so you could go there. And they even had like, viewing areas and stuff like that. So most of the Pokemon shows aren't going to have that versus the. The other shows. So Saturday in Minneapolis, that collectcon was. It was Beckett throughout the whole show Shadowless Card show, from what I was told was booming. Crazy attendance. So the shows are going good. Yu-Gi-Oh The week before that, we were in New Jersey. It was the most crowded show I have been to in a very long time. Both days. Both days. It was nuts. Nuts. And the. The feeling I'm getting from vendors is very interesting because some of. Some of the vendors have. Have started panicking. Right. Like, because they're noticing what we're Talking about earlier is there's a little bit of dip in card value and they've definitely loosened up in terms of wanting to get rid of some stuff. A month ago, two months ago, it was tough sledding out there, right? Like, you know, I'm trying to talk to vendors and being like, Yu-Gi-Oh let's make a deal on a whole bunch of this stuff. And they're just like, I don't want to sell it. And it's like, amp. Yu-Gi-Oh I'll just wait because next week it'll go up again. Yep. And then you talk to the same vendors last weekend, and they're like, Yu-Gi-Oh I'll sell it. Yu-Gi-Oh Actually, they're searching, like, looking for us. You want to buy this? Yu-Gi-Oh I know. I've had more calls in the last two weeks from people trying to sell stuff to me than it in a long time. People are trying, like, people are having to work, you know, to move stuff. And for a while, they weren't like, they just post something on Instagram or, Or, you know, they just have like a guy, right? They just have a guy to sell stuff to. And then that person is, I'm not buying right now. And then all of a sudden they're like, oh, Yu-Gi-Oh And a lot of the vendors having somebody like that, that they're. I can just move it to my guy. I could sell it to my guy. Well, a lot of those guys, capital dried up their sources turned off the faucet for a little while. So now when money stands still on a massive scale, it just runs down the pipeline and you definitely notice it. And it's interesting to see, like, how fast it flips when you're at one of those peak moments and no one wants to work with you. Versus the, I don't want to say humility, but the. Well, it's. It's just a good lesson. It's just a good lesson for, you know, some of these lesser experienced vendors. Right. Like, I don't want to say it's. It. It's easy to be a vendor, but it has been less difficult to move stuff in the last six months than it probably ever has been. Right. Like, it's there. There's. There's been so many different outlets and so many different guys to sell stuff to. So these vendors just pick stuff up and then they're like, all right, well, I'm going to just be able to sell it to this person. So unless you're offering me more than that, Yu-Gi-Oh I'm not going to sell it. And I think People have just kind of learned in the last couple of weeks that when those guys are not buying from them, you know, they don't have somebody, especially because they've burned a bridge or they've, you know, denied selling stuff to other people that are right in front of them. So many times those people stop coming to them. Yu-Gi-Oh You know, and I think it's something for vendors to consider that if you have a deal in front of you that makes sense, it's okay to make that deal. Right. Like, even if you're going to make a little bit less than you had calculated for, you know, moving it to whoever the other person is, sometimes it just makes sense in that moment to just make the deal happen. And then on the other side of things, when you're buying these. A lot of these people I've talked to that are kind of struggling right now and, you know, are. Are like, calling me up and being like, Yu-Gi-Oh I need. I need to move this. They've been buying at such tight margins that they're like, I need this out of it. It's like, I can't give you that on that. Right. And. And I think that's like a very, very important thing for people to kind of learn is just like, you buy it a rate that makes sense. Everything goes up and down. So for sure, humbling was the word I was looking for. Humbling is good. If you had guessed humbling, you're correct. So I feel like there's an evolution to a lot of these vendors. Right. We have some guys that we've made a ton of deals with, and then all of a sudden they get too big for themselves and all their prices go up and they want just these crazy. You. You have to make it fair for both sides. Right. If you're a vendor to vendor seller, you have to leave some meat on the bone for the end guy or girl. Right. We have to be able. Like, it doesn't make sense that we do the end work for such a small amount. So it's like we'll just pass. With these vendors being kind of new to the game, and a lot of them not really have been doing, you know, much or have much experience. You'll see them, like you said, working on these tight. I can get this percent, I can buy up to this percent, which is great for certain things. But then it's like people just get kind of set in their ways, and if you do that and then something changes like this, you're like, no, you really have to always be kind of moving the Dial a little bit and just kind of watching and going with the market. It's like what you think is today will not be forever, it will not be. It could change tomorrow, it could be next week, next year, next month, whatever. You always have to be kind of just adjusting and looking at that. And I know you and I have quite a few talks about what are we doing, what are we getting into trending the market out. Kind of the reason for an episode like this, which I think hopefully is helpful to everybody listening. What's, what's coming up, what's going on? How's, what's the, you know, what's the market look like? What's the, what's the pulse of the, of the market here? And it just should make you think a little bit more about what you're doing. You know, probably three weeks ago I told everybody that I bend with and I just said it's going to cool down. Don't be buying at such high percentages right now. You'll get stuck. Hopefully they listened. You know, in the last two weeks, majority of modern PSA is down 30%, right? So if you bought at 80, you're down 10% already if you bought a 90 cooked. So I mean, you can lose thousands of dollars fast if you don't know what you're doing. So it's, it's always just kind of like, you know, play in your lane, but also just kind of be watching, watching the traffic all over the place, you know, see what's going on. Other than that, shows have been great. They've been banging so good, so many people, so many. I want to say at the end of last year, shows had become so much vendor to vendor deals and like the first half of this year, so much vendor to vendor. The last few weeks like this last month, I've been seeing a lot more collectors at the shows, buying and selling and, and trading and, and doing all the things, which is great. You know, no disrespect to the people who just deal with thousands and thousands of slabs, but when I'm walking around the show looking for stuff to buy and I just see people sitting on their zions with a million slabs in front of them with sticky notes and there's like a collector standing behind them with their little Pandora and they're like, they want to see the singles on the table, but it's like, obviously the vendor is just going to work with the multimillion dollar deal that's in front of them. It's just cool to see collectors getting their time again. Right. Like, I think there's a balance there that can be made. And I think vendors can probably do a better job of dealing with both sides. Right. Like, there's a very customer facing side of things that if you are a good vendor for collectors, those collectors are going to keep coming to you. Right. Obviously, a single collector isn't going to pay you a hundred thousand dollars for all of your slabs in your. In your thing, but it's just nice to see. I mean, we need collectors, we need actual people in the hobby as well. Like, it's not just all vendors. This episode is brought to you by Facebook. So you were scrolling on Marketplace and there it was, the bike you'd been searching for. You sent a message and it turned out the seller was. Was Zebra chatty, kind of funny, and an avid cyclist. The next thing you know, you're in a cycling crew. Well, a community cycling group. The thing about Facebook, you might find more than what you're looking for from a browse to a bike ride this summer. Find more on Facebook now at Lowe's, faster quotes start at the Lowe's Pro desk. Got a material list handwritten on a sticky note or saved as a photo. Perfect. Bring it to us and get a quote in minutes. And if you don't see what you need on the shelf, we'll help you get it. You can access thousands of products beyond what's available in store or on lowe's.com right. From the Lowe's Pro desk. Build quotes faster and source the materials you need to keep your jobs moving. Just like that at Lowe's. And I mean, there is a ton of collectors in the hobby. Right. So it's nice to see, you know, people getting out. I mean, that also means that there's a little boost, you know, maybe not in the overall economy, but in the economy of, you know, the community of Pokemon. Right. So everybody's kind of got enough that you can spend some money, get in and. And buy some singles, buy some. You know, it's good to see. I agree with you 100%. And just seeing the attendance, I mean, we talked about beginning of this year, shows just going off like crazy. And now still just seeing shows just be bo. And now in the middle of the season here, we'll see, you know, as we talk about this, in August, September, we'll see it kind of taper down a little bit towards the end of the year because there's not as many shows. But as of right now, it's in full swing. Second card parties this weekend when we're filming this. And you know, card parties are a great event as well. It's not as card show centric. A lot of streamers and influencers in the Pokemon hobby are there, you know, walking around, filming, doing panels. And it's just interesting to, to see. It's like a. And it's an entirely different experience than going to just a normal card show. Very kind of cool to, to see that. So they do a really good job. They do, Yu-Gi-Oh they do a great job. I wouldn't close it out with, you know, kind of just any big things going on in the hobby. I mean, PSA remains closed. Forecasting. They open up maybe some of the higher tiers that are closed. I'm, I'm a guessing November all the way down to value into like probably next year. Probably next year, Yu-Gi-Oh As well. January to March somewhere in there. But some of those like obviously regular and above is open, but the tier right below that, that's closed. You know, maybe that one's opening up November. Ish. And then we got some big sets coming up. It's going to be crazy. It is going to be nuts. The 30th and a requisite set to end the year. It'll be, that'll be insane. And I just, I, I feel like they have something up their sleeve or after the 30th. I think we'll, we'll have a, probably have a whole episode Talking about the 30th and what comes next. Because I think a lot of people in the hobby have kind of looked at the 30th as like an end point. And I just don't really see it that way. So we'll get into that more in another episode. But there is 10th is coming up quick. It's really, really quick. The 30th is gonna be Bowman. It is going to be unbelievable. Rayquaza. Then there's a Lucario set. There's a mystery set that we don't really know anything about that I think will be our next like high class set or specialty set. And they have just been so on, just on with these specialty sets. It could be crazy. I'm excited. I am too. I'm excited. I'm excited for the end of this year. PSA put out a stat. Okay. They estimate there's about 30 million collectors, card collectors, not necessarily just Pokemon, just card collectors in the US with roughly 9 million of those collectors joining since 2023. So saying the hobby seen like a 35ish percent increase in collectors in the last three years. And I would assume that kind of even still spikes up a little bit towards the end. Yu-Gi-Oh it's going to be interesting to see what happens if we stay on a trend like that where if we bring more collectors into the hobbies. And I know actively these companies are. Are, you know, trying to convert fans, say even sports markets convert fans into collectors. And I know that, you know, it's. There's a lot of overlap there. You already like the sport, you like the players. Maybe you'll like the cards. Yu-Gi-Oh I mean, and you're seeing a lot of success too, right? I mean, sports cards, that's kind of been a thing for a while. Right. So I think you're not going to see those gains as dramatically. But I think the. The One ip, it's very close to me that we've seen insane gains with is Disney cards. Right. Lorcana has skyrocketed, which is their TCG and then tops Disney tops Marvel tops what X Men tops Fantastic Four, all of these Disney properties and top Star Wars. Right. Like, all of these cards have just exploded in popularity. I mean, people that I never knew even collected cars. I've seen them posting stuff about Disney cards lately and I'm just like, like, it's crazy. I mean, Lorcana, you've seen explode on the bigger, more rare cards, which is really great to see. That tops getting the licenses back as of just this year for Disney. I don't know if it's back or if it's the first time they had it, but being able to print those Disney cards with the licensing has been great. And there's been a lot of really cool products, you know, that we've seen and. And ripped. So something to watch, something to keep an Yu-Gi-Oh on. There's a lot of people that are getting into it. It's a lot of fun. It's something you can do with whole family. You know, card collecting is really a great time. Vending is a great time most of the time. Outside of that, I mean, I think that that'll kind of wrap this one up. Yu-Gi-Oh Anybody has any questions or something they'd like us to cover in this monthly episode that we do, let us know in the comments. We're always interested to adapt and make changes to what everybody's looking for. So. Still looking for a few more questions to finish the Q and A episode. We have quite a few, but we'll just kind of keep a few more piling up. So if you have any questions, make sure and drop those in the comments as well. And we'll see you guys in the next one. See you in the next one. Peace.