Keith D Ben Leavitt Pokemon card market analysis
Keith D and Ben Leavitt argue that Pokemon cards are only worth what a single grading company says they're worth. The ecosystem for high-volume collectibles relies on firms like PSA which hold near-monopoly power with human discretion deciding grades from one to ten. This centralized system gives one entity excessive influence over market prices while recent trends show inflated scores where many items get a nine. In contrast NFTs let the market determine pricing rather than a central grading entity. The speaker notes Pokemon opened a massive facility to meet demand printing significantly more new product yet observes these new prints appreciate faster than vintage cards calling this logic zero and indicative of a bubble. They recommend selling Pokemon cards because the market lacks conviction and prices could drop quickly.
Transcripción (en)
But the physical collectibles kept going up and up and up and up and up. And so now people who have been collecting sports cards and Pokemon cards, they've become very well off. But how that whole ecosystem works is that almost anything to be traded at a really high volume or like high price point, it's got to be graded. And so there are these companies that grade the quality of the card, and they're typically on a scale of one through 10. And those numbers have a very strong correlation to what the market price is for that card. so about it like like getting your diamonds appraised or getting your watch checked out to see if it's real or not totally but here's the problem with that is that if it's in the hands of basically one company which it more or less is they've purchased up brands underneath and they're currently going through a monopoly case because they've bought in so many of these brands but think of the power they have keith when you send me your card i charge you a cost and then i dictate what this leaves my room as for the cost right because if i rate it as an eight which is i'm a human being choosing this they have a criteria but at the end of the day it's a human being making this decision and there's been a lot of graders coming out recently basically saying like i just ripped through this shit everything's a nine like again who knows if that's true right i'm sure there's a bit of people jumping on maybe former employees whatever but the the logic is still there right where it's a human being grading this and their decision will make this slab of cardboard be worth two grand or a hundred And they deciding that over the next five minutes or 20 minutes whatever it is they spend per card That a crazy thing That so much power in a centralized entity where this company is having so much influence over the broader market of what these things go for. Whereas NFTs, the pricing mechanism is the market. So of course, you don't have the amount of people buying and selling that you do on something like Pokemon cards but you also don't have that uh that super strong central force of someone like psa dictating what the thing is worth because if there's a card you have to then get it graded the nft is the nft there's only so many of them and you also have to worry about the reprinting right so people don't know this too if you're not following the pokemon shit they just opened this massive facility to meet demand for pokemon cards and they're gonna be printing way more wow and the craziest shit two years this is how i know it's a freaking bubble i hope the guy is watching who keeps giving me shit for that if this is what you're telling me it is how is the new shit going up more than the vintage shit that makes no sense zero if this is what you're telling me it's the nostalgia it's all this crap how are new prints going up prices faster than the vintage stuff that puts a dead end on that one that makes no sense that makes zero sense so i still think if i was holding pokemon cards now i'll say it for like the fifth time i would be selling some because it can come down and pop really quickly because these people don't have the conviction that you think they do they have the conviction to the money that they were making
