Past Results and Predicting Future Returns in Cards

So I know when I started this channel, I talked a lot about soccer cards.

We had the World Cup coming up, which was a nexus event that was going to bring a new flood of demand into a very small market.

And I expected that this nascent market was going to get a massive boost.

That was certainly the case, and there were many learnings and many failings through that process that I've shared with you over the past year or so.

In more recent times, though, I've been looking at everything in every sport from football to basketball to baseball, and I've been really diving into Pokemon TCG.

Now, the beauty of Pokemon TCG, and I'm not going to stay on this too long, so stay with me.

is that the players don't get hurt.

That removes a pretty massive variable from the equation, and it allows us to understand more about the psychology behind the purchasing of the cards and the market rising and falling.

I've done a lot of studies because I have access to a lot of data, but one of the most recent ones that I've done is look at any card that's over $500 in a PSA 10 over the past 25 years.

The data that I've been gathering is how those prices for those cards have moved over the past one month, three months, six months, one year, the start of the AI boom, and the start of COVID.

I've also gathered data not only for PSA 10s, but for PSA 9s, so I can get a good comparison between those two.

This data set ended up being about 800 plus cards, so we're working with a pretty hefty body of data.

Talked about everything from BGS 10 being something that's undervalued, to PSA 10s not being as difficult as people think they are to get, to showing how different grades of iconic cards, like Jordan's Rookie for example, have actually had better returns from a PSA 1 than a PSA 10 over the past three years.

I know that sounds crazy, but the data is actually there to back it up, this is not just my opinion.

And that same thing goes for PSA 9s actually starting to accelerate versus PSA 10s in their value.

I know people think this is a hot take, but that was from looking at 800 different cards I saw this pattern emerge.

So the title of this video is telling you that I'm going to be using data in order to glean learnings from it that we can apply to understanding what the future might hold.

Looking at metrics like PSA 9 to 10 ratios in terms of gem rate, and looking at the value between the two and comparing the population of PSA 9 to 10 and the value of PSA 9 to 10, along with the overarching story of how all of these Grail cards have moved in their prices, is what helps us paint a full story of what might actually be going on and what's underpinning this rapid rise.

We can then take those learnings and we can apply those to any sport.

Although Shohei Otani can tears ACL, the metrics that are going to go around these cards and the way that these values are going to be moving should be similar to the Pokemon market.

Of course, not the same.

So let's get into the theory and the psychology of what's really going on and what's underpinning these price movements.