Pokemon PRINTED LESS Cards Last Year!

Added: 2026-05-27

[00:00:01]Folks, I have been waiting for this video for a long time.

[00:00:08]Finally, the time for opinions and speculation is over. Something I have been preaching now for the past year has come to fruition. Pokemon has put out their print numbers, and surprise, surprise, they're less than the previous year. 10.2 2 billion which is less for the people in back than the previous year before that.

[00:00:33]So in the largest boom in Pokemon history where ripping ships are ripping more packs and they are more prevalent than ever when casual consumers are buying and ripping more packs now than ever.

[00:00:51]Pokemon decided to print less.

[00:00:54]You do not have to be a genius to understand simple supply demand economics. When you squeeze the supply so short while demand is exploding, the bears don't have a chance.

[00:01:11]The prices have no choice but to go up.

[00:01:14]There's no other answer. You cannot short you cannot short print the supply while demand is through the roof and think anything other is going to happen than $300 booster boxes. Let's get real, folks.

[00:01:28]And people wonder why I'm so bullish on the Scarlet Violet era. I get asked all the time, Alex, you know, I'm watching some other people online that, you know, they've been telling me Sword and Shields where to go. They've been telling me maybe look back at some of the Sun and Moon XY stuff. And I'm like, okay, that's fine. Um, Scarlet Violet era has reached price points higher than any other era in the same time frame. It has exploded to price points other eras didn't see for years and years and years.

[00:02:00]And people think this is a fluke. People think it's an overreaction. They think it's a bubble.

[00:02:06]The truth of the matter is there's not enough to go around. Let me explain to you something about this whole uh hobby and why I've always been so pro popularity and demand and I've really not worried as much about supply. People overanalyze supply. They get really wrapped up in the population reports and the restocks and the reprints and how many were printed and you know how plentiful the product is in the market like Crown Zenith was. Where all that go by the way? They don't understand one thing with sealed product in particularly. Okay. After the first 2, three years of being in print, you're going to have all kind of ups and downs, right? Restocks, reprints, all that.

[00:02:45]Once they go out of print, sealed product does one thing. It goes down.

[00:02:51]Supply always goes down. Popularity and demand always come and go. Popularity and demand and then things fall off.

[00:02:59]They come back and they go back off.

[00:03:00]They come back, they go back off. And the only way this ever stops, Pokemon Company completely implodes. population collapses. Otherwise, a certain portion of every generation that gets born as the population of the earth increases, right? They're going to catch that collector bug, that collector gene. And the consumer base is always larger than it was in the past. The consumer base right now is larger than it was in 2000.

[00:03:28]It's larger than it was in 1980. It's larger than it was in 1950. So, as long as you continue to have more and more customers, right, and they want to go back and experience nostalgia and they want to go back and collect older sets when sealed product is only getting less and less available, it's always going to rise over time unless again population collapses like some kind of crazy worldwide cataclysmic event or Pokemon Company just implodes, which at that point it probably won't even affect the older stuff because that stuff will still be collectible and sought after for nostalgia purposes. And so this is why you're fighting a losing battle when you're trying to bet against this market. You're only really going to win during the time things are in print.

[00:04:10]You know, you can say things are going to drop. They'll get a big restock or reprint. You can say, "I told you so."

[00:04:14]Given enough time, bears have always been wrong because over time, things always rise in value when it comes to sealed product. And for that case, a lot of the best hit singles have all done relatively the same thing. Even in the midst of all these high population reports, which I've tried to explain to people before that, too. Alex, what do you think about these 10 20,000 population reports? I don't know, Timmy.

[00:04:35]What do you think about there being more than 10 or 20,000 people worldwide that want that car and can afford it? I don't know. Do you think people have less money now or more money? The people who Sorry, the the K-shaped economy, the ones who have the money, they have more money now than ever, right? That's why you can't, you know, find a, I don't know, a supercar or a Rolex or anything because everything's sold out because all the people with money have more money now than ever and their assets continue to grow. So, they use that money to buy more things they want. And so, do you think there's going to be more people in the future who can afford high-end collectibles or less people in the future that can afford high-end collectibles? If your answer is more, then you're not too worried about 10, 20, 30,000 population reports. If your answer is less, well, I guess you should be scared to death and sell everything.

[00:05:21]There's only two answers, right?

[00:05:25]Another reason why this is happening, I can't technically say it's an objective truth because there is an opinion factor to this, but Scarlet Violet Era is more fun to open. The majority would agree on that. The reason is, there's a few reasons. One, objectively, it just they have more hits. They put more hits per booster box per every hundred packs than Sword and Shield did, than Sun and Moon did, than XY did. There's just more hits, right?

[00:05:57]There's more EX or better than there were Sword and Shield V or better, Sun and Moon GX or better, and so on. So, it feels better to pull more shiny cardboard out of the packs. Okay? And this sort, you know, there's two schools of thought. Some people like the Sword and Shield Sun and Moon style where there's more focus on the top hit. It's much harder to hit. It's got a very high raw value. But the problem with that is a lot of the rest of the set has very little value and it's basically all topheavy. Whereas Scarlet Violet era, they may not have as high of heights on a lot of the sets, but they're less topheavy. The value is a lot more dispersed where there's a lot more say $50 to $100 cars in a lot of these sets than there are some of the older sets.

[00:06:39]And on top of that, they're already that much value in these sets. while they're cheaper than most all the older sets.

[00:06:46]So, you can open a lot of these packs in Scarlet Violet for cheaper than Sword and Shield, Sun and Moon XY. And the raw values in a lot of the cards are very similar to a lot of the other sets. And so, you're asking yourself, why would I not open a a pack that has more hits in general? I have a better chance of actually hitting something with some decent value, right? And overall right there, there's more valuable cards than there are in a lot of the other sets. So the only reason you'd want to open Sword and Shield or Sun and Moon or something more is just to go for that grail chasing, hit that, you know, god tier rarity card. But honestly, as the Scarlet Violet sets age and become more and more valuable and scarce, a lot of the cards are catching up. Umbreon EX Prismatic has basically passed every single card in Sword and Shield era other than what maybe Umbreon, right? Destin Rivals Mewtwo.

[00:07:40]You got the Blackbolt Victinis and the Resi Ram Zechron. You've got the bubble Mew, right? You've got the 151 Charizard, the Magikarp from Pala Evolved. I mean, heck, some of these Scarlet Violet era cards are surpassing all the Sword and Shield era cards in PSA 10 value because there's a more gradable chase. So, you don't only have the chase of the pack, you have the grading chase. And so Scarlet Violet has a lot to offer that I think a lot of people want to overlook.

[00:08:06]When you couple all of that with the fact they printed less of it in the biggest boom we've ever been in, why are people astonished that the boxes are $300? Why are people astonished that 151 ETBs are 600 and Paladane Fates are 500?

[00:08:28]Why do people think Prismatic is not going to follow suit when it goes out of print?

[00:08:32]Why are people fighting themselves on the Mega Evolution era, seeing all of the same things happen again and again and trying to convince themselves that $225 for a Chaos Rising box isn't worth it when they saw what happened to Twilight Masquerade when all it has was a Greninja.

[00:08:54]I know Twilight has Eevee and some other things and you could argue it's a better overall set, but that being as it may, there's two Greninjas that people chase after in Chaos Rising. Why do you think it's back over $ 250 a box? Why do you think it's going to be $300 a box, which it is going to be very soon here in my opinion, guys? I don't know what this year is going to hold, right? I don't know what the next year is going to hold. Maybe the print facility that Pokemon's building does get up and running. Maybe a lot of the capacity is used for Pokemon and not other TCGs, which if you guys didn't know, Pokemon rents out their facilities to other TCGs, right?

[00:09:34]Things like Yu-Gi-Oh, things like some of these new TCGs coming out. So, it's not all going to be dedicated to Pokemon only, just so we're clear. But even if they dedicate enough capacity to Pokemon and they, you know, print it to the ground and, you know, next year we see the highest print numbers ever, I don't think that affects anything that's already been done. And I think a lot of that print capacity is going to be used on Mega Evolution era sets. Maybe some Destin rivals. Maybe they print Prismatic for the rest of the year. I don't know. But 90% of all the sets in Scarlet Violet are likely not going to see much more printing. So, you're going to have an era that brought as many or more people back to the hobby than ever.

[00:10:13]151, one of the most iconic sets ever.

[00:10:15]You got Destined Rivals, you got Prismatic Evolutions, right? You're going to have an era that has less printed and more exposure and demand.

[00:10:26]And you don't think at some point throughout its life cycle as a sealed product only goes down and down in supply that we're going to have that popularity and demand. Even if the demand curve gets smaller, you're still going to have pockets where things pick up in the future. People want to come back and collect this stuff. And there's just not enough to go around. There's not going to be that. Do I mention the ripping ships? Guys, you're living under a rock if you don't think ripping ships are more prevalent now than ever.

[00:10:50]There's more people doing it. There's more packs being opened on every stream.

[00:10:53]This stuff's getting ran through. And you can say, "Well, yeah, Alex, but none of these other sets people want to open." Hell, they do. We just opened Scarlet Violet Base on stream last night. Pala Evolved, Twilight Masquerade, Surging Sparks, all these sets still get open. Less, mind you, but every little bit continues to get opened without more coming. It just gets scarce, guys. It goes up in value. It's just the way this works.

[00:11:25]You don't have to like it. You don't have to like me, but you have to understand it if you want to be successful in this hobby. And these print numbers coming out. Honestly, I was a little skeptical, right? I put my my thoughts out there, you know, but I didn't 100% know. I don't have any contacts at Pokemon or knew what was going on. But, um, it felt to me, right, the the the sentiment around the market, the supply that was out there, it felt to me like there was less being released. And lo and behold, there was.

[00:11:56]So instead of increasing print runs into the biggest boom, they decreased them.

[00:12:00]They didn't keep them the same. They decreased them. And that's one of the main reasons we have the prices we have.

[00:12:07]We have the supply issues that we have.

[00:12:09]Um, again, moving forward, I I don't know what the previous year is going to hold.

[00:12:14]For all I know, this next year could be, you know, exponentially more. It could be the largest print year ever. Uh, but this is why I'm so bullish on Scarlet Violet, guys. I still hold on to my I I still hold on to my u my thesis is that over the next 2 3 years. I'm not saying that Sword and Shield era will not grow.

[00:12:35]I'm not saying you will not see returns.

[00:12:37]What I'm saying is overall the Scarlet Violet era is going to see more percent gain than the Sword and Shield era. I still stand by that. And again, we can go we can look it back up every year. We can look at the numbers and if I'm wrong, I'm wrong. But, uh, I really don't think I'm going to be, guys. I think this is really going to hit home when people realize this stuff just ain't out there. And when it's gone, it's gone. So, take it for what you will. That's what we got.

[00:13:04]I'm out.