Market Watch: Dream League
Looking at price changes of one of the best Sun and Moon Sets in Japanese - Dream League
Bit of a short one this week, so consider this a part 1. Dream League SM11b - was one of the last sets released in the Sun and Moon era, and might go down as one of the best sets of its generation. It featured all new Character rare artworks, as well as ‘alt art tag team GXs.’ Not to mention Full arts of 3 very popular trainers, N, Lillie and Rosa. A set with great fundamentals but was underrated for a very long time. I remember buying boxes of these for £50 in December of 2020. In December 2021 I sold a box for £150, and in late 2022 I sold one for £200. So how have prices now reach around £300 (in the UK)?
Let us go over the fundamentals. There is certainly a lot of demand currently, especially as people aim to complete alt art sets and binders, and these were almost forgotten. We can see this as Cosmic eclipse is still very much a sought after set. There’s also been another boom in wiafu collectors, and this has further fuelled interest and spiked prices.
I have a strong feeling the market right now is changing so quickly, not because people are suddenly realising this is a great set, but because of manipulation and influence. Perhaps asking the question, is such a steep rise in price in such a short time indicative of a stable market or something else at play? A lot of interest in Japanese off late could be an explanation. Another one could be that continuation of alt arts and CHRs may mean that people are now aware of the originals like N and Lillie alts. These are all valid, and could mean healthy growth. But something just feels off about these modern cards being so expensive. Comparing to older eras, like BW. This Full Art Celebi, which is an awesome card, first full art ever, less than 200 PSA 10s be only £200. But some of these other chases are double, even triple that. You could make the argument that these BW are underrated, and I will cover that in a later newsletter, but I think they are appropriate, and what we are seeing with modern is just hype and inflation.
In terms of supply, there was a lot of this printed. As far as I recall, there were 2 official print runs in Japanese (which was unheard of back in 2019 in Japan). The boxes are still readily available on eBay as well on marketplaces like Facebook and Instagram. Supply of the cards follows the same pattern; There have been 32,000 cards graded from the set, 28,000 of those in 10s. The card with the highest POP is the CHR Pikachu, with 4,500 PSA 10 copies. That is simply massive. It was quite easy to pull the CHRs with 3 in a box, and the alt arts as well. I can only say that the Rosa and Lillie were harder to pull, I only pulled 1 of each after opening upwards of 15 boxes. Still a set with relatively easy pull rates. None of these cards are truly ‘rare.’
(I will be going through a full expected value of a booster box - deep dive in a newsletter soon so stay tuned).
Overall, this is a tricky one. There are those that will say anything sealed will gain value over time, especially a set like Dream League. But the skeptic in me is less confident. I think if you’ve got some boxes stored away then by all means keep them, but if you haven’t I think it is too late now to make it an ideal investment. There’s just so many boxes out there still being kept sealed in people’s cupboards. I think once prices settle, I don’t see it shooting up for a while unless theres a huge boom or influx of people in the hobby. A fantastic strategy that i myself have deployed if you have a fair few boxes is slowly selling them off every few months or annually. This way you get your money back from your initial investment and spread your risk in case it all comes crumbling! I’ll cover individual cards and slabs in the next one, but in short I don’t think they’re great investments - they are awesome collectables though.
Stay Tuned for a part 2