Why Alt arts are a poor investment
An insight into the reasons why I believe the new alt arts in Pokémon are not the best place to invest your money
Ok this is a controversial one, but hear me out. Alternative arts are the hot, new cards that everyone is now chasing. Even though, they were originally released back in the Sun & Moon era (Team Up) they didn’t really catch on. Things really picked up after Chilling Reign, and things have blown up since then to unimaginable proportions. Here I want to make the case for why so many of these cards are simply overpriced and hyped up to inflate the price, making them relatively poor pokémon investments for the future.
Let’s start with the positives. These are arguably some of the coolest cards and artworks that the pokémon company have released, ever. I can completely appreciate the fantastic artwork, and the uniqueness of having not just the pokémon but more of an interactive background. They’ve also diversified the alt arts and we’ve seen some relatively unpopular pokémon like Lumineon even getting the alt art treatment, which is awesome for collectors. I personally own a few of the affordable alt arts with pokémon I like - but these are simply for my collection, not an investment. They’re also very hard to pull, theres no official numbers but certainly some of them might just be the hardest cards to pull from a main set ever in pokémon. The issue arises with the amount of these cards are out there, and still being printed. I’m all for these alt arts - if you’ve got money to burn and don’t care about things going up or down then this post doesn’t apply to you.
Okay, let us take a deeper dive into the future prospects of alt arts, and I want to caveat this before by saying I’m just speculating but trying to be as rational as possible.
The boom in popularity of pokémon from 2020 has now settled down, prices haven’t recovered to pre-pandemic levels, but reached a new equilibrium. My argument for why alt arts are not the best invest in pokémon stem from the main idea that your money would be better placed elsewhere, not that alt arts won’t make money in the future. From a basic, fundamental economic point of view, the price of a card is determined by its supply and its demand. I’m going to use Umbreon as an example to illustrate my point. It’s one of the most popular pokémon, thats been around since Gen 2, so we have a whole host of its chase cards to compare to.
As of writing this, there are 5,780 PSA 10s and 1,100 PSA 9 “Moonbreons (evolving skies)” graded. There’s probably tons still ungraded, and let’s not forget the amount that CGC were grading when PSA had shut down. So these numbers are much higher CGC and BGS included. That’s a lot of PSA 10s, and an important thing to look at is the ratio of grades. Most likely, a pack fresh card will give you a 5:1 odds on a PSA 10. So a card that is relatively easy to grade if you manage to pack it.
What about some other umbreons? We’ve got the first ever umbreon card (what some would consider the original moonbreon) from Neo Discovery for a slightly higher price of around £1,100 - PSA 10 (yes, I know its unlimited but my point still holds true). There are 88 - 10s and 539 - 9s, heck theres 500 - 8s as well. The set isn’t being printed anymore, so who knows how much is really out there. Thats a 1:5:5 ratio, so even if you did manage to open some packs and pull it most likely you won’t even get that 10. A PSA 9 sells for around £200.
Another umbreon we can look at is from Aquapolis, which for me is absolutely stunning. A PSA 10 is a whopping £2.2k but 9s hover around £700.
Theres 80 PSA 10s, 200 - 9s and 105 - 8s. A grading ratio of 1:2:1 so still unlikely to get the 10, with these E-series centering being difficult to grade. Also a set which was arguably not printed a lot.
So here’s 3 umbreon's, which are all awesome in their own regard - objectively. Some might like the new one more, I personally think the aquapolis version is much better, nevertheless the question you have to ask yourself is what would you pay for one of these? And is this a good investment for the future?
The new alt art umbreon Vmax is great, but theres almost 6,000 already graded in a 10 - the supply is huge. If you had £1000 to spend, on a card you liked but had to hedge your bets on one that would hold its value 5 - 10 years down the line, which card would you choose? Logically, that answer would be the card thats rarer, harder to get in a 10 and with the best artwork. Can the new moonbreon keep getting more and more expensive in the next 10 years, yes. But if a card with such supply can increase to £1000s surely an older, rarer and some would argue ‘as nice to look at’ card would see even more growth. Investing means you want the most value and potential return for your money, and I don’t think alt arts are the best bang for your buck.
Alt arts may be all the craze now, but what if pokémon continue to improve and innovate like they have in the past? Will we think in 2 years that alt arts are still the best thing ever? Possible, but unlikely. In the past the pokémon company has always waited for a few sets into a new era to introduce a new type of rarity. In XY it was Gold bordered FAs, in S&M it was Tag Teams, in SWSH it was the beginning of Alt arts and CHRs. It will be interesting to see what pokémon has in store for the next coming years, will history repeat itself? We could see new rarities, alt arts WITH tag teams or even serialised and number rarity cards like sports. It is possible that alt art remain the ‘in’ thing for years to come, and this is as good as it gets, if thats the case then all this speculation was incorrect.
Overall, could alt arts significantly increase in value over the next 5 to 10 years? Yes. If this were to happen, we would need a significant amount of new people entering the hobby and staying or even a bubble forming. But is investing in these alt arts a wise decision? If alt art prices rose significantly, one would presume that prices of vintage would increase significantly more. The saying from smpratte “older, minter, rarer = better” will hold true. Could I be completely wrong about all of this…also yes ;)
I would love to hear your thoughts and comments below! If you have any counterarguments I would also love to know so I can address them if I haven’t already!