Buy Pokémon cards at release or wait? The price data says wait

The idea is that chase cards only go up, so the sooner you buy, the less you pay. The fear is simple: wait, and you'll pay more later. The price data says the opposite has usually happened.

The belief makes sense on the surface. When a set drops, everyone is talking about the same handful of cards. Listings are thin, videos show big pulls, and prices look like they can only go one way.

But release prices are set by the first rush of openings, before supply catches up. In those early weeks, only a small number of copies are out there, and demand is at its loudest. As more boxes get opened and more copies hit the market, that early price usually doesn't hold.

This post is about singles: the individual cards you buy from other sellers. It's not about sealed product bought at retail, which works differently and isn't in these numbers.

They've usually lost a lot. Singles bought in a set's first six months made a typical −49% over the next year, after fees, tax and shipping.^[1] Cards bought two years or more after release made +2% over the same kind of year.

The pattern is steady. Cards bought 6 to 12 months in made a typical −30%. One to two years in, that improved to −10%. The gap between the earliest buyers and the latest is 51 percentage points.

Here's how we measured it. At the end of each month since late 2022, we took every English single above a minimum price that trades often enough to resell, noted how long its set had been out, and followed its TCGplayer market price for a year. We show each group's middle result, so a few huge winners can't drag the number up.

Every return counts what buying and selling online really costs: paying a bit over market to buy, shipping both ways, the marketplace's fee, selling a little under market, a small storage cost, and tax on any profit.^[2][3][4] Those costs alone mean a card has to rise just to break even. Our post on how much a card must rise to profit walks through that.

Rarely. Only 13% of singles bought in a set's first six months made money after costs over the next year. For cards bought two years or more in, it was 53%.

The table below adds two things the chart doesn't show: how often each group made money, and a cautious estimate (one in four buys did worse than this). It also shows how many buys each group rests on. We count one card in one month as one buy, so the same card can appear in several months.

Notice how small the early groups are. The first-six-months result rests on 980 card-months, a fraction of the late group. That's still a lot of buys, and the direction matches every other group, but it's a smaller base than the late figures.

The cautious estimate tells the harsher story. For early buyers, a bad year looked like −65%. For late buyers, a bad year was −22%. Waiting didn't remove the risk, but it shrank it a lot.

Sometimes, and that's why the belief sticks. That 13% of early buys did make money after costs. Those are the cards people screenshot and talk about for years.

The trouble is what you don't hear about. A set's first months include its most hyped cards at their highest prices. For every chase card that kept climbing, many more slid as supply caught up, and nobody posts about those.

There's also a fair point on the other side: waiting hasn't made people rich. A typical +2% for cards bought two years or more in is close to flat. Waiting mostly stopped the bleeding rather than paying off.

And not everyone buys to make money. If you want a card to play with or to finish a binder page now, being early has value that a price chart can't measure. The numbers here only speak to what happened to the price.

It can't tell you what any one set or card will do. These are medians across many cards from past prices, not a forecast.

• Sealed product isn't included. Booster boxes and other sealed items bought at retail are a different question. These are singles only.
• English cards only. Japanese singles weren't part of this study.
• A short window. The data starts in late 2022, so it covers only a few years of releases and one stretch of the market.
• The late group is cards that lasted. We only counted cards still trading often enough to resell. Older cards that faded out of the market drop out of the late group, which may make it look a little better than a random older card would.

If you want to see how age plays out over much longer stretches, our post on vintage versus modern cards looks at that.

It means the first six months have historically been the costliest time to buy singles for their price. Release prices reflect a rush that usually fades as more copies get opened.

If you're buying a new card hoping it goes up, the history says the odds have been against you early: a typical −49%, with only 13% of buys coming out ahead after costs. Cards bought later did far better as a group, though even then a bad year was a real possibility.

If you're buying because you love the card, none of this says you're wrong. It just tells you what patience has usually cost or saved in the past.

One way to see this for yourself is to watch a card from release day and track its price as the set ages. Pokelit prices English and Japanese cards every night from TCGplayer prices, and you can watch cards or keep a binder that tracks their value (see what the app does).