Structured guides for serious collectors — researched from primary sources.
Sets, the UK Pokémon card market, and collection management — researched from primary sources, written to the standard the subject demands.
1. Why Pokémon Cards Are Worth Anything (And Why Most Aren’t)
The £300,000 Card That Convinced Everyone They Were Rich In 2021, a PSA 10 1st Edition Shadowless Charizard sold for more than £300,000. The story went everywhere. For a few months it was almost impossible to avoid headlines about six-figure Pokémon cards, and the predictable thing happened: people went up into their lofts and started […]
2. Grading and Condition: What Actually Separates a PSA 9 from a PSA 10
Grading and Condition: What Actually Separates a PSA 9 from a PSA 10 The Single Grade Point That’s Worth More Than A Car I own a Base Set Charizard. It isn’t 1st Edition and it isn’t Shadowless — it’s an ordinary unlimited print from 1999 that millions of people own. As a raw card it’s […]
3. Buying and Selling Pokémon Cards Online Without Getting Burned
It arrived. It was a Base Set Blastoise, and it was in a PSA slab. The grade was PSA 6. When I went back and actually read the description — which I should have done first — there it was, buried near the bottom: “Pictured card shown as example. Actual grade PSA 6.” The title […]
4. Why the Pokémon Card Market Goes in Cycles (And What That Means for Collectors)
The £20,000 Charizard That Became A £5,000 Charizard In early 2021, a PSA 10 Unlimited Base Set Charizard — not even the 1st Edition — was changing hands for somewhere around £18,000 to £22,000. Influencers were opening vintage packs on stream, the coverage was everywhere, and people who’d never owned a card in their lives […]
5. How to Store Pokémon Cards Without Quietly Destroying Them
The £500 Card I Ruined With A Binder I once owned a Near Mint Base Set Blastoise. Good centring, sharp corners, clean surface — worth perhaps £400 to £500 raw, and plausibly more than three times that if it graded well. Important: those figures are illustrative, not a current price guide. I kept it in […]
6. Are Pokémon Cards an Investment? An Honest Look at the Risks
Why Most Pokémon Card “Investors” Lost Money In 2020 and 2021, a great many people bought Pokémon cards as “investments”. They paid two to three times retail for modern sealed product, bought graded vintage at peak prices, and assumed — because everything was going up — that everything would keep going up. Through 2022, a […]
7. How to Spot a Fake Pokémon Card Before You Buy
The £800 Fake Charizard I Nearly Bought I was looking for a Base Set Charizard and found one listed at £750, against a market price of perhaps £900 to £1,000 at the time. Not suspiciously cheap — just a good deal. The seller had strong feedback and a couple of hundred transactions behind them. Important: […]
8. Sealed Products and Promos: What’s Worth Buying and What Isn’t
The £2,000 I Lost Opening Modern Booster Boxes Between 2020 and 2021 I bought modern sealed product as “investments” — Evolving Skies booster boxes, Shining Fates ETBs, Celebrations product, all on the received wisdom that “sealed always goes up”. I held them for a couple of years. By 2023 the same products were available at […]
9. What I Wish I’d Known Before I Started Collecting
Every Mistake In This Guide, I Made First When I started collecting in 2018, I worked through more or less the entire catalogue of errors this series describes. I bought fakes on eBay. I paid peak prices in the middle of hype cycles. I put a couple of thousand pounds into modern sealed product expecting […]
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