Beware the Buyouts (Greninja Gold Star)

The Greninja Gold Star promo from Celebrations is the latest card to suffer from price manipulation, with sealed copies of the promo card selling for $45 or more just a few days ago.

Today, the price seems to have settled back down to $30: a large fall from $45, but still 20x the $1.50 price on TCG Player at the beginning of January this year.

Price movements like this are often the result of buyouts: a form a market manipulation where someone, acting individually or in a group, decides to buy all available copies of a card on popular marketplaces. This causes the supply of the card to temporarily disappear from the market, allowing the perpetrators to relist the cards at significantly higher prices.

What people often misunderstand about a buyout is that instigators don’t need to buy every copy of a card. They just need to buy enough copies to create upward movement in price, and draw the attention of the rest of the market.

Like it or not: the market responds to prices more than any other data point. When manipulators cause the price to rise, the market handles the rest.

Getting involved in any of this is not just morally dubious: it’s incredibly risky.

Because the high prices achieved by cards that are bought out will be short-lived: as prices for the card rise, it’s inevitable that more and more collectors and investors dig up their copies and sell them.

And, when the card in question is a widely available promo card that has sold for years at less than $2… it should not surprise you to find that there are A LOT of these cards that will return to market.

Buyouts succeed by taking advantage of the time delay between initiating the buyout, and the distributed network of collectors and investors all independently deciding to take advantage of the short term prices by locating and list their own copies, adding supply back to the market.

This takes time, and in the meantime, the prices for the card will be artificially high as the supply has been drained.

But, here’s the thing: the Greninja Gold Star is an awesome card.

And, even though a buyout like this is manipulation, it also has the benefit of bringing more awareness to a great card. Just think of all the new collectors who have entered the market since Celebrations was released who didn’t know about this amazing promo card and are now discovering it for the first time.

I’ve found it’s common to see successful buyouts on cards like this that have great fundamentals but have flown under the radar for too long due to their wide availability.

In the end: I don’t expect to see the Greninja Gold Star card get anywhere near the $1.50 price point again. It will be worth more when all is said and done.

But, still be careful out there and don’t buy into the hype.

Just don’t be afraid to celebrate that collectors are finally excited about the Greninja Gold Star card. It’s overdue if you ask me.

As always,

Thank you so much for reading the TCG Buyers Club newsletter. My name’s Grey, I buy cardboard, and I’m on a mission to make collecting and investing in Pokémon simple.

Cheers 🍻

P.S. I don’t have anything to say this week other than thank you so much for subscribing and reading my work. It means the world.