Terastal Festival ex Is Too Good

With December upon us: happy High Class Pack season!!

Because, at the beginning of December each year, The Pokémon Company in Japan release what is always the best set of the year: the annual High Class Pack set.

These sets are so popular, it's the one time of the year when even the international Pokémon card audience takes notice of a Japanese release.

And, this year's High Class set, Terastal Festival ex, is looking like it might be one of their best sets in years.

But, despite the nearly universal appeal of these sets, it's surprising to see that all of these sets from the past few years are down in value…

You might already be aware of last year's set, Shiny Treasure ex, continues to sell around all-time low prices:

Shiny Treasure ex Booster Box Price History

But this has also been the trend for the High Class sets that preceded it, despite being considered far better sets to the average Pokémon collector and investor.

Here's 2022's VSTAR Universe:

VSTAR Universe Booster Box Price History

And here's 2021's VMAX Climax (my personal favorite):

VMAX Climax Booster Box Price History

In today's newsletter, I want to take a look at some of the recent history of these hyped annual releases, and discuss what we might expect from this year's exciting release.

What Are High Class Pack Sets?

Japan's Pokémon High Class Pack sets are premium expansions released at the end of each year. These sets are best known for including large subsets of special, highly collectible, cards. These are subsets like the Shiny Vault in Shiny Treasure ex (released as Paldean Fates in English), or all the Trainer Rare cards from VMAX Climax, which were distributed as the Trainer Gallery cards in Sword & Shield's final year of releases.

But, the brilliance of High Class Pack sets is actually this:

They are reprint sets.

The sets are absolutely PACKED with top-tier playable cards released over the previous year.

And, by making them available in a reprint set like this, Pokémon makes sure players can get their hands on affordable competitive staples for their decks, and helps make the game more accessible.

And, the success of these products can't be understated:

They have created a set format that everyone in the hobby wants: from collectors, to investors, to players.

It's a masterpiece of product design, and something I look forward to every single year.

Do They Make Good Investments?

Well, YES…

And, NO…

Because, as I've already shown: sealed booster boxes for the past few years of High Class sets are all selling around their all-time low prices.

Despite the fact that every one of them was popular and well received at release and beyond!

And, while you just have to go back a bit further to find better performance from High Class Pack sets like Tag Team GX All Stars, which sells for $430 compared to its MSRP of $50 a box, there is an important trend we've seen play out year after year that affects the performance of High Class Pack sets:

They are printed to OBLIVION.

When I first started collecting Japanese Pokémon cards in 2021, you would rarely see additional print waves for any Japanese sets.

Most sets were released with a single print wave that slowly sold out over time. As a collector or investor, you just had to start buying when the initial launch hype died down, and prices hit a short-term low.

But there was one critical exception to that rule:

The annual High Class Pack sets!

These sets are often reprinted multiple times throughout the year in order to meet demand, and supply players with tons of playable cards.

The result, is these sets tend to see the prices spike quickly upon release, before dropping throughout the year as more and more print waves hit the market. With the past few releases, it was common to see the market bottom around 4 to 6 months after the initial release.

And, because The Pokémon Company releases a new set of class each year, they usually stop reprinting the set towards the end of the year while they switch their printing capacity over to the soon-to-be-released new High Class Pack set.

While this results in considerable price volatility, it’s also been quite predicable, with prices crashing over 6 months or so before slowly appreciating as printing stopped.

So: Why Are Prices For High Class Pack Sets Down?

It's simple: demand for Japanese Pokémon cards is down…

But their print capacity is way up.

That's it.

Because these sets tend to be aggressively reprinted to meet demand, and the past few years saw a surge in interest in Japanese Pokémon cards, they were printed in enormous quantities and there's still a lot to go around.

But, the demand for Japanese Pokémon cards has dropped off quite a bit from the peak, causing the supply to be consumed more slowly.

And, at least for now, it looks like it's going to be a slow recovery for each of these sets.

What To Expect With Terastal Festival ex

With this year's release, the Pokémon Company is taking advantage of the current popularity of the Eeveelution Pokémon, and the hype is already reaching a fever pitch…

Just, mainly for the English version of the product: Prismatic Evolutions.

The Pokémon Center had to limit purchases of their exclusive ETBs to only 2 per person for Prismatic Evolutions, and pre-orders still sold out within hours!

And, resellers are already flipping these sold out, $60 boxes, for $225 a box: almost 4x the retail price!

Sold Out eBay Listing for Prismatic Evolutions PC ETBs

So, there is proven international demand for this set, which will release in Japan 2 months prior with this year's High Class Pack set…

And I think we're going to see a lot of collectors try to get their hands on it.

I'm expecting dramatic early price surges for this set that will make buying sealed boxes or singles around release extremely costly.

But, with history as our example:

  1. The Pokémon Company will release additional print waves of the product, and

  2. As Prismatic Evolutions releases internationally on January 17th, 2025, much of the international demand for the Japanese product will shift back to English.

And, sometime around May or June, we might just see the all-time low prices hit for this product. But, that's assuming the Japanese market doesn't join English in the current modern Pokémon boom…

Conclusion

I've already pre-ordered 2 Terastal Festival ex booster boxes: one to rip, and one to keep sealed.

But that's it.

I'm expecting the prices to follow the pattern we've seen from past High Class Pack sets in the months following their release, and if I decide to build a larger position in the product, it will be based on how the market evolves over the coming months.

I can't wait to see what happens next!

As usual: thank you so much for reading the TCG Buyers Club newsletter.

My name's Grey, I buy cardboard, and I make collecting and investing in Pokemon simple.

Cheers 🍻

P.S. Here's your sneak peek of my next video, which is going live later today at 4:00 p.m. EST on my YouTube Channel. In it, I continue to expand on last week's newsletter, discussing how the Stacked Hype Theory can help you identify the best time to sell into a booming Pokémon market.

⚡️ Is it time to Sell? Pokemon Card Market Update ✨

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