In the past month, there's a card that has surged in price 300%.

This is a card that barely saw a price movement over the past 4 years!

And, although a sudden price rise like this can often raise suspicions of market manipulation…

For this card in particular, I think it instead highlights an important quality of a Pokémon card or product that can create these kinds of delayed price surges.

I'm talking about the Full Art Jesse & James card from Hidden Fates: the perfect example of the Delayed Nostalgia Effect in Pokémon.

The Full Art Jesse & James card was selling for only about $20 at the beginning of January 2025.

And, today, just over a month later, TCG Player prices a raw copy at more than $60.

Setting aside the speculation about market manipulation, the current price for this 5-year-old card feels justified, and the sudden change in price can be explained by a phenomenon I've observed in the Pokémon market before: the Delayed Nostalgia Effect.

What Is The Delayed Nostalgia Effect?

This phenomenon is a delayed price surge for a nostalgic product that is created when a large number of new collectors enter the market.

A great example of this is XY Evolutions sealed product. As a set that is largely a reprint of the original base set cards, there was always a strong nostalgic quality to Evolutions. The problem was: it was absolutely printed to oblivion. And it was so widely available and cheap that the existing Pokémon market quickly became bored of the set, causing it to sit on shelves for prices far below MSRP for years.

It wasn't until the pandemic boom of late 2020 that prices for this product started to appreciate again, and significantly!

Over the course of 2020, sealed Evolutions booster boxes rose from as low as $80 or $90 to well over $500. And, prices continued rising through early 2021, peaking at $1,100 a booster box: a more than 10x price increase over only 1 year!

And what drove this massive appreciation is the Delayed Nostalgia Effect: when a previously overprinted product with a nostalgic connection appreciates in price as new collectors enter the market.

The nostalgic quality of the product simply increases the likelihood that new collectors will want to own it.

And, when the market booms and brings all kinds of new collectors into it, the demand swings in favor of the nostalgic products.

These kinds of nostalgic products can have extreme untapped potential, and spotting them early can be a great strategy.

The Jesse & James Card

This is exactly what I think is happening to this Jesse & James Full Art card.

As classic characters from the original Pokémon anime, there is an extreme nostalgic connection to this card. I know I felt immediately compelled to buy a Japanese copy of this card when I discovered it back in 2022, and I'm not surprised to see new collectors doing the same in 2025.

As I'm writing this, the price for this card on TCG Player has dropped from an all-time high of $68 to the current market price of around $62. This could be a natural pull-back after a massive surge, as additional sellers hop on the bandwagon and temporarily increase the supply of this card on the market…

But it could also be a sign that this card was manipulated to it's current levels and is now coming back down to earth…

But, regardless of what kicked of this sudden price move (manipulation or not), I think we're seeing a long undervalued card achieve the price point it deserves because of the Delayed Nostalgia Effect: I don’t think the price will drop too much further from here.

I think nostalgia will continue to carry the value of this card.

Conclusion

I'll admit: I don't have a great track record picking individual cards to invest in. But, because of that, I'm trying to develop a better understanding of the qualities of cardboard that can make them more valuable in the future.

And, I think the Delayed Nostalgia Effect is an important one.

As we've seen, this applies to both sealed product (like XY Evolutions) and individual cards, like Jesse & James, making it a powerful lens to use when evaluating any Pokémon product.

Let me know what you think and let me know: did you buy any copies of this card when it was still cheap?

And will to price continue to fall from here, or is this just the beginning?

And, 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 Pokémon, simple.

Cheers 🍻

P.S. I have another video going live today at 3:00 pm EST. It's all about how long the current booming Pokémon market will last, based on the history of past booms and guidance from collectibles experts. And, in the end, I explain why none of that info might matter at all because, this time, the Pokémon market might truly be different… I hope you enjoy it!