Pokemon Surging Sparks Surges in Pricing
Prices are skyrocketing and Demand isn’t going anywhere.
Remember, this isn’t financial advice.
Pokemon Surging Sparks is in a level of demand that we haven’t really seen since the Covid era of TCG. Prices are going up and there is more demand for Surging Sparks than there is for Half Life 3.
Let’s take a look into what is going on with the market and see what the deal is. Hint, there is no deal.
Looking at the 1 month chart on tcgplayer.com, we see the price increase over a short period of time due to demand.
With the initial supply being limited, this has caused a lot of FOMO. The market is in full swing and we are watching economics and emotions play out. Now when emotions enter the game, we see unpredictable behavior. With the unpredictable behavior we see unpredictable price movement. Remember this is a standard set and not some anniversary, super-ultra-rare set. It’s standard.
Unless The Pokemon Company wants to release a press release guaranteeing reprints, I expect the market to continue in an upward trend on Surging Sparks. The continuing increases in price might lead to a cool down as more people become priced out of the market. It could reach $200/box. Who knows anymore? Everything right now is unpredictable.
If your grocery bill is up 100%, why can’t shiny cardboard be as well?
Let’s do some math.
This will be an extremely dumbed down approach to pricing.
The MSRP for Surging Sparks is $160/booster box. Let’s say a distributor gets each box for $100 and sells to the reseller or local game store for $110/box. The distributor makes the profit of $10. The reseller or game store needs to also turn a profit on the box so they sell it for $120 which makes them $10 in profit per box.
Let’s factor in the market now. There is a large demand for Surging Sparks and people are buying. The distributor can then look at the secondary market and see that resellers, ebay, tcgplayer, etc are selling for $140/box. A couple of days go by and the reseller wants to buy more boxes and goes to the distributor. Now since the distributor has seen the secondary market, they tell the reseller it will be $120/box this time.
The reseller then needs to increase their prices to make similar profit. This chain reaction causes price increase in every part of the chain.
- Secondary market goes up in price.
- Supply is limited.
- Distributors raise prices.
- Resellers and stores raise prices.
- Secondary market goes up in price.
This becomes a vicious cycle until people are priced out of the market and demand settles.
I will say this. I don’t understand how this set can gain so much traction when the cards are mid-tier at best, Surging Sparks is a standard set, and this is all PREORDER product. The cards haven’t even landed in peoples hands yet and this is the type of demand we have.
The fact that this is a preorder product with this type of demand is the most irrational thing in this scenario.
With unpredictable emotions comes unpredictable price movement.
This Surging Sparks rollercoaster is going to be fun to watch.
