TL;DR
- 📦 Supply & demand does most of the work
- 🔥 Attention moves fast and reverses even faster
- 🇨🇦 Canadians price against Collectr, in CAD
- 🧾 Sold prices are evidence. Asking prices are not
Market price is not a number anyone sets. It is what people paid recently, and it moves.
What moves it
- Supply. In print drifts toward retail, out of print only gets scarcer
- Attention. One chase card or strong art lifts a whole line in a week, then drops it a month later. Popular Pokémon tend to hold steady: Charizard, Gengar, Eeveelutions
- Time, slowly and reliably
- Q4 (Holiday season) and launch weeks, pushing both directions at once
Where the number comes from
- Most Canadian buyers and local shops price against Collectr
- When someone in here says market is around $180, that is the figure they mean. Market doesn't mean buy at this price. Your goal is to buy at MSRP
Two habits that save money
- A listing price is what someone asks. A sold price is what someone got. Only the second is evidence, and on slow product the gap is enormous
- Canadian prices are their own market. Converting a US figure is a sanity check, not a decision