Post by: Tyler Boughton
As a long standing member of the (Nerd/Geek) community it never occurred to me that something that dealt mainly with children and teenagers could amass such a high price tag and being compared to things like hockey cards, baseball cards, and basketball cards as far as worth was concerned. Yet here we are in early 2021 and I’m blown away by how wrong I was. If you were to say to anyone in the early 90s that your stack of Pokémon cards that you paid a fist full of dollars for could potentially be worth thousands when you became an adult, they’d almost certainly laugh and brush it off as non-sense. I’m not laughing now. Nobody is.
Pokémon has seen yet another surge in popularity over the past few years, with new games popping up on the Nintendo Switch at a fever’s pace, the continued popularity of Pokémon GO! retaining over 100 million players world wide, the card market has also seen a boost in the action. Parents and children alike sharing in the fun as one walks down a path of memories, and the other is shown that “Our parents were nerds too!”, as adults pass along their cards to a younger generation it can be easy for anyone to miss a potential gem in that old deck of cards. With such small damaging details in a rare card like small frays on corners, micro bends, etc. A card’s value can drop, going from what one might expect as “Mint” or “Gem Mint” to not being the case.
With hundreds of Pokémon to collect it can be daunting to understand which are rare, more common, but also when finding value which have issues that an untrained eye would never see. Which is why card and collectible grading has also started to see an increase in activity. A proper grading can take something that initially wouldn’t fetch anymore than initial pack value, to potentially moving it into top tier highly sought-after card.
The biggest hurdle for any trading cards, games or collections in general is to put aside what one would assume is correct in discovering value. Simply being old does not make it valuable, even limited edition’s can be like a blanket over the market. While unseen details that are easy to miss in simple mass-produced cards (errors or shadows). There are even cards that were banned or simply removed from production due to several issues. This is why grading is on the rise, as more and more information begins to hit the market on these cards, people are seeking out companies to give them proper grading, for the purpose of selling, or securing the quality for future generations.
Upon learning all of this it can be easy to get swept up in the possibility of having a potential big ticket item, but variations in cards, simple changes, or the overall quality is something that needs to be looked at by those who are trusted and know what to look for. Since the beginning of the pandemic (I hate having to bring this up) there has been more of a focus on local companies, and “Keeping Things Canadian” so naturally most people would search within our borders.
That is where KSA Grading came into the picture, and with more than a few testimonials, and recommendations from various collectors it was clear the perfect local Canadian based company was them. I’ve already begun closely checking cards I myself have, while investigating other cards I’ve seen floating around my city, and online. It’s time to dust off the trainer hats we once adorn as youths and embrace our childhood. It might just be more worth your while than just sharing in old memories and forming new one’s with your kids.
I truly hope this helps shine a light on up until recently a subject cloaked with misinformation and confusion.
