Dear readers, hello again.

Short story to start with: when I was younger I started with collecting videogames. Some of them I could sell recently for quite a good price, but the ones that were going for amazing prices were sealed items. Including a TCG Pokemon Theme Deck from the Neo era and a sealed copy of DS Pokemon Link!

Which gave me the idea to start investing in Pokémon stuff last year. Seeing the crazy prices people sometimes bid, it got me really excited to make a small online store at an online marketplace. I love Pokémon since I was 4 and never stopped loving it. I decided to sell a decent amount of games and take those profits for Pokémon stuff. So I decided to stash up on loose cards, new sealed items and a big bunch of sealed 3ds Pokémon games (Which are now like 50 each). Some of those will be a long term investment, some short term.

Then I found out some people offer the Wizards of the Coast cards pretty cheap (The OG cards will ALWAYS be a thing). As example I bought a Dark Charizard Non holo from the Team Rocket series for 10 and sold for 60. And the effort is pretty low, all you need is to be stashed up with some bubbelplastic enveloppes and boxes. So whenever I feel like it, I buy cheap cards and ask for a lot more money. There are only average selling prices. Friendly reminder: you just get whatever somebody wants to give for it. What matters the most is how badly they want it!

So after getting a lot of mint cards I decided to try out Grading companies. I've sent over 57 cards by now, got 20 back and sold 20 with also decent profits. Still, low effort. Whenever I go walk my dog I bring away the enveloppes. The ease of this is the power of the internet. My experience goes with the French company PCA (Those will arrive this month) and AP Grading from Germany. AP was quite fast but more expensive (20 euros per card). PCA was cheap to grade (9 euros per card) but really slow. It doesn't really matter where you grade the cards as long as the slabs look good and you get high numbers (prefer 8s, 9s and best are the 10s) Then they always sell. PSA is ofcourse the most preferred one, and PSA adds extra value. But that does not mean that you can not make a profit with other companies. PSA is just too expensive now and too busy.

While these 2 methods are the quicker ones, here we come at sealed items. The sealed TCG items are sold quicker with a profit, but also take up more space. If you buy an ETB or Booster box, after 1 year you are guarenteed a profit of a minimum of +60% in todays market. It can be even faster if you find these kind of clearances in stores that make space for new products.

The slowest, but most convenient if you don't have too much storage space, are sealed games. Currently the 3ds era games are like 8-4 years old. Video game stores sell them for around 50 bucks now. To be honest, for the past couple of months I bought multiple copies of Pokémon X&Y, Omega Ruby&Alpha Sapphire and Ultra Sun&Ultra Moon. If you want to know why, go to Ebay now and check the prices of sealed copies of the DS era games of Pokémon, like Black&White. The same will happen with the 3DS era games as history repeats itself and those items will never be made again. The more rare they get with aging, the more you will make profit.

So if you have some investing money left and want to spread it more out like I did, I recommend to try out the Pokémon market. I believe this will always be trending and interesting like baseball cards. With not too much effort, I make around 50-200 bucks extra every month and I reinvest that again. And while I do it, I enjoy to see the collection that comes and goes.

Maybe some small extra tips: you need to make good pictures of your cards, handle them with care, make sure the shipping is always done carefully and get some businesscards to look a bit professional. Don't be shy to ask for good reviews of your customers!