While most of the collectibles market has been in a downturn, we are starting to see FOMO again in certain pockets, especially for Pokémon cards. If you collect Pokémon cards, then you know there's real hype surrounding the release of the Scarlet & Violet Prismatic Evolutions expansion set on January 17th.
There's a lot of excitement surrounding the release of this set. Pre-orders of these cards have been sold out for awhile now; some brick-and-mortar stores that will sell these cards, however, are afraid for the safety of their staff and customers. If you're unfamiliar with Pokémania, this may sound crazy to you, but you only need to take a look at this video (and many others like it) to see that some investors have gotten aggressive trying to buy these cards for MSRP and then immediately reselling them online for a much higher price.
We've already seen this reselling happen online pre-release; here's an example of where an Elite Trainer Box (ETB) sold for $250 on eBay on January 14th before the set has even been released! In case you're wondering, the MSRP of an ETB is only $49.99.
Several outlets have reported that The Retro Emporium, a pop culture store in Kent, Washington, has refused to sell the Prismatic Evolutions set because thieves have broken into the store twice in the past seeking to steal Pokémon products.
People are buying ETBs hoping to pull certain chase cards, and there's one chase card that, at the moment, stands above all the others: the Umbreon Special Illustration Rare (SIR). A SIR is a rare, full-art Pokémon card with a special illustration and are generally highly sought after by collectors. The Prismatic Evolutions set is expected to have just over 30 SIRs with most of them featuring Eeveelutions.
It's going to be harder to pull those SIRs this time around though since booster boxes aren't available for this set (a booster box has 36 10-card booster packs). In comparison, an ETB only has eight 10-card booster packs along with dice and other components you need to actually play the trading card game). According to this article, the odds of pulling an SIR is almost 2%. This means you'd roughly pull one SIR for every 66 packs you open. The odds of pulling the Umbreon SIR, however, are much more challenging sitting at just .05%. Considering that the market rate for a pack is now around $15, this could be a risky endeavor.
As for sales values for the Umbreon EX card, pre-orders for this card have already been listed for sale on eBay, and buyers are purchasing these ungraded copies of this card (even before it's been released) in the $2,000 to $3,500 range:
