Price Surge: Modern Full Art Trainers
Lillie Full Art Ultra Prism as a Case Study
In recent months the price of Full Art cards have gone up significantly from recent out- of- print sets. A prime example of this surge is the Sun & Moon Ultra Prism Secret Rare Lillie Full Art card. Let’s see if we can glean anything about future values and collecting these desirable pieces of cardboard through the lens of what happened to this Lillie Full Art, which surged unexcitedly on the heels of a YouTube video in early January 2021.
The Full Art card style has long been used as chase cards in Pokémon sets, starting in the Black & White era with Reshiram and Zekrom. The first Full Art Trainer card looks to be N, which was a meta card that was sort of a cross between Reset Stamp and Marnie. The first female Full Art Trainers were the trio of Cherin, Bianca, and Skyla from Boundaries Crossed. I’d argue that the Japanese version of Skyla on a BreakPOINT Promo is the first real ‘Waifu’ card; her pose is much more stylized in a sexual way than the other Full Art Trainers to that point. I’m sure some PokeArt Historian could delve deeper into that, but I think we’re close enough on the history for our purposes here.
Full Art Trainers have always had a following. I’m not going to get into the Male Gaze elements of the Waifu trend, though there is certainly an element to these collectables that rubs some of the community the wrong way. Let’s focus for now on the move in the marketplace on the cards released around 2018 and later. The Sun & Moon sets were largely dismissed by collectors early on, particularly the base set, which was printed heavily and can still be found in repack pin boxes and tins pretty easily. For the Sun & Moon collector, Burning Shadows was the first to boom last year; the chase card being a Full Art Rainbow Rare Charizard, this was probably predictable. But savvy investors saw opportunity in Ultra Prism, a set that lacked the top end draw, but has a bevy of Full Art Trainers, including the skyrocketing Lillie.
This card always had a following, holding steady in the marketplace around 35-40 dollars in NM condition for virtually from release until late 2020. Ultra Prism sealed product really started to move in late 2021 in price, which boosted the value of the set as folks realized it was out-of-print and becoming more scarce. In general the main chase cards in this set follow a pattern of slow, appreciating value in recent months. This trend of can be seen with Lillie Full Art in the graphic below; it had a slow trend from 40 dollars up to around 100 dollars market price on TCGPlayer by early winter of 2020. Notable is that you can see the volume of the card increasing as the card slowly climbed; this is not exactly a hard to find card, and there are always versions of it available for sale on eBay, but the marketplace was seeing more of this card being sold than ever before. There was a brief surge on TCGPlayer in late December only to see a dip right around the turn of the year back to about 125, which matched the eBay price up until the beginning of the year. I cannot see any trends toward 200 for this card on eBay during this period; list prices and sales at this level seem to be confined to TCGPlayer only during that few weeks of time.
So, what happened here in early 2021? There was a decent sized Pokémon YouTuber named TwiceBakedJake who posted this video on July 5th:
Almost immediately after, the stock on TCGPlayer and Troll & Toad were wiped out of anything under 200. What I feel happened was there was a coordinated move to buy up all the supply under around 200 dollars on this card over the period of a couple of days, moving the price point of the card to unheard of levels. There were several days where you couldn’t find this card through TCGPlayer or Troll & Toad for less than 300 dollars, before there were enough of a supply on alternatives like eBay to settle this down a bit. The virtual marketplaces like Virbank on Facebook or the subreddits devoted to Pokémon trades and sales were largely confused by these events, but the supply surged to meet the demand. Many people have these in their binders, just through course of collecting, and they were amazed to find they could get turn their Full Art page into several hundred dollars instantly (and did so!).
We are a more month past that and this card is still humming in the marketplace; an auction for a NM+ copy went for over 400 today. While this card represents perhaps the most marked example, nearly all recent set Full Art Trainers shot up significantly. Even Pokémon cards featuring trainers got caught up in the bonanza, seeing significant value increases over just a period of days.
Many feel this was concerted effort to spike the price by buying out the stock of these cards on TCGPlayer and Troll & Toad to spark artificial demand. I tend to agree; while the card had seen appreciation in value, I think it was a clear case of a small subset of buyers creating irrational marketplace conditions that led to some serious FOMO on collectors who were sitting on a bit of a lull in terms of what was happening in the marketplace at the turn of the year. That being said, the cards from Sun & Moon’s era are now considered out of print and have seen values increase across the board. So, I would not expect the price of these cards to crash. Taking our case study of Lillie Full Art from Ultra Prism as a benchmark, the price is holding for NM around 200-250 per sale on eBay, with pristine raw cards commanding more.
One thing to really watch on this card is the PSA population. As of writing this, the PSA 10 Pop report is 167 Mint 10s; with the backlog at PSA at 6-9 months, I’d assume there are some additional Lillie Full Arts already in for grading. This is absolutely the most graded card in the set. The most recent 10s sold have sold extremely well, and an auction on 2/8 went over 1700.
So, what should you, the casual Pokémon card collector do with this knowledge? If you’re looking simply to complete the Sun & Moon era Master Sets, you should buy your raw Full Art trainers now. I do not think these will drop markedly in price. If you’re collecting for fun, look for a NM example that’s a little off-center; those will be card that won’t grade and could be scooped a little under market value. There are not a lot of ‘Lightly Played’ versions of this card, as modern Pokémon card condition is fairly high, with the biggest issues being production quality.
If you are looking to invest, Full Art Trainers are a good bet. Pay premium for NM+ condition from reputable sellers on eBay or marketplaces that offer reference checks. Maximizing your investment on these cards requires grading them. PSA is obviously returning well, though I do think the population will increase on these cards over time, so I don’t think near term you’ll see much appreciation if you buy the card already slabbed. If you opt to grade, PSA’s prices are established in the marketplace. For quicker flips, you could look at CGC as an option, but there are some risks. I do not see record of a CGC 10 having been sold, and 9.5s are lagging the 10s significantly. It is extremely difficult to get a CGC 10 and once we see their population report, I think the prices of 9.5s from CGC will see a boost. Buying high grade CGC slabs could be a good strategy to see some medium turn appreciation.
Summing all of this up, I would not expect the velocity of Full Art Trainer values to slow down. Folks are looking for alternatives to the typical big chase cards (Charizard, Pikachu, base starters, etc) and these offer beautiful art for the collector.
Recommendations
For collectors, look for slightly off-centered or high quality cards advertised as Lightly Played cards and haggle under 200 dollars if possible.
Buy NM+ Raw between 250-350 and send to grade. Be certain of quality! Card should have NO whitening and look perfectly centered. Upside is high, but if you hit a 9 instead of a 10 you will see a dramatic decrease on sale.
Buy CGC 9.5s cheap (recent sales around 500) and either hold and wait for CGC to rise OR crack the case and submit to PSA fishing for a 10. If you find with subgrades and see all 10s and 9.5s, the risk is lower.
Look for alternatives! Lillie, for example, has several other Full Art cards that are just as rare, but not yet as expensive. Skyla from BreakPOINT can be found for a reasonable price, and I suspect her inclusion in the new Shiny Fates set will push all of her cards up in value in the short term. Consider Japanese versions of Full Art Trainers (especially for grading; Japanese cards tend to have better print quality).
Grab the Full Art Secret Rares from the new sets when they come out earlier rather than later, as there’s absolutely no reason to think this is a fad; the cards have beautiful art and will always be sought after. This goes extra for whatever set the US Version of the next Marnie that mirrors the Japanese version from their Shiny V set. This will be a hugely sought after card.
It certainly has been an unexpected spike in the values of some of these cards. Was it driven solely by a YouTube video? Was it a pump and dump scheme aimed at creating a supply shock and then coordinated selling to release a supply of cards that had sold for 35 dollars just a few months prior, now fetching over 200? Are we all just bored, tired of the pandemic, and looking for a nice piece of art at the same time as hundreds of others in the same situation? We may never know for sure, but we need to adjust our thinking on Full Art collecting. And we need to check those old binders to see what gems are in there! A page of Trainers from 2018 could be worth 1000 dollars or more!