Fastest Card Bubble To Burst in History

 

Well, that didn't last long!

On Monday I did a post about how the above card  of Shinjo with his name as "Big Boss" from the just released Calbee Series 2 had sold on Yahoo Auctions for a whopping 33,500 Yen (about $300 US).  This didn't make much sense to me since its just a Shinjo card and, while its a "chase" card its not a particularly rare one.

Out of curiosity I started watching other auctions for the same card.  The first two ended last night (here and here).  Exact same card, exact same condition.  How much did they sell for?

Ouch.  One copy for about $40 US, the other about $30.  So in other words the card fell to 1/10th the price it went for on Monday by Wednesday of the same week.

This is really weird.  I mean, the auctions in the 30-40$ range that ended yesterday feel a lot closer to what this card should be worth than the ridiculous 300$ auction price of just a couple days before.

I'm a bit puzzled, but I'll try to throw a theory out here to see if it sticks.  There is a kind of norm in Japan, amongst those who have lots of money, that being the first to own a new thing brings a great deal of prestige to you.  Thus the market value for being the "first" owner of something is way higher than it is for being the second owner of the exact same thing.  

The most famous example of this are the prices that are paid for the first tuna to go on sale at the Tsukiji market each  year.  In 2019 for example a single tuna sold for about 3 million US$ at Tsukiji because it was the first.  There are less dramatic examples out there too.

I wonder if the $300 Big Boss card might have only achieved that price because it was the very first copy of that card to appear on Yahoo Auctions and so some rich/vain collectors bid each other up on it in order to have braggging rights for being the first to land it.  

Edited to Add: I've been having a back and forth with Prestige Collectibles on Twitter and he pointed out that the seller on that 300$ sale earlier this week has a ridiculously low feedback rate, and also that the underbidder seems to have had his account suspended.  So this raises the likelihood that the 300$ sale was a bogus one to begin with, thus rendering a lot of what I wrote in this post moot!