In economics, the market equilibrium can be simply defined as the point at which the quantity of a good produced by suppliers equals the quantity demanded by consumers. The collectibles trade is the perfect market to see this economic principle in action. Unfortunately, market participants need to understand that the market equilibrium price is often changing. I have long lamented that the only constant in the antiques and collectibles trade is change. Collectors tastes change, prices change, and markets are always changing and evolving for better or worse. What is popular today most likely wont be popular tomorrow and vice versa. Incidentally, one of the hottest markets in the collectibles trade at present time is the market for Pokemon trading cards. Pokemon was a Japanese phenomenon that first premiered on the scene in the United States back in 1998, spawned from the popular Nintendo video game franchise. Since that time, the market for Pokemon cards has had its share of ebbs and flows. When the cards were first produced for the North American market (originally produced by Wizards of the Coast), hysteria overtook the market, and Pokemon fever was in full swing. Fast forward to 2003 when The Pokemon Company itself started to manufacture the cards, and demand finally subsided. But as what tends to happen with a lot of pop culture crazes, what was once old is now new again, and by 2015 with the release of the mobile phone application known as Pokemon Go, Pokemon cards were back in vogue again, with prices on secondary market starting to escalate. It was also around this time that major third-party card grading companies like PSA (Professional Sports Authenticator) started grading and encapsulating Pokemon cards. This gave the market a shot in the proverbial arm, and collectors as well as nostalgia seekers looking to capture the innocence of their youth took notice. By the time the pandemic started, Pokemon was poised to make a monumental splash with modern era mass-produced cards selling out at retailers all across the country and vintage cards seeking new high price points at auction. This led to many wannabe speculators starting to hoard the product and devote massive amounts of money (and in some cases, debt) to acquiring as much of the product as they could. This in turn led The Pokemon Company to announce that they were upping production to over 9 billion (yes, that is billion with a b, folks) cards per year. This announcement did nothing to quell the demand of the cards, and speculators just doubled down on their belief in the long-term investment potential of these items. Make no mistake, I have a lot of faith in the vintage Pokemon card market. The cards produced during the early years of the company in the late 1990s were quite iconic and reek of nostalgia. I myself hold a small position in these cards and do have an emotional attachment to them. When the opportunity permits and I come across a vintage graded card at a reasonable price, I will purchase it and add it to my collection. I am not, however, caught up in the frenzy like some collectors who lose all sense of rationality and pay a premium to buy up these items as a sound financial investment. This is the antiques and collectibles trade, after all, and in my opinion, there are no sound financial investments here. It is all speculation and fairy dust. An item is only worth whatever someone is willing to pay for it at a distinct fleeting moment in time. That said, today the modern era Pokemon market has entered into a massive bull market with sets that were released just a few years ago doubling and tripling in price. This is not a healthy market, especially given the fact that these products were recently mass-produced. I have long criticized extreme price movements in the antiques and collectibles trade. During the pandemic, prices on most antiques and collectibles soared to new heights. The vintage comic book market hit all-time highs during this timeframe as did demand for luxury watches, handbags, and even graded video games (side note: to be fair, the market for graded video games was most likely artificially manipulated due to other factors at play). The prices that most of these mass-produced modern era Pokemon cards and sets are now selling for is not sustainable over the long term. Few Pokemon collectors can remember back around 2005, Pokemon cards fell out of favor and the market entered a bad bear market. It was only recently revived with the launch of the mobile game Pokemon Go and the demand for nostalgia during the pandemic. As noted, Pokemon was conceived in 1998, which was roughly 26 years ago. While Pokemon isnt going away anytime soon, it still has a long way to go to become an established, let alone mature, collecting category. All this appears to be lost on modern era speculators who are quick to call themselves savvy investors just because they bought a case of six factory-sealed booster boxes of the latest Pokemon trading card set that will sit untouched in a closet hoping it accrues in value. Ironically, if and when the Pokemon set does increase in value, these same starry eyed speculators wont sell, the thinking being that it will go up even higher in the future. The Pokemon Company also has a habit of reprinting some of their most popular sets, but this does nothing to deter these same speculators who just buy more of the product. I am sorry, but this is not collecting, this is hoarding. Pokemon cards have no underlying cash flows. They are purely speculative, and make no mistake, when this frenzy ends, and it will surely end, these same speculators are going to be counting their losses. Always remember this famous quote that sums up speculating in the collectibles trade quite eloquently, The trend is your friend, until the end, when it bends. And in the collectibles trade, bend it does, because nothing lasts forever, not even Pokemon. Shawn Surmick has been an avid collector since the age of 12. He currently resides in his hometown of Boyertown, Pa., and is a passionate collector of antiques and collectibles. His articles focus on various topics affecting the marketplace.