Rhys Fisher

Finally got to test today's judge. Not good enough yet. I have an idea. Long shot.

Sent the swarm out to gather data on the Pokemon market. Tons. This is tip of the iceberg. Also scanning Magic the gathering. Already learned some things I think Rudy is probably only half aware of if some of the questions he asks on lives are genuine and not market manipulation. What a time to be a market participant. I still believe that even with all this insight, it’s a trap to over estimate ones edge. Or that it’s easy to loose sight of it. It used to be “the” thing during the 1999 peak. Since then it’s one of the things. Adoption within younger groups are struggling and millennials and GenZ can only absorb so much. They’re printing +10billions of cards per set. New sets launching every 3 months and they’re expanding with the new plant live for 2028. Look at the PSA number for mega evolution and it’s like in the tens of thousands per month vs a couple in previous eras. DGMW. If bag holders double down positions as these print runs get bigger, even with demand the same, you can see the squeezes clearly. And if some escalation of conflicts creates black outs, games and cardboard will be it. You also have a baby boom happening within a millennial generation that is older, looking at mental health studies of kids these days who had too much access to phones… so there’s definitely many cases where even with higher print runs, the money keeps chasing. But let’s be real. Look at what’s happening with the kids toy market overall. First those stuffed animals and objects (Jellycats). Then figgies (or however you spell them). Companies are rinse repeating the pokemon formula and its working. Too well. Disguise a unboxing lottery into a child’s toy and you make more money selling to the speculative millennials than you do to the base use case. It’s quite smart how they do it. Sponsor a child’s YouTube channel to mention it. Small stock in brick and mortar and get some influencer to unbox and live react to a rare one and then buy a few rare ones back at crazy prices. Kids see them in shops and react. Sending parents to tiktok to check. Who then find the unboxing and resale value and boom. Hooked. Suddenly they buy a few packs to unbox themselves and few more to store. And the produce goes from kids toy to speculative instrument in a flash. Kinda genius. But can’t help but wonder when scalpers will need to learn the difference between real scarcity and the illusion of it. Don’t know where I was going with this. But thanks for getting this far 🤣 DM me if you want some alpha on cardboard markets.