Magic: The Gathering products once again seized the top three spots on the TCGplayer Top 25 Sealed Products chart for June 2024. The TCGplayer chart (see “June 2024“) ranks the most active products on the platform by dollar volume, showing the beginning and ending prices of each product. The chart also added some perspective as to where the TCG market is headed in the near term.
The newest TCGplayer chart offers up three significant storylines. The first storyline involves the hotness of Magic: The Gathering Modern Horizons 3 products. After having sub-par to average Standard set releases in the first half of the year, Wizards of the Coast came through big in the summer with Modern Horizons 3. Eight of the 25 spots on the TCGplayer chart are all occupied by Modern Horizons 3 products, including three of the top five slots. Additionally, these products maintained their values from month beginning to month end relatively well, only rising or dropping a few percentage points.
All seems to be well in Magic: The Gathering-land, for the moment. However, the same can’t be said for Pokemon TCG. After being a dominating force on this chart from 2021-2023 (see “The ‘Pokemon TCG’, ‘Magic: The Gathering’, and ‘Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG’ are in Control“), Pikachu, Squirtle, and their Pokemon ex pals seemed to have hit a bump in the road as Pokemon TCG managed only to get the #13 slot on this list. This, needless to say, isn’t the standard performance for Pokemon TCG as their products tend to hang out in the top ten from month to month.
This is now the fourth time this year that Pokemon TCG had no products in the top ten, and it looks like the game is hitting a bit of a soft spot. This is by no means a reason to panic, as Pokemon TCG has had a stellar performance from the pandemic up onto this point, and the game has gone through correction periods before and done fine. However, it’s definitely something to add to the retailer’s “watch lists” to see if game actually begins to “circle the drain” a bit more.
The third storyline that can be gleaned from this chart is from the sudden disappearance of all of the TCGs that are not part of the Big Three (see “The Big Three Rule Again“) or have major licenses attached. There is not a single TCG on this list that isn’t packing a heavy-hitting brand name. All of the smaller TCG companies have been bumped off the list, and big name manufacturers like WotC, Konami, Pokemon, Ravensburger, Bandai, and Fantasy Flight have assumed control of the space. The top end of the chart is so mega-corporation dense that even Bandai’s lesser TCG brands, which are all major licenses (Digimon, DBS, etc.), can’t even crack the top 25.
In general, the top end of the TCG space seems to be clogged by heavyweights, and the reason could be twofold. For one, the larger game manufacturers just simply have more resources to use to print and promote their games. At some point in any competitive market, money talks and the entities with the most money often have the loudest voices; the Silver Age of TCGs era is probably at that point.
Secondly, in-store organized play may have finally become a sales factor from the first time since the pandemic. The TCGs on this list all have strong organized play systems, especially Disney Lorcana, which has been absorbing players from other TCGs with the lure of winning golden Mickey cards and limited edition playmats worth hundreds of dollars if sold on online auction platforms. MagicCons have, of course, been a game changer for Magic: The Gathering organized play as well, and Pokemon TCG, One Piece TCG, and Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG all have solid organized play programs that are picking up steam. Unlike the days MetaZoo (see ” MetaZoo Games“), it seems TCG fans want to actually play with the cards they are collecting.
Source: ICv2
