Everyone assumes Pokemon carts only go up, so I compared the first 30 days of my tracking against the last 30. Loose carts, US eBay Buy It Now listings, average of the daily median asking price.
| Game |
Jul 19 - Aug 18 |
Sep 17 - Oct 16 |
Change |
Listings per day |
| Emerald |
$243 |
$230 |
-5% |
~25 |
| Crystal |
$179 |
$168 |
-6% |
~16 |
| Ruby |
$99 |
$97 |
-2% |
~13 |
| Sapphire |
$98 |
$98 |
0% |
~15 |
| Gold |
$74 |
$71 |
-5% |
~17 |
| Yellow |
$69 |
$70 |
+2% |
~18 |
| Red |
$69 |
$69 |
0% |
~16 |
| Silver |
$67 |
$63 |
-6% |
~15 |
| Blue |
$64 |
$62 |
-3% |
~17 |
FireRed is around $115 but I only started tracking it in late September, so no comparison yet.
What stood out:
- Nothing moved more than 6% either way. If anything the trend is slightly down.
- Emerald is still in a league of its own at ~1.4x Crystal.
- Gen 1 and Gen 2 carts all sit in the same $60-70 band.
How it's measured: new listings matching each game, loose carts only, excluding lots/bundles, Japanese and PAL copies, and anything labeled repro, bootleg or fake. Days with fewer than 8 matching listings are left out.
Big caveats: these are asking prices, not sold prices, so actual sales land lower. And fakes that aren't labeled as fakes can still slip in, which is a real issue with Pokemon carts.
Disclosure: the tracker is a project of mine (CresvaMent, it does eBay deal alerts). Daily numbers for each game are here if you want to dig in: https://cresvament.com/deals?ref=reddit