For those just joining us, let’s do a brief recap of our previous buyout experiment. We set out to test the mechanics of market control—dubbed Operation Walking Wake —to see how easily a coordinated sweep could artificially raise the price floor of a promising card. This is officially Part 2 of that journey. In our initial phase, we systematically bought out the lower-end listings to dry up liquidity and shock the algorithm. Now, we are in the maintenance phase, actively monitoring how the TCG market reacts when the cheap supply is suddenly ripped away.
Since our last update, we have watched the market supply stubbornly hover around 120 Near Mint quantity on TCGPlayer. Sellers may have noticed some of the momentum and slowly started listing their withheld inventory. To defend our position, we’ve had to make a few strategic buys here and there for any remaining cards listed under the $8 market price. These recent sweeps totaled somewhere in the 14 to 35 card range, pushing our current holdings to around 150 total copies . Admittedly, this exposure is higher than we initially wanted , tying up more capital than a standard speculative play, but we are absolutely committed to seeing this thing through to the end.
Our immediate follow-up strategy and operational goal remains laser-focused: buy absolutely anything that drops under the $8 cap . By creating a synthetic buy-wall at this price point, we are forcing the market—and subsequent sellers—to recognize $8 as the new bedrock. It takes discipline to hold the line, but as savvy investors, sticking to the parameters of the experiment is crucial. We will continue to absorb these cheaper listings and then reassess our portfolio in a couple of weeks to plot out our moves for the next part of this series.
Interestingly, the broader market seems to be fighting this new floor price. Sellers are testing the waters, but the incredible news for our portfolio is that most of the inventory recently added onto the market is priced above the $8 floor . The psychological shift is already taking effect. Instead of a race to the bottom, sellers are finally anchoring their expectations to our buyout threshold, slowly dragging the overall market sentiment upward.
As we analyze the current spread, the pricing landscape looks incredibly polarized. We are seeing the highest listings populated by hopeful sellers aiming for the $35 to $40 price range , trying to capitalize on the perceived scarcity and demand. However, the vast majority of the realistic inventory is currently clustered in the $8 to $15 range , with around 100 NM copies currently floating on the open market. The tension between organic supply and our artificial demand is reaching a boiling point, and the coming weeks will definitively prove if our strategy can yield the growth we are hunting for.