A few years ago, I saw this similar dynamic happen firsthand when the crypto market was going completely crazy. Specifically, I remember watching SHIB—or the Shiba Inu coin—go absolutely parabolic. To drive long-term value, developers introduced the "burn" method. The premise was straightforward: if you bought a certain amount, they would "burn" or permanently delete an equal amount of the overall SHIB coin from the market’s total supply. They refused to reissue new coins, and although they started out with a staggeringly high amount—hundreds of trillions—the underlying mechanism was incredibly effective at shifting market perception.
The core idea behind this aggressive strategy was that the more tokens that were burned, the less total supply there would be circulating overall in the open market, naturally making your individual stake or position worth more over time. They even partnered with other companies to create incentives to burn tokens in exchange for using their services. Long story short, even though a 500-trillion token supply is almost unfathomable to comprehend, I understood the overarching concept immediately. It fundamentally proved that supply restriction works, and it left a lasting impression on me as an investor.
Fast forward to the current TCG market, and I am seeing an eerily similar concept taking shape right before our eyes. But instead of digitally "burning" cards out of existence, there are a rapidly growing number of content creators and serious collectors effectively doing the exact same thing. They are actively removing premium items from the open market and locking them away into their "forever collections" or earmarking them for a multiple-year-long hold. The supply isn't just changing hands anymore; it's being permanently sidelined from the active trading ecosystem.
This dynamic is especially aggressive when it comes to sealed product. In the TCG world, opening a sealed box is the ultimate burn. Once that plastic wrap is torn, the product is effectively "burned" out of existence forever, since it no longer holds its premium valuation as a sealed asset and is irreversibly converted into single cards. Every time a streamer rips a sought-after vintage or modern-era box for a video, the remaining sealed population takes a direct hit, making the surviving sealed boxes that much rarer and more valuable to the investors disciplined enough to hold them.
We can see this playing out with real, tangible data on platforms like TCGplayer. Take the legendary Pokémon: Evolving Skies booster boxes, for example, which currently show only around 154 boxes actively listed on the market. Granted, this specific metric doesn't factor in posted listings on eBay, private sales, or the sealed cases quietly tucked away in investors' closets. BUT , in the strictly open market, this is the harsh reality of a booster box that actually had multiple massive reprints after its initial release. This intense clash of high demand and limited open-market supply is currently giving this booster box a staggering market value of around $2700.
This supply vacuum is even more apparent in the One Piece TCG . Because One Piece is a massively explosive market with a fiercely dedicated player and collector base, the hoarding effect is intensely magnified. We are seeing premium single cards released just a couple of years ago that currently boast an open market supply of fewer than 100 available copies. In some of the more extreme cases for high-tier alternate arts, manga rares, or serialized cards, the available open-market supply has literally dwindled down into the single digits.
So, are these cards literally being destroyed out of existence? Most likely not; they are just being aggressively kept off the open market. But that is the reality of investing: whatever is currently on the open market being bought and sold determines the actual market price. This mirrors another major TCG constraint I've noticed: card grading . Sending raw cards away to companies like PSA or Beckett effectively locks up liquidity for months, acting as a secondary "burn" that temporarily starves the market of circulating singles. Whether it’s a forever collection, a ripped box, or a graded slab lock-up, the lesson is clear. The available supply is shrinking, and recognizing this engineered scarcity is the key to mastering your collection.