Pokemon cards were trendy in the late 90s and early 00s, following video games and animated series footsteps. Little sparkly monsters with unique features were in schoolyards globally. Some twenty years later, the Pokemon mania reemerged, fueled by the collector’s hype, various YouTubers’ endorsement, and a side effect of the unique health situation in the world.
Why Did Pokemon Cards Start Trending?
Spending more than the usual amount of time at home, many dug up their Pokemon cards from the bottom of the garage. A wave of nostalgia contributed to the interest in acquiring cards that people were missing, and the snowball started to roll. YouTube celebrities like Logan Paul hopped on the bandwagon, paying allegedly $200,000 for a first edition pack so that he could get a PSA 10 graded Charizard.
English-speaking countries soon saw a massive drought. Scalpers feasted on the shops leading stores like Target to stop selling Pokemons at one point. The Pokemon Company also had a statement about the inability to meet the demand for unique cards. If it’s any consolation, Japan had a similar situation in 2018 and successfully recovered from the Pokemon craze.
How Valuable are Pokemon Cards
While the mainstream media did some stories on the Pokemon cards, the leading media that ramped up the interest were YouTube, TikTok and Instagram. Famous YouTubers started unpacking rare Pokemon booster packs, while ordinary collectors getting rare and valuable cards were like revelling cards in live blackjack Canada or other games of chance. Of course, scalpers contributed to the price rise, and if you got the box with cards, you paid it excessively, and it better gets you something worthwhile.
Pokemon cards transcended physical form and joined the NFT craze. As a result, collectors started to invest in digital Pokemon cards in the form of nonfungible tokens.
To get an idea of how valuable Pokemon cards became, we could look at Dani Sanchez or SuperDuperDani. The LA-based YouTuber has a precious collection. She values around a quarter of a million dollars. In addition, there are some first edition Charizards and other desirable cards.
Vintage cards have immense value, and a sealed box of Pokemon cards from the late 90s can reach between $20,000 and $50,000. The original price was around $100.
Record-breaking Sales
If we know the increase in sales volume from 2019 to 2020, when the Pokemon cards saw growth of 574%, it is no wonder that the price skyrocketed. In late 2020, a gold-labelled Charizard card from the first-ever set reached the price of $369,000 on the Goldin Auctions site.
Just two months later, a rare Illustrator Pikachu card sold for $375,000. Blastoise character from Wizards of the Coast series that got 8.5 grade from CGC reached $360,000 from the starting price of $100,000.
Collectors started sending their cards massively to three grading companies PSA, CGC, and BGA. As a result, their offices got more cards in a week than previously in months, and at one time, PSA, the most prestigious of these companies, stopped receiving cards.
Pokemon cards are a great example but are not the only collectables that got the rise in popularity. But others, like sports cards, didn’t get that much love from the community and thousands of YouTube minutes.
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