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Pokémon Cards: A Booming Industry


Mekaael: Pokemon. The highest-grossing media franchise of all time, surpassing 92 billion dollars. During the initial rise of pokemon, the “Pokemon Trading Card Game” was unveiled to the public in 1996, becoming an automatic hit. Since then, various types of cards, and packs were released, making the Pokemon community even more attached to the game and TV series. Since February of this year, there has been a recent boom in the market for Pokemon cards, with prices of cards skyrocketing to upwards of 150,000$ USD. This article will explain, why there has been a recent boom in prices and popularity, and how the card trading system works.


Pokemon Cards have been released since 1996 and have released different versions, whether it’s series one, two, three, etc. The lower the series number, the earlier they were released. Inside the packs, there are various types of cards one can receive: trainer cards, energy cards, and pokemon cards. The most popular and most valuable of the three are the Pokemon cards themselves. Of the Pokemon cards, one can get regular cards or holographic cards, which are more valuable.


In the whole card collecting industry, there are two main grading organizations, PSA and BGS. The companies will grade the cards based out of ten (ten being the best condition). There are three aspects of the cards that will make more or less valuable. The rating from the grading companies PSA and BGS, the age of the cards (the older the better), and the rarity of the card. With the combination of these three aspects, cards can soar in value. This is a brief introduction into the world of Pokemon Cards, but for a much more in-depth understanding of the assessment of pokemon cards, watch Logan Paul’s video titled ‘I Bought A $200,000 Box Of Pokémon Cards.” It helped spark my interest in the Pokemon Card industry and gave me enough information to understand what was going on.


Now onto understanding why there has been a recent boom in Pokemon Cards. Over the last few years, sports cards and trading cards have become a fun way of investing. If one has a good understanding of basketball, they would purchase cards of individual players to hold for long periods of time to sell in the future, purchase packs of cards in hope of luck providing them with high rarity players or purchasing boxes of packs, and either opening them or selling the box as a whole unopened. Since the recent boom in trading cards, many people who watched Pokemon as kids had started purchasing older cards that made them more nostalgic and from there it took off. Many celebrities such as Ronda Rousey, Ed Sheeran, Justin Bieber, and Logan Paul all found joy in watching Pokemon and decided to invest lots of money into the card trading game, spending over hundreds of thousands to purchase the cars they loved as kids, a fan favorite being series one Charizard, which goes for over 120,000$ at a PSA 10 rating.


Image: Today's Parent

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