What’s behind the hype and demand?

When I was a kid in the late ’90s, collecting Pokemon cards was a fun hobby. I used to buy packs in hopes of getting the rarest “shiny” cards, or holographic cards. We would trade with friends or go to meetups to exchange cards, aiming to “catch them all.” This was the catchphrase that defined the series as it transitioned from Nintendo’s Game Boy to an animated television show.

When I started collecting again two years ago, things had changed. I waited in line of 100 people in the parking lot outside a toy store to get the latest cards restocked. I once saw four men huddled around a car discussing how much they could make by selling a trunk of cards they had bought in the morning at another store.

New cards can sell out in minutes. People tune in on X and Discord to know where to go.

Similar scenes occurred in the United States, with videos circulating on social media of people stomping on each other to get their hands on packs of cards. There have also been reports of theft at stores that carry cards. Valuable cards are resold at multiples of retail price. The rarest pieces can sell for millions of dollars.

This is a stark contrast to the days when you could go into any store and buy whatever you wanted.

According to an index compiled by Collectors Inc., which owns card rating company Pro Sports Authenticator (PSA), the price of Pokemon cards rose 282% from 2004 to 2020. Since 2020, prices have increased by a staggering 1,350%, according to the index.

Their prices have soared and they are outperforming traditional asset classes, attracting the attention of people looking to make a quick buck and the ultra-high net worth looking for investment assets to protect and grow their wealth.

People who have made money with cryptocurrencies are flooding the market as prices reach unprecedented levels, market sources told CNBC.

Pokemon first gained attention in 1996 when the first game was released. nintendo Gameboy. Trading cards were also released soon after.

Pokémon continued to print cards, but its popularity waned in the 2000s. “Pokémon Go,” released in 2016, changed everything with the smartphone game where people chased around a city trying to “catch” Pokémon in the real world.

The launch of the Nintendo Switch in 2017 and the new Pokemon game for that console brought nostalgic millennials and new gamers into the world.

The card has become particularly popular over the past three years, as the Pokémon Company, which owns the franchise, released a set that included the original characters from the late ’90s.

“This is like a Pokemon renaissance,” Stephanie Farnsworth, a lecturer in media and communications at the University of Sunderland, told CNBC in an interview.

The Pokémon Company continues to release new card sets every few months, and this year the promotion has been boosted by special 30th anniversary merchandise.

In addition to price increases, high-profile sales have also driven more hype in recent years.

In February, influencer Logan Paul sold a rare Pikachu Illustrator card he bought in 2021 for just over $5 million for more than $16 million.

Other rare cards sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Roy Raftery, a trading card expert at London-based auction house Stanley Gibbons Baldwins, said the high-end market is being driven by people who have made money in cryptocurrencies.

“People say they’re putting their money into this because they have nothing else to do and they’re just making a lot of money in crypto and putting it into Pokemon,” Raftery said in an interview with CNBC.

A quick scan of social media sites like X shows crypto users talking about Pokemon cards as if they were stocks, debating the market and whether the recent decline is just a correction.

Raftery said most of his company’s buyers are not “true collectors” but people “looking for high-end assets” or global companies looking to buy stock of Pokemon cards for resale “because that’s how lucrative the general market for all these vintage cards is.”

It’s not just vintage cards that are being resold at high prices.

In the UK, the Mega Evolution Ascended Heroes Elite Trainer Box is on sale for £54.99 ($74.50) on the official Pokémon Center website. I’ve found them resold on eBay for over £100 and in some cases over £300.

Some of the more popular Elite Trainer Boxes, such as the Scarlet & Violet 151 ETB Elite Trainer Box, sell for over £450 on eBay.

Raftery said high-profile sales lead him to believe that even more common Pokemon cards can be profitable.

“Right now, 19- to 22-year-olds are probably thinking that they can’t afford a £500,000 card, but they can buy a £50 Elite Trainer box and sell it for £100,” Raftery said.

Pokemon fans have a term to describe people who aren’t fans but buy up cards and sell them at multiples of the retail price. It’s a scalper.

Regardless of what true fans think of them, they often have to compete with scalpers who quickly buy up the supply. Online retailers can’t handle the traffic because automated software buys products on behalf of scalpers.

I’ve tried the websites of major UK retailers like Argos and John Lewis, but they’ve crashed or had checkout issues in the rush of new product releases. CNBC has reached out to Argos and John Lewis for comment.

This creates a supply shortage and people buy cards at higher resale prices, said Farnsworth of the University of Sunderland.

She added that scalpers create “volatility” and “panic” so people look at cards online and think, “Oh my god, I have to buy this because I can’t get it anywhere else.”

David Bellinger, senior equity analyst at Mizuho, ​​said the card market is changing at a “very intense and fast pace.” “So there’s also a bit of a bubbly, bubbly aspect to it,” he added.

Despite all this, there are still collectors who buy just to complete a Pokemon set or get a card with their favorite character on it.

In 2023, clinical pharmacologist Johannes Heck discovers an old Pokemon card collection from the late 90s in his grandmother’s house. From May 2024 to 2025, he listed several items on eBay and published a paper on what his experience said about the trading card market.

Mr. Heck never told buyers about his motives, but he noticed that one of three categories in older sets, “uncommon” cards, as well as “common” and “rare” cards, sold “surprisingly fast.”

Heck told CNBC there could be two types of buyers. Those who want to complete their collection, and those who think that “rare” cards can make a lot of money.

Mizuho’s Bellinger, who focuses on consumer markets that include collectibles, said that while Logan Paul’s sale of millions of cards adds “another element to the hype,” collectors play a role in the overall market.

“There are a lot more of these local card shows happening…I think there’s a collector base…They don’t care about buying and flipping and making a quick buck,” Bellinger told CNBC.