Crypto bros, scalpers and Logan Paul: Inside the world of Pokémon where cards are sold for millions

When I was a kid in the late 90s, collecting Pokémon cards was a fun hobby. I’d buy packs, hoping to get the rarest “shinies,” or holographic cards. We’d trade with friends and even go to meet-ups to trade cards trying to “catch ’em all” —a catchphrase that defined the franchise that had gone from Nintendo Game Boy to an anime TV show.

When I started collecting again two years ago, things had changed. I’ve stood in line with 100 people in a parking lot outside a toy store for the latest restock of cards. I’ve seen four men huddled around their car talking about how much they could make by selling the trunk of cards they bought during a morning hitting different stores.

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

There are similar scenes in the U.S. Videos have circulated on social media of people stampeding over each other to get their hands on card packs. There have even been reports of smash-and-grab thefts of stores that stock cards. Prized cards resell at multiples of what they retail for. The rarest can sell for millions of dollars.

It’s a stark contrast from when I could walk into any store and buy however many I wanted.

From 2004 to 2020, Pokémon card prices rose 282%, according to an index compiled by Collectors, which owns card grading agency Professional Sports Authenticator (PSA). Since 2020, prices have risen by an incredible 1,350%, per the index.

Prices have surged and even outperformed traditional asset classes, attracting the attention of people looking to make a quick buck and ultra-high net worth individuals seeking investment assets to protect or grow their wealth.

People who have made money from cryptocurrency are piling into the market, market watchers told CNBC, as prices reach unprecedented levels.

Pokémon captured people’s attention in 1996 when the first games were released for the Nintendo Game Boy. The trading cards followed shortly after.

While Pokémon continued to print cards, their popularity waned in the 2000s. Everything changed with the 2016 release of “Pokémon Go,” a smartphone game that had people chasing across cities to “catch” Pokémon in the real world.

The launch of Nintendo Switch in 2017 and new Pokémon games for the console brought nostalgic millennials and new gamers into the world. 

The cards gained particular popularity over the last three years, as The Pokémon Company, which owns the franchise, releases sets with original characters that were introduced in the late 90s.  

“It’s kind of like a Pokémon 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 sets of cards every few months, with hype being driven this year by special 30th anniversary products. 

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

Other rare cards sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars. According to Roy Raftery, a trading card expert at London-based auction house Stanley Gibbons Baldwin’s, the high-end market is being driven by people who have made money off crypto.

“People tell me that they’re putting their money in this because they’ve got nothing else to do with it, they made a lot of money on crypto, and they’re just ploughing it into Pokémon,” Raftery told CNBC in an interview.

A sweep of social media sites like X shows users affiliated with crypto often talking about Pokémon cards as if they were stocks, discussing the market and debating whether the latest dip is just a correction.  

Raftery said that most of the buyers at his firm are “not genuine collectors” but people “looking for high-end assets” or global businesses looking to buy Pokémon card stock to resell “because of how lucrative the general market is for all these vintage cards.”

It’s not just vintage cards being resold at big markups.

In the U.K., a Mega Evolution Ascended Heroes Elite Trainer Box sells on the official Pokémon Centre website for £54.99 ($74.50). I found them on eBay being resold for more than £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, are on eBay for more than £450.

High-profile sales encourage others to think they can also make money from more common Pokémon cards, Raftery said.

“Now you have all these 19 to 22-year-olds thinking to themselves, well, I can’t afford a £500,000 card, but I can go buy a £50 … elite trainer box … and then sell it for £100,” Raftery said.

I’ve tried the websites of major U.K. retailers like Argos and John Lewis, and had them crash or suffer checkout issues in the flurry of a new product release. CNBC has reached out to Argos and John Lewis for comment.

This creates a supply crunch that pushes people to buying cards at a higher resale price, the University of Sunderland’s Farnsworth said.

Scalpers create “volatility” and “panic” so people see cards online and think “oh my god, I have to go for this because I’m not going to get it anywhere else,” she added.

David Bellinger, a senior equity analyst at Mizuho, said that the market for cards had changed at “such a torrid and quick pace.” “So it does have a little bit of a frothy bubbly aspect to it,” he added.