| ▲ | doctorpangloss 3 hours ago |
| Haha what would Pokémon have to do to convince you it's more than a fad? It's already the world's biggest IP, it's been around for 30 years... |
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| ▲ | freetime2 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| I’m referring specifically to the cards, which exploded in popularity after Logan Paul paid $5 million for a rare card in 2021. The prices are completely driven by artificial scarcity - obviously they could easily print any card in unlimited numbers, but they intentionally print some cards in limited quantities that can only be obtained by getting lucky with a random pack. Most buyers don’t even play the card game. In February Paul resold the card for $16 million. [1] [1] https://edition.cnn.com/2026/02/16/americas/pokemon-card-log... |
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| ▲ | cptroot 6 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | I recently watched an excellent video about that incident. [1] The takeaway was that this was yet another move by rich assholes designed to siphon money from the pockets of small time gamblers just so that the rich could get richer. They did it to Pokemon cards, destroying the experience of playing the actual game, and they tried to do it to Manga (although they hopefully won't succeed there). [1] https://youtu.be/W2x-UQpiARc?si=eVwXhHAtD0keH2ON | |
| ▲ | john_strinlai 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | >I’m referring specifically to the cards, which exploded in popularity after Logan Paul paid $5 million for a rare card in 2021. the cards have been popular for significantly longer than 5 years. my kid's entire class (the entire school, really) brought their binders of pokemon cards to school every day in ~2002 until the school banned pokemon cards on premise because they were such a distraction and causing issues (kids crying about unfair trades, etc.) | | |
| ▲ | freetime2 24 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | They have long been popular, but the popularity has increased more than 5x since the pandemic. They were printing less than 2 billion a year before then [1], and are now selling more than 10 billion a year despite shortages, scalping, etc [2]. Perhaps "boom" is a better word for it than "fad". But my point is just that this demand seems to be largely driven by artifical scarcity, speculation, influencers - similar to Labubu. And eventually prices will hit a peak and I expect we will see demand fall off rapidly. [1] https://www.pokebeach.com/2021/06/pokemon-tcg-sold-3-7-billi... [2] https://www.ign.com/articles/10-billion-pokemon-cards-were-p... | |
| ▲ | Veserv an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | Their popularity is a fad. You are talking about their popularity when they first released in the US. They faded significantly for at least a decade if not two until seeing a recent resurgence so massive even random corner stores carry pokemon card packs these days. |
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| ▲ | buildbot 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | This was true over 20 years ago when I was in elementary school - I don’t know anyone who really played the game, most people just collected the cards. Magic the Gathering was always both though, you collected good/rare cards & played the game with them! | | |
| ▲ | resonious 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Yes I remember having a hard time finding other kids who wanted to actually play the pokemon card game. And even when I could find someone, they didn't care about the rules/energy costs. This was in elementary school though to be fair. |
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| ▲ | dvt 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > I’m referring specifically to the cards, which exploded in popularity after some YouTuber paid millions for a rare card Objectively untrue boomer take. Pokemon cards have been popular & have been traded since I was in middle school and I'm 40 now lol. Even without ever collecting them I know how cool having a Holo Charizard was. | | |
| ▲ | freetime2 an hour ago | parent [-] | | If you look at Google Trends you can see that interest in Pokemon Cards was mostly flat until 2021 when Logan Paul made headlines for spending $5m on a card. It spiked again in late 2024 and has remained high when they released an app for trading cards digitally. Before 2019 they printed fewer than 2 billion cards per year [1]. Since 2021 they are printing 9 billion cards per year, and 12 billion in 2024 since they released the app. And release 7 new sets a year. And they are still selling out as soon as they hit store shelves [2]. The popularity you experienced in grade school is nothing like the revenous demand today. I suspect you might be the one who has fallen behind the times. [1] https://www.pokebeach.com/2021/06/pokemon-tcg-sold-3-7-billi... [2] https://www.ign.com/articles/10-billion-pokemon-cards-were-p... |
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| ▲ | coldtea 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Well, they have all the characteristics of a fad (driven by imitation, viral adoption, unserious, novelty over substance) aside from short lifespan. There are fad diets that have been around for 50 years after all... |
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| ▲ | john_strinlai 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| indeed, i always understood a "fad" to mean some short-lived trend. meanwhile, pokemon is probably around the same age as the average HN user. |
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| ▲ | alephnerd 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | > probably around the same age as the average HN user. Based on the references and speech patterns I've seen on HN, I think the average HNers is at least a decade older than Pokemon. The first Pokemon videogame only came out in 1996. Y'all are boomers - nothing wrong with that, but HN has become an older monoculture. | | |
| ▲ | buildbot 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I don’t think this is true. HN was well known to CS people in my undergrad and I’m barely a millennial. | | |
| ▲ | alephnerd an hour ago | parent [-] | | I'm roughly the same age (maybe a bit older) as you and frankly, we are middle age. Yet by HN standards we skew young. |
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| ▲ | Karrot_Kream 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Agree with this FWIW. The music and movie references here are largely from the 80s. Nostalgia here tends to be rooted in the 80s to the early 90s. This place feels solidly GenX to me which makes sense as the first web-forward generation. | |
| ▲ | john_strinlai 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | >Y'all are boomers. i am! but i see a fair amount of people just starting their careers, students, etc. as well. and, based on some of the comments ive seen, i think there is a lot of young folk. most of my students are active, or at least browse, HN. they are mostly 18-20. i took a wild guess that ~30 would be the average. maybe 35-40 is closer. either way, i think my point stands: 30 years seems too long to be classified as a fad. | | |
| ▲ | alephnerd 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | > i think my point stands: 30 years seems too long to be classified as a fad. Yep! Completely agree! I'm not that much older than Pokemon, and most of my peers have been influenced by it heavily and their kids will be influenced by it as well. If Pokemon is a fad, so are smartphones. In classic HN fashion, I decided to kvetch about something completely irrelevant to the larger convo ;) | | |
| ▲ | pretzellogician 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | :-) In that case, I'll kvetch about the "boomer" term (Baby Boomers are ~61+ years old), as I think you're conflating it with Generation X (45 - 61 years old) |
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| ▲ | Nursie 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | 10 years older than pokemon isn’t even Gen X, it’s millennial… | | |
| ▲ | RedNifre an hour ago | parent [-] | | They probably meant "Boomer" in the colloquial sense of "somewhat old person" like how "Boomer Shooters" are for GenX and older Millenials. | | |
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