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 8 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

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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 25 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 2 hours 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...