By Kyle Grizzell-Smith
- Trading cards, selling for thousands or even millions, could potentially have a role as an alternative asset
- The most successful investors would be knowledgeable collectors who understand the history of the franchise
- According to MRI scans, Pokémon has altered fans’ brains
Forget gold or bitcoin – what you want is a Base Set Charizard #4 First Edition graded PSA 10.
The Pokémon card is currently valued at $450,000 for an almost-30-year-old piece of cardboard covered in sparkly foil.
And that’s nothing compared to a world record set earlier this year. In February 2026, content creator and “WWE superstar” Logan Paul sold a Pikachu Illustrator card at auction for over $16 million.
Another outlandish addition to this story; the buyer, AJ Scaramucci, venture capitalist and son of former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci, had the card placed around his neck at the end of the auction – attached to a $75,000 diamond necklace.
So, how has a card game once common across school playgrounds become such a lucrative collectible?
Poké-mania
For the uninitiated, Pokémon is a Japanese media franchise encompassing video games, animated TV series, films, toys, and trading cards.
Following its first video game launches in February 1996, the company was inspired to enter the world of trading cards after the success of Magic: The Gathering, considered the world’s first collectable card game. The first Pokémon trading card set was then released in October 1996. Celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, Pokémon is now estimated to be one of the highest-grossing media franchises of all time. with a revenue of around $130.7 billion. That’s more than the second and third place franchises (Mickey Mouse & Friends and Winnie the Pooh) combined.
For someone born at the time of Pokémon’s inception, the games and cards were ubiquitous throughout my childhood; trading cards with other children on the playground with no thoughts on “mint” condition or the monetary value of a single card. Just collecting whatever you thought looked cool, or cute, or fun.
However, in recent years, something strange has happened.
The child wanting to spend their pocket money on a single pack of cards at a local shop is finding it increasingly difficult to do so. Stocks of cards are bought by masses of adults as soon as they’re delivered to stores – and almost immediately resold on auction sites like eBay for at least double the original retail price in a practice known amongst the fandom as “scalping”.
Theft has also become a key issue as games shops are robbed of cards totalling tens of thousands of pounds in value. Many retailers now refuse to stock products in-store, due to poor consumer behaviour. The fun, colourful, collectable cards have somehow evolved from something children swapped in the playground to… a sought-after financial asset?
Poké-nomics
There is a method to the madness.
Pokémon cards, as well as other trading cards, can be graded through the Professional Sports Authenticator (PSA). A trained grader will inspect the authenticity and quality of the card, evaluate its condition, and assign a grade from 1-10.
Going back to the value of Charizard card referenced at the start, the price it could fetch from buyers is only possible if the card is assigned a PSA grade 10. If the card is ungraded (or “raw”, as those in the industry call it), that could drop the value to around $5,000, for example. A huge drop from $16 million, but a significant profit nonetheless.
So, what might just be pieces of card to me and you, do have value to some. A lot of value.
In fact, from mid-May to mid-August 2026, Pokémon cards outperformed both the S&P 500 and Bitcoin, seeing a 22.8% gain, while Bitcoin declined 20.7%.
TCGCharts, which tracks the Pokémon card market using real sold listings, currently values the market cap at more than $15 billion (at time of writing) and recently launched two market indexes for card collectors – the PKMN200, tracking the 200 most valuable cards in the world by market value, and GRAIL25, the 25 most valuable cards.
Could this suggest the cards are behaving as a financial asset?
Research from Fabio Nonino at Sapienza University of Rome and Alessandro Pompei the School of Advanced Defence Studies (CASD) suggests that trading card games might actually have a legitimate place as an alternative asset. Researchers investigated Magic: The Gathering (MTG), evaluating its role within diversified investment portfolios.
The researchers constructed an equally weighted index of high-value MTG cards, comparing the index’s performance with traditional asset classes such as gold and the S&P 500, and assessing its integration into diversified portfolios over a 12-month period.
Their findings suggest the trading cards display near-zero correlations with traditional assets, indicating they behave differently to equities, bonds, and gold, and deliver high average returns with volatility comparable to that of equities.
Including MTG cards in a diversified investment portfolio could reduce maximum losses, improve risk-adjusted performance, and shift the range of 12-month returns upward.
Individually, the highest-performing cards over the sample period were mostly early-edition prints (which could explain the incredibly high value of that first edition Charizard card), and those benefitting from long-term scarcity constraints.
Scarcity could explain Logan Paul’s sale of the Pikachu Illustrator card. Only around 40 are believed to exist as the card was never sold, only given out as part of a contest in 1998.
The influence of scarcity is also demonstrated in research from Carsten Schumacher, Martin Schulze Westhoff and colleagues at Hannover Medical School and the University of Applied Sciences and Arts (Hannover). They explored a sample of 300 Pokémon cards on eBay over a year to analyse sales characteristics and found those with “shorter distribution history” were much more popular. Also, interestingly, although the vast majority of buyers were male, female buyers spent more money per trading card on average.
Superinvestor and Pokémon Master
Not just anybody can reap the rewards of a card collection. Beyond the value of scarcity and market demand, the researchers from Sapienza University and CASD also warn of the importance of nostalgia and emotional attachment; investors benefitting most may be knowledgeable collectors who understand the history and dynamics of the game.
And the influence of nostalgia is reflected in research led by Simos Chari from Alliance Manchester Business School and and Dinara Davlembayeva at Newcastle University Business School, which investigated why people feel nostalgic and how this affects behaviour.
Through a survey study, they found that nostalgia can be triggered by a number of factors, including a need to feel competent, escape reality, social stability, boredom, and regain connection with your past.
They also found that satisfaction with a nostalgic gaming experience influenced people’s decision to buy retro games – if someone enjoys playing a classic game and feels nostalgic, they may feel more likely to purchase it, or other retro games.
The role of nostalgia and emotional attachment could explain why this financial interest in Pokémon cards has culminated at a point when millennials and Gen Z (who grew up with the franchise) are all grown up. During lockdowns, those 90s/00s kids embraced the nostalgia, reconnected with their childhood interests, and were released with a renewed passion for the trading cards.
Plus, the adult money to spend on them.
Pikachu on the brain
Perhaps this huge financial and economic mania surrounding Pokémon cards shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise, considering research has found Pokémon has had a unique effect on the brains of childhood fans.
Jesse Gomez from Stanford University and Michael Barnett at University of Pennsylvania used functional MRI to scan the brains of a specific group of adults: those who had, as children, been obsessed with Pokémon.
Subjects were shown images of original character pixel art from the games they would have played as children, alongside images from the TV show. One group had extensive experience with the games and show, whereas the other group did not.
Gomez hypothesised that if early childhood exposure is critical for developing dedicated brain regions, then the brains of adults who played Pokémon constantly as children should respond differently to Pokémon characters compared to other stimuli.
For Stanford University’s neuroscience news, Professor Gomez explained, “What was unique about Pokémon is that there are hundreds of characters, and you have to know everything about them in order to play the game successfully. The game rewards you for individuating hundreds of these little, similar?looking characters. I figured, ‘If you don’t get a region for that, then it’s never going to happen.’’’
The researchers found that viewing Pokémon characters activated a particular region of the brain in those who had played and watched Pokémon as children. Additionally, the region of the brain activated was the exact same across all Pokémon fans. This “Pokémon region” was located in the high-level visual cortex; the part of the brain involved in recognising words and faces.
As humans, we are drawn to what we know and what we are good at. We enjoy the hobbies that makes us feel good, and make us feel skilled or accomplished. If recognising Pokémon characters on trading cards triggers a special region of your brain, and having in-depth knowledge of the franchise makes you a greater success at investing in them, it’s no wonder that adults who played the games heavily as children are now so drawn to them and investing so much.
If your parents ever scolded you for spending too many hours catching Pokémon on your Nintendo, perhaps those “wasted” hours weren’t quite so wasted after all. Your brain might now be perfectly shaped for reaping the rewards of your newest investment strategy. So, get out there and start ripping some packs.
Kyle Grizzell-Smith
Kyle Grizzell-Smith writes about business schools, universities, academic research, and the broader topics that interest him on any given day. He specialises in translating complex research into accessible stories for a wider audience.
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