To take another example, a simple 'Nintedo' typo in a 1999 edition of the 'Ancient Mew' Pokémon card is what makes it so desirable. The ‘Shadowless Charizard’ sold in November 2020 owes much of its appeal to a printing error that was corrected in later editions.
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Its multi-pronged approach combining the card game with an anime series and even feature-length films has helped sell over 35 billion cards since the game launched in Japan in 1999.īut with so many trading cards in circulation, what do the most valuable have in common? In the 22 years since the Pokémon trading card game was first launched, more than 34 billion of them have been printed and sold in thirteen languages and 76 territories worldwide.Īnother Japanese card gaming franchise, Yu-Gi-Oh!, followed Pokémon's recipe for success. Soon, children across the world were gathered around their Game Boys, swapping the 151 original monsters in a bid to "catch 'em all," as the series' English slogan proclaimed.įor a game that elevates the act of collecting to a shared mission in pursuit of the rarest, most unique monsters, the move into trading cards was an obvious next step, and it paid off. But I wanted to design a game that involved interactive communication." It wasn't about competition," Pokémon's creator Satoshi Tajiri told TIME magazine in a 1997 interview. "The idea I had was for information to go back and forth. The need to interact, trade, and co-operate in real life was baked into the series from the very start. The catch is that players can't do it alone. You didn't just watch the story unfold you could be part of it.Īt first glance, Pokémon has a simple premise: go out into the games' virtual world and collect every creature you can find. Like Dragonball before it and Yu-Gi-Oh! after, Pokémon offered an all-round experience, the toys and games integrated with accompanying anime and film franchises. When Nintendo launched the original Pokémon games in Japan in 1996, they rapidly became a gaming phenomenon that blended the digital world with reality.
To understand this seismic shift in card collecting, we need to go back to where it all began. What drove the wave of nostalgia that propelled millennial childhood hits like Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh! and Dragonball to new heights at a time of global crisis? For the adults who grew up on the diet of anime, games and movies of these franchises, what prompted them to take a second look? The trend was more than a few big sales: online auctioneer eBay reported a 500% increase in trading card sales volume in 2020, while the Pokémon Company announced it had enjoyed one of its most profitable years ever, selling more than 3.7 billion new Pokémon cards.
S the COVID-19 pandemic took hold and the world retreated indoors, a strange thing happened in the world of collectable trading cards.Ī series of record-breaking auctions, culminating in the November 2020 sale of a first edition, mint condition, 'Shadowless Charizard' Pokémon card for US$369,000, thrust the hobby back into the spotlight. Tom Bateman explains what is driving the current craze, and how it has evolved from its early beginnings to a global phenomenon. More than two decades later, near the 25th anniversaries of both Pokémon and its popular contemporary Yu-Gi-Oh!, collectors witnessed a resurgence in these trading card games all over the world. In the late 90s, Pokémon became one of the most popular video games in existence, spurring on an anime series and trading cards.
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