Pikachu’s cute face is a mask for one of the world’s fastest-growing stock markets.
This likely isn’t the first time Pokémon cards have appeared on your radar. The trading card game (TCG), first launched in 1996, has seen a lot of traction in the last few years, among both children and adults alike.
They’ve become so popular, in fact, that they’ve become nearly impossible to buy in shops, selling out in seconds. So-called ‘scalpers’ aim to buy up whole supermarket shelves to resell for a profit; the source of many tears over Christmas, no doubt.
Despite its primary function being a playable trading card game – wherein players put together a custom deck of 60 cards and battle each other – Pokémon cards are mostly sought after by collectors, who enjoy the cards for their artwork.
They’re available to buy in packs, each containing 10 cards, with a slim chance of finding a rare card that features special artwork and is often worth hundreds of pounds.
This is the way Pokémon cards have been attainable for years. ‘Chase’ cards, the rarest and most valuable cards in each release, have always been expensive, yet the market has never reached the heights that it has soared to now.
The artificial exclusivity of cards created by scalpers only drives people to want the best cards more, and fans are willing to empty their pockets for them.
The chase card from November 2025’s Phantasmal Flames set, Mega Charizard X EX, sells for well over £450; not a bad return on a pack that only retails for £4.
The problem, though, is that everyone has the same ‘it could be you’ feeling and is willing to pay double or triple the retail price for a shot at the chase cards, only really caring about making a profit. Packs are lottery tickets with adorable faces.
It’s exactly this lure of potential cash that’s ruining the hobby for those who actually want to enjoy it, and selling out the 10 billion cards printed each year.
The excitement of getting a rare card, being cool to play with or collect, is being harnessed by scalpers and used to extort genuine fans through reselling.
The Pokémania we’re seeing now hasn’t just appeared from nowhere; Pokémon cards have been around since before I was born, so why are we seeing this frenzy over them now?
Fingers are often pointed in the direction of influencers – content creators who open mountains of packs for views – and if there’s one to rule them all, it’s Logan Paul.
Despite Pokémon cards being just one of his many facets of content among his WWE career, founding Prime beverages, filming dead bodies on YouTube, etc., his infamous opening of the first-ever Pokémon card set – originally released in 1996 – went viral on YouTube in 2020.
Other influencers naturally followed suit in an all too familiar domino effect that dictates the public’s obsessions. His opening of this box of packs, which, at the time, was worth £250,000, was the beginning of the end for a lot of collectors.
Since 2020, more and more influencers have been hopping on the bandwagon of opening vintage packs, driving the demand for them higher and higher as viewers follow suit.
Vintage cards will never be reprinted, and when purchased, are often kept sealed for years to come as their prices rise indefinitely; less supply means more demand, and higher prices.
They’re being treated like stocks. As the experts website SwitzerDaily states: “Pokémon has become an unlikely market superstar, outpacing even the S&P 500 and big names like Meta,” climbing over 3,800 per cent since 2004.
Logan Paul’s ‘crowning glory’ in the Pokémon TCG world was setting the world record for the most expensive Pokémon card sale in 2022 with a £3.8 million purchase – and it’s likely the best example of how the game’s market has blown completely out of proportion.
The card was a perfect condition Illustrator Pikachu, originally awarded to winners of a 1998 Japanese illustration contest. Nearly 30 years ago, the card was simply meant to be a keepsake for a comic’s young audience.
Logan has since had it ‘iced out’ in diamonds – with a matching necklace – to be worn on worldwide stages like WWE’s WrestleMania.
He is now selling it at auction, hoping it will fetch a tidy £5-9 million price tag; at the time of writing, it has 22 days left and has bids over £4.6 million.
Atop his pile of gold, he recommends his adolescent audience to follow in his footsteps, “urging young people to invest,” reports Fortune magazine.
Naturally, most enjoyers of Pokémon TCG content can’t afford to buy and open thousands of pounds of vintage Pokémon cards on a regular basis, and instead turn to the modern TCG for a shot at the best cards, their ‘fix’ so to speak, which leaves us with the barren shop shelves of today.
That being said, modern packs being inaccessible for retail value isn’t really an issue for actual players of the current game.
‘EX’ cards are the most powerful and near-essential cards for any deck, and while expensive variants exist – which are what people chase after – cheaper variants that are a lot more common are available. The average modern deck usually wouldn’t cost more than £50, even with current market inflation.
But what about people who want to enjoy the same game they played as children?
Playing vintage Pokémon cards is an entirely different beast to the modern game. Each year, Pokémon adds new sets and removes old ones, introducing new mechanics to the game.
You cannot play a modern deck against an older one, as the game would be completely unfair. For example, the strongest cards in some vintage play formats average 70 damage, whilst in modern, they can deal over 300.
The cards that retro enthusiasts need to play are sealed in packs worth hundreds, or purchasable as individual cards, sometimes for thousands.
The ‘EX’ cards in vintage decks, which are essential to have any chance at winning a match, have been taken to the moon along with the market. Just one vintage EX will consistently cost over £100, whereas a modern one won’t exceed more than £10.
I had all but given up on the dream of playing vintage Pokémon for this very reason, until one day, at my local card shop, I stumbled across Retro Pokémon London, a trading card group dedicated to playing these formats. I was lent a deck, played one game, and was hooked on the old format we played.
I was invited to their next tournament, and, in full of excitement, rushed home to research what deck to put together. I settled on a Shiftry EX deck – a fairly beginner-friendly, low-cost deck to build, and took to eBay to buy the cards I’d need to play it. The price of the cards killed my hopes; just one of the 60 cards I’d need cost £50, the entire deck reaching close to £400.
I was gutted, until my phone buzzed with a flyer invite for the tournament. It read “PROXIES ALLOWED;” my wallet let out a sigh of relief. Proxies are fake cards, often printed out at home on normal inkjet printers – my Shiftry EX deck suddenly shot down to the price of a HP ink cartridge.
“It’s a good time for modern players,” says Sam, as we sat down for the first game of the tournament a week later. “Everyone is buying products, so all cards are quite accessible online for building new decks. I built a new one and was able to find lots of the most crucial cards for about a pound each,” he said.
“You have the flipside for the retro; everyone is trying to buy everything.” This takes cards out of the market, which in turn boosts prices of the remaining cards that people like Sam need to play their decks.
Just four of the 60 cards in his deck, Scizor EX, already totalled £280. “This is probably on the lower end of things, too, for what people could be playing.”
He had absolutely no issue with me using proxies. “I don’t mind at all. I’d rather more people would play the game, so do whatever you can. As long as it’s readable, or people who are playing know what’s going on. I’d rather people played than be priced out.”
It was a very welcoming experience, and I felt that I had the same chance of winning the tournament as anyone who paid for their deck did. Retro Pokémon London actually encourages using these fake Pokémon cards, with the entry gift for the tournament being a proxy gold star Mew card, an authentic copy of which sells for an average of £700.
Unsurprisingly, I didn’t win my first game with Sam, and with the winner’s trophy slipping through my fingers, I moved onto my second with Noah. Again, I was welcomed with an open attitude to my printed deck.
He differs, however, in his attitude to the price of vintage Pokémon cards. “Relative to the modern ones, I think the vintage are still undervalued.”
Noah showed me a Flygon EX card from his deck. “This card here is £200, but actually, I think it’s worth it. Especially compared to a card that came out last month for £400, it kind of makes sense that this would be expensive.”
Part of the appeal driving the price of these vintage cards up is their art, which is very much of its era, often featuring hand-drawn or charmingly 3D modelled Pokémon.
People who have been fans of Pokémon for a long time often prefer the artwork of retro cards to modern ones and are willing to pay a lot for cards that remind them of when they were just starting out in the hobby.
Proxies are a great adaptation to the state of the vintage Pokémon TCG, but the support for vintage players is subpar compared to other popular trading card games. Yu-Gi-Oh, an equally popular TCG, consistently releases anniversary collections: modern packs which contain reprints of older, classic, otherwise expensive cards.
Pokémon themselves have tried to, if rather halfheartedly, follow suit. In 2021, for Pokémon’s 25th anniversary, the trading card game released Celebrations, a special expansion that included a lot of reprinted cards.
The set included cards that are essential to use in these vintage decks, in turn driving down the entry cost of playing with high-quality official cards.
For example, 2004’s Team Rocket’s Admin is a particularly useful card in vintage decks. “Before Celebrations, I was picking one up for £10 a card,” said Sam. “Now the Celebrations versions are so easy to find for two or less. It helped make things a little more accessible.” The set was small, however, leaving the entry price high for the vast majority of vintage official cards.
The price of true vintage Pokémon cards will always be high. To a lot of people, they’re not just shiny pieces of cardboard; they’re collectors’ items, relics of the past and a hit of nostalgia that can be revived in the flick through of a binder.
In the meantime, with the likelihood of another Pokémon reprint vintage set looking dim, players seeking the genuine Pokémon product feel will have to succumb to the market.
But proxies work. The vintage TCG community is an innovative and, as I found when playing with them, generous one, lending out proxy decks to players who stumbled across their table; it’s thriving in a time when everything is seemingly against them.
At the end of the day, there really is nothing stopping anyone from playing if they want to, and like me, placing last in a local vintage tournament.
As one player said: “If you actually only care about playing the game, then you could just write what you need on a piece of paper, and you should be okay.”
Featured image by Isaac Hodgson.