What’s cute, costs $6 per pack, and has soared in value by 3,821% since 2004?
We’re talking about Pokémon cards, of course. According to the Wall Street Journal, the power of Pikachu has trounced the S&P’s 483% increase over the same time span, as well as Meta’s 1,844% growth since going public in 2012.
It’s been over 20 years since the pocket monsters first arrived on the scene, but the popularity of the Pokémon franchise remains strong: searches for “Pokémon” on eBay poured in at tsunami-sized 14,000 times per hour last year. When cards were tucked into Japanese Happy Meals last month, McDonald’s was swamped by scalpers who took the cards and ran, leaving behind mountains of uneaten burgers and teary-eyed children.
Which begs the question: Just how valuable can these colorful squares of cardboard get? As an investment, some say Pokémon are like baseball cards—only better. As avid collector and Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Matt Strahm pointed out in a recent YouTube interview, “Pikachu’s not going to tear his ACL and miss the whole season. Charizard is not going to get a DUI driving home.”
Yet others warn that these cards can’t be counted on as moneymakers, and could even be entering bubble territory and eventually crash, much like baseball cards did after production was ramped up in the late 1980s.
We doubt that will stop die-hard fans, who claim they enjoy collecting the cards on their own merits. But it doesn’t hurt that opening a pack of cards can change your life: Avid collector Logan Paul sold a Pikachu Illustrator card in perfect condition for $5.3 million in 2022, breaking a Guinness World Record for the priciest Pokémon card ever sold.
Guess it’s time to pour through our kid’s collection to see if they’ve got a holographic Charizard that can pay for college.—JD
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