Pokemon Cards-Business & Nostalgia
This cute little yellow mouse is named Pikachu, for millennials and Gen Z, this yellow mouse symbolizes our childhood.
Over the past 25 years, from cards to video games to the animated series, Pokemon has absolutely exploded in popularity. Chances are, you’ve seen one of these small characters or at least heard about them in your lifetime.
The Beginning
Pokemon originally began on February 26, 1996 - debut in the form of a Japanese role-playing game on the Game Boy. The gist of the game was to catch ’em all and complete the game through a series of checkpoint battles. Sold in multiple versions, red, blue, and green were able to sustain interest as the trading and collecting mentality got people hooked for future generations of the game.
For the next 24 years, Pokemon was able to build an empire with over 980 total pokemon and establish multiple streams to fully utilize them.
Pokemon’s revenue is broken down into 6 categories — merchandise, video games, box office, movies, home entertainment, & manga.
But there’s a 7th — the Pokemon Trading Card Game (TCG) — Pokemon TCG makes up a majority of Pokemon’s total revenue: $12 billion/Est. $100 billion
Like the digital games on the Game Boy, the TCG also possessed the same core principle of collecting them all. From the different sets, new types of exclusive cards, new Pokemon being released every few months, it gave consumers something else to look forward to and more to collect.
In addition to the craze of collecting them all, back in the primary school days, having strong Pokemon cards meant that you were the big boi on the block, most notably the flaming dragon — Charizard.
With these 120 HP pieces of cardboard, you felt a sense of power that you had never felt before. This probably lasted until middle school.… and age slowly began to flush interest out. However, these were memories that would stick forever.
Rebirth & Nostalgia
In October 2020, the TITAN of the Pokemon TCG was put on auction and sold for over 200k to popular Youtuber Logan Paul
— 1st Edition Shadowless Base Set Booster Box (1st Ever Released Pkmn Set)
Logan Paul has over 22 million subscribers and most notable for his unique vlogs and crazy things that he does during these vlogs. No one expected someone as popular as Logan Paul to invest so much money into little monsters printed on cardboard.
However, Logan’s actions and video follow-ups sparked the inner nostalgia of many around the world. It gave them the warm feeling of opening a pack and getting the same holographic that was pulled when they were 8 years old.
As people became more aware of the current state of the TCG, Logan further pushed awareness by organizing a charity stream where he would sell 35 of the 36 packs to others that were interested.
Each pack was sold for a whopping $11,111 (mostly to other Youtube creators) they would get a shoutout and have their pack opened on Logan’s charity stream. During the stream, Logan kept pushing for donations and in total, they raised USD 131,182 for the National Alliance on Mental Health.
After the stream, a majority of the creators made follow-ups reacting to their pack and announcing that they had bought a pack. This pushed the news to their audience further pushing Pokemon back into people’s minds.
Paul & Pokemon
What Logan Paul did for the Pokemon community was huge, it finally gave the TCG the exposure that it needed for so long. With many today stressing about things going on in life, Paul introduced a hobby that many had forgotten as they aged, the feeling of opening a pack.
In addition to just providing major awareness, Paul also shot the demand for modern Pokemon sets through the roof. Many sets now out of stock or correspondingly, some modern sets quadrupled in value overnight and many rarer cards from the early ages of Pokemon gained further price momentum.
Some of these older card sets such as Jungle & Fossil contain cards that are now well worth maybe 30% or even higher after the Paul stream.
The Next 25 Years
Even though Logan Paul significantly boosted the TCG, has still been steadily growing to this day. Being the largest grossing media franchise in history, Pokemon has a place in everyone’s hearts, efficiently utilizing the nostalgia, and obtaining sustainable interest will be key for continued growth over the next 25 years.
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— Tristian Xu
