As kids, we all had fascinations and obsessions with games, characters, and so on. Personally, I was deeply attached to the world of Pokemon, and a big part of that obsession focused on the trading cards that were released.
At least once a week, I would walk with all my neighborhood buddies to the sports and trading card store around the block– carrying all the couch cushion coins I could find that day. Over the course of a few years, I probably accumulated over 1,000 cards and had them sorted out in a series of binders that had labels such as “Cool Ones” or “Stupid Trash” (actual labels to my personal collections). It got to a point where my parents actually told me they wanted me to find something else to spend my money on because they thought I was “going overboard,” so I stopped collecting cards and let them collect dust in a closet.
Now, 12 years later, their comments haven’t particularly aged well. When I used to go to the card store, my friends and I would all marvel at the “shiny ones” and wish we had enough money to buy them. At the time we didn’t understand their value, and instead just wanted to have cards with our favorite Pokemon that were as colorful and decorative as possible. Now, these rare cards with shiny, decorative designs are worth a TON of money and gaining a lot of traction in current news and entertainment media.
Numerous high profile Twitch and YouTube streamers have begun a “card pack opening” oriented streams, spending (sometimes) millions of dollars on packs to open for content. The latest big pack opening event in the streaming community was Logan Paul, who spent 2 million dollars on unopened, original Pokemon card packs. He plans on auctioning off packs to viewers with a $10,000 dollard starting bid per pack, which sounds like a huge gamble but they have the chance to hold a rare original card that sells for over $100,000. For example, Paul had previously bought a similar pack where he pulled two first-edition Charizard cards valued at $400,000 each.
Needless to say, Pokemon cards are relevant again and I bet when my parents see this, they might think differently about what they told me. In fact, I’m going to have to go home and make sure they didn’t start digging through my collection to find ones to sell. However, this just goes to show you that my Pokemon card addiction may have appeared to be “just a phase” but could have had (still might even) a major advantage in the end!
