I’m
sure many of us collected various stuff from our favorite tv-shows, games and
animes. One of the most popular thing to collect were game cards, mainly from Pokémon,
Duel Masters and Yu-gi-oh. They were made mainly for battling your friends to
see who collected better cards. However, many people after buying cards,
weren’t even unpacking them, they were putting them in sealed, safe places and
waiting years till the price had risen up to sell them to various card
collectors.
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Pokémon cards are probably the most popular cards in the
world in terms of the amount of potential buyers, and also an astonishing price
that some cards reach. The most craved cards were bought up to 200,000 dollars,
because they were so rare. The card in question is 1st Edition Charizard Holo Shadowless PSA 10,
which was sold for 220,574 dollars. You probably read the name and you are
confused what any of these mean. I’ll describe every term below.
1st Edition – it refers
to cards that were printed in the first print runs of a particular set. If the
cards are printed later, it lowers their value quite a lot and most of the
collectors only want 1st Edition cards.
Holo – when you unpack a Pokémon card pack, you have a chance that the rarest card will have holographic background. It makes the price skyrocket a lot.
Shadowless – there is no drop shadow underneath the art box on the right side of the card
PSA10 – it’s basically a grade of card, that shows how well printed and preserved it is. If it’s below 10, you won’t sell it for a fortune, as everyone wants their card to be best quality. Every one of them is graded by a professional company, that checks with a microscope if the prints on card are symmetrical and if there are any errors on it.
Charizard – one of the most popular Pokémon of all time
Holo – when you unpack a Pokémon card pack, you have a chance that the rarest card will have holographic background. It makes the price skyrocket a lot.
Shadowless – there is no drop shadow underneath the art box on the right side of the card
PSA10 – it’s basically a grade of card, that shows how well printed and preserved it is. If it’s below 10, you won’t sell it for a fortune, as everyone wants their card to be best quality. Every one of them is graded by a professional company, that checks with a microscope if the prints on card are symmetrical and if there are any errors on it.
Charizard – one of the most popular Pokémon of all time
https://d1w8cc2yygc27j.cloudfront.net/-2027744384198977217/-9198448593956601360.jpg
How the craze happened
As
you can see, having a card that checks all of the boxes is quite rare to say the
least. Before 2020, Pokémon cards weren’t that expensive though. It all
happened, because some big youtubers started buying packs and unboxing them on
their videos. After them, tons of streamers made whole livestreams dedicated
solely for unboxing packs of cards. Surprisingly, all of them were getting 2 or
3 times the viewers during such a livestream. That made content creators even
more keen to buy Pokémon packs and raise their popularity. All the publicity
added up made the value of packs and cards go really high. Collectors and
inventors were pushing prices as much as they could, happy to earn hundreds of
thousands of dollars.
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Conclusion
I
think no one is lying by saying that Pokémon cards are basically gambling. It
was proven that opening packs gives you no profit in 99 out of 100 times.
Still, people loved doing it, and other people loved watching them doing it.
Personally, it was really fun getting excited for a Holo card that someone
unpacked, but as every fad, it eventually gets boring. Now, in 2021, Pokémon
cards are again dropping in popularity, although the influx of new fans will profit
whole franchise a lot.
Questions
1. Do you collect any cards
yourself?
2. What do you think about buying a piece of cardboard for 200,000$? Would you call it worth?
3. Did you miss the time when Pokémon cards were so popular, or did you watch some unboxing on YouTube or Twitch?
2. What do you think about buying a piece of cardboard for 200,000$? Would you call it worth?
3. Did you miss the time when Pokémon cards were so popular, or did you watch some unboxing on YouTube or Twitch?
Comments
Well, not really. I've been playing Hearthstone a couple years from now and at this game you are playing cards but in a digital way, so I collected some of them, but I've never been that into it to collect all of them or even to buy particular ones. When I was a kid, I believe that I was around 5 or 6 years old, me and my friends were trading duel masters cards even though none of us knew how to play it 😂.
2. What do you think about buying a piece of cardboard for 200,000$? Would you call it worth?
I think when you have that kind of money to spend on one card it's absolutely worth it. It means that you have such strong passion and dedication to this cards that buying such one would give you all of the joy in the world.
3. Did you miss the time when Pokémon cards were so popular, or did you watch some unboxing on YouTube or Twitch?
I don't watch american/ other than polish Youtube or Twitch. I think it wasn't a trend in the polish site of the Internet, so yes, I missed it. I think it could be fun to watch though.
No but I did it as a child. It was funny to admire a piece of paper with a little glitter.
2. What do you think about buying a piece of cardboard for 200,000$? Would you call it worth?
I would call it a waste of money, but we need some hobby in our lives.
3. Did you miss the time when Pokémon cards were so popular, or did you watch some unboxing on YouTube or Twitch?
No because I hate Pokémon. It's so many factors to miss but Pokémon are not of them.
1. No, I don't collect any trading cards.
2. No, I would never spend such a large amount of money on some collector's item. Unless I was a millionaire.
3. I don't even know what pokemon trading cards look like. I didn't collect cards as a child.
2. Collector's items have different rules. In a normal market, you can try to judge whether an item is worth its price or not. However, remember that the value depends only on how much someone is willing to pay for the item. Personally, I wouldn't spend that kind of money on a playing card. (Rather on a sports car or an apartment).
3. I remember the times when my whole class at school collected Pokemon cards and then Duel Masters. I was lucky to unpack the Holo Gyarados from booster pack. I didn't know its value then, so I traded for a few other cards. One of the worst decisions in my life. Today, this card reaches huge sums on e-bay.
Sometimes I watch unboxing videos on YT, but the most interesting ones are specialists who explain why a specific card is valuable and what makes it different from others.
Yes, when I was a kid I collected a lot of cards, stickers and posters. I haven't been interested in it for some time now, but I have very fond memories of those times. It was very exciting to buy packs of cards and open them.
2. What do you think about buying a piece of cardboard for 200,000$? Would you call it worth?
Yes, when I was a kid I collected a lot of cards, stickers and posters. I haven't been interested in it for some time now, but I have very fond memories of those times. It was very exciting to buy packs of cards and open them.
3. Did you miss the time when Pokémon cards were so popular, or did you watch some unboxing on YouTube or Twitch?
Maybe 1 time I watched some unboxing as a video related to this popped up on my head page. I'm not really interested in such things so I don't watch videos related to it
I had same exact situation as you with Duel Masters cards :D I guess majority of people were just collecting them, because rules for battles were too complicated. Heartstone is a really interesting example, I didn't think about collecting cards strictly digitally when I was doing the presentation.
You're right, this trend completely missed our country, so it was hard for some people to hear about it.
I'm kinda curious as why you hate Pokemon :D I wouldn't mind if you only disliked it, but there must be some interesting reason for hatred towards it.
@Karol Sołtysiak
It's really nice you could profit from your cards. My mom threw away my whole collection of cards to trash, so sadly I can't even look at them anymore.
Wow, Holo Gyarados is indeed very rare and expensive. I am truly sorry for your loss.
I noticed everyone was more keen to collect things when they were kids, I guess spending hard earned money from work on cards, stickers etc. isn't a popular choice.
It seems I overestimated the popularity of these videos or maybe no one in this thread is interested in American side of the Internet.
I have some old Yu-Gi-Oh cards, but I haven't been collecting them for a long time.
2. What do you think about buying a piece of cardboard for 200,000$? Would you call it worth?
Honestly, I don't see a point in buying a card that is worth so much, especially since I'm not a huge fan of card games.
3. Did you miss the time when Pokémon cards were so popular, or did you watch some unboxing on YouTube or Twitch?
I don't miss the popularity of Pokémon cards, I'm just not interested in games like that anymore. I've seen some unboxing videos on youtube, mostly videos of youtuber named "moistcr1tikal", it's fun to see how much money can you lose on card games.
I know you in real life, and I must say I'm surprised you said you don't like cards games :D I thought it was totally opposite.
You are the first person that watched some of the unboxing videos. Also, "moistcr1tikal" is a really fun Youtube/Twitch personality, I'm glad you chose to watch him.