Hello everyone! This is Elena from Gaia Storm TCG and welcome to another article here at CCG Castle. For the first article of the year I want to talk about something which is quite different from my usual articles: collecting. Believe it or not, 2020 is a year that will be marked as the period where Pokémon cards acquired a whole different level and become first level collector good. In fact, there has been some kind of explosion and now we are seeing more and more collectors getting into the game than ever before. Old booster boxes and sealed product have been recently selling for double or even triple their original price, and I am not even talking about things like Base Set boosters. Let’s rewind a bit to understand the trends that motivated this rise in prominence and what are the best sets to invest in nowadays.
Pokemon cards have been around since 1999, when the iconic base set was first released. As it normally happens with Trading Card Games, such as Magic or Yu-gi-oh!, these first generation cards held an enormous collector value because the number of printed copies where limited. In the case of Pokémon TCG, 1st edition Base set booster boxes as well as some cards sold for hundreds (and in some specific cases, thousands) of dollars. The most famous card of this collection was none other than Fire Spin Charizard. Jungle, Fossil, Base Set 2 and Team Rocket where the sets that followed shortly after.

And yes, these old Pokémon items had always been kind of expensive but right now, if you look at the selling trends online, you will see that their selling price has increased exponentially and now the numbers are beyond logic. I think that there are three important factors that can explain this situation:  First of all, that these type of items are “older” and rarer every year so its longevity will probably mean that they become more expensive. Second –and to me this is the most important aspect–, many famous influencers with millions of followers have been recently talking about old Pokémon cards, recording openings or even streaming how they purchased some rare products. I am not going to give any names but very interestingly, the profile of these influencers is not related to videogames or trading card games so that meant that a lot of people started to learn about the value of the Pokémon market. And that leads me to the third factor. More and more people are getting into this world every day and trying to build or sell items so the demand has basically increased a lot in a market with a finite number of items.

Investors from different areas have turned their attention to Pokémon cards. And this explains well why collections are now worth that much: for the case of old sets, this means thousands and thousands of dollars but special modern era sets like Evolutions or Hidden Fates are now incredibly expensive. Now, I am not saying that investing large sums of money in the TCG industry is going to make you rich. Buying and selling old cards always comes with a risk as they are crazy expensive and no one really knows if there will come a day where this sort of inflation disappears. My advice for people who would like to enter this world or that is just interested in buying special Pokémon products is to focus on small collections like Champions Path or the upcoming Shining Fates. They are great products on their own and have cards of great value inside so I wouldn’t hesitate to preorder Shining Fates as soon as possible. Remember that this would be available in CCG Castle soon!

So, in conclusion, Pokémon TCG’s investments have clearly skyrocketed during the past year and the trend will probably continue during the current one. Whether the bubble will burst or not, only time will time. But what is clear is that we are now seeing a lot of interest for the game and that is positive as new players will potentially come.