The Price of Pokémon Cards

By: Aditya D., Grade 10

Back in 2017, when I was eight years old, I recall visiting Target and purchasing a pack of Pokémon cards for around five dollars. Those Pokémon cards could entertain me for days, simply because I thought they looked cool. After all, what eight-year-old did not love Pokémon? Every time we would visit Target, I would beg my parents to let me get more Pokémon cards. Eventually, I had a binder full of my favorite cards, just like any other elementary school kid at the time.

Recently, I went back to Target and decided to take a peek at the Pokémon cards I adored so much when I was younger, mostly due to nostalgia. I was expecting to see all sorts of new Pokémon that I would laugh at, and then complain to my friends about how the series was “ruined,” but that could not have been further from what happened.

I made my way over to the trading cards section and saw absolutely nothing. Every single pack of Pokémon cards was sold out. On top of that, one single pack cost upwards of eight dollars, and that was just at Target. When I looked on Amazon, I was shocked to see packs priced at more than twenty dollars. Back when I was playing, you only saw prices that high when looking at sets that were no longer printing. All this made me want to figure out why prices suddenly soared so incredibly high.

At first, I thought maybe Pokémon had released a special new set that everyone was going crazy over. But after doing some digging, I found that it wasn’t a new release at all. Instead, Pokémon cards in general have seen a massive surge in popularity over the past few years. A big part of this trend started during the pandemic, when people were stuck at home and craving nostalgia. Old hobbies, especially those from childhood, made a huge comeback. Pokémon cards were no exception.

As more people turned to collecting, opening, and selling cards again, demand skyrocketed. Some influencers and celebrities even joined the craze. Logan Paul, for example, made headlines when he purchased a first-edition Charizard card for hundreds of thousands of dollars and wore it around his neck during a boxing match. That moment alone brought millions of eyes to the Pokémon card market, sparking curiosity and driving up prices across the board. Suddenly, even newer cards were selling for inflated prices due to their rarity and limited stock.

I also found out that card scalping became a major problem. People would buy out all the stock as soon as it hit store shelves and then resell the packs online at double or triple the price. This made it almost impossible for casual fans like me to walk into a store and pick up a few packs for fun. It turned a once simple and enjoyable hobby into a game of speed, money, and luck. Retailers like Target and Walmart even had to place restrictions on how many packs a single customer could buy, and for a while, some locations even stopped selling them in-store altogether due to safety concerns after fights broke out in the aisles.

What’s even more surprising is how complex and layered the hobby has become. When I was a kid, I just liked the cards with the coolest art or the most damage points. I didn’t care about the condition of the card, centering, or print quality. But now, collectors use professional grading services to evaluate their cards down to the tiniest detail. A card rated “10” by PSA (Professional Sports Authenticator) can be worth thousands more than an identical card with a “9” rating. There are YouTube channels dedicated solely to card grading and collecting strategy. There’s even terminology like “pull rates,” “chase cards,” and “booster box mapping” that people casually throw around. It’s almost like a second language, and one I never knew existed when I was stuffing my cards into plastic sleeves for fun.

This shift has made me reflect on how something so simple—just pieces of cardboard with cartoon creatures on them—can evolve into a multi-billion-dollar industry. It’s not just kids collecting anymore. Adults are now a huge part of the Pokémon market. Many of them, like me, grew up during the original Pokémon boom in the early 2000s. But now they have jobs and disposable income to throw into collecting cards they could never afford as children. For many, it’s a way to reconnect with their childhood in a world that feels increasingly fast-paced and stressful.

Despite all the changes, part of me still loves Pokémon cards. I may never be able to casually collect them the way I did when I was eight, but I still find joy in flipping through my old binder and remembering how much fun I had trading cards with friends, battling on the playground, and trying to pronounce names like "Rayquaza" and "Giratina." There was an innocence to that era that no market trend can replace.

And who knows, maybe someday I’ll splurge and buy a pack, just for old times’ sake. I probably won’t pull anything valuable. It might even be filled with Pokémon I’ve never heard of before. But that’s not the point. The magic of Pokémon cards was never just in their resale value. It was in the anticipation of opening a pack, the surprise of seeing what’s inside, and the joy of sharing that experience with others. That kind of feeling is timeless, even if the cards aren’t five dollars anymore.

So while the world of Pokémon cards has changed dramatically since my first pack in 2017, my love for them hasn’t. Whether I’m chasing shiny holographics or just flipping through my childhood binder, one thing’s for sure: those little cardboard rectangles still have the power to make me smile. And in the end, that’s worth a lot more than market price.