Rare Pokemon Cards

The truth behind Pokemon Cards

Background and History:

Pokemon as we know it is the famous trading card game that was popularised in the early 2000s. But how did it start, where is it from and how do some cards have such exorbitant prices?

Pokemon was originally a video game published by Nintendo 1996 for the GameBoy, a then popular game console. Nintendo continued to release games for its consoles and Pokemon quickly grew to become a multimedia franchise with comics, spin-off games, an animated series and most importantly trading cards. The trading card game was released a few months following the game and immediately garnered a lot of attention from japanese players. With a unique game system and attractive design, it did not take long for them to be released in the US in 2003. It received international recognition and with more generations of cards being released, collectionists started having a hard time acquiring older and rarer cards.

The Economics Behind It:

So, why do some pokemon cards reach insane prices? Well, partly because Pokémon is the highest-grossing entertainment franchise of all time. Having acquired a whopping $90 billion since its conception in 1995, it continues to grow in popularity, its demographic constantly widening at an unprecedented rate. Once a viral sensation all over the globe, it hasn't fallen off the map. In fact, the augmented reality game Pokémon Go is earning more money than it ever has before. According to mobile analytics firm Sensor Tower, Pokémon Go had a record year in 2019, taking in an estimated $900 million through in-app purchases.

The main factor that can somewhat justify the prices of these pieces of plastic is supply and demand. Supply is the amount of goods that a company has, pretty self explanatory. Demand refers to how many people want those goods. When the supply of a product goes up, the price of a product goes down and vice-versa. At some point, too much of a demand for a certain product will cause the supply to diminish. In this scenario, Pokémon cards are in such small supply compared to the amount of users the multi-media franchise has, that the prices of these rare cards are so high, compared to what you would expect of a plastic card with some fancy colours on it.