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Ironically the people who have done the most to grow the hobby over many years, Leonheart, Scott, Gary, cop the most criticism, likely from people who are profiteering from this growth in some form.
What an amazing experience watching that. There will be a time where the last 1st edition base charizard is pulled on camera and while watching it we will never know itās the last! Enjoy all of these moments while they are still around.
Already over 60,000 views! It will probably be 100k tomorrow! I feel like this will be one of the last few 1st Ed charizard openings we will get to experience. Crazy we had 2 this year.
Super happy for him! Really awesome moment in the hobby with great timing. This is up there with the storage locker find, a once in a lifetime experience that most hope we get to have happen to us.
I donāt watch him religiously but I know that I have seen a few and I am glad he got this win. I know he has done a lot for the community, not just Pokemon. Pokemon has become an āevolutionā of Garyās āPokemansā video on Pawn Stars, to having more respect for the hobby in general (disregarding some of the flaws of parts of the community or āadults crying about pricesā). Growth in the hobby is good and we all deserve it, thanks for sharing the video!
I donāt think you know how much the big youtubers actually make. There is some ten year old named ryanās toy review with 25 million subscribers who was making 20 million per year at one point, just off ad revenue. Advertisers used to specifically go after ākidā channels because they want to create new young consumers for their products and you used to be able to target kids specifically through the youtube ad platform. Leonhart has 800k subs so I wouldnāt be surprised if he was making something like 300k-800k year (before COPPA). All the cards he opens could be sold off, especially the modern stuff to lower his overall costs. If you are under the impression that Leonhart is just blowing his savings on pokemon cards for the benefit of the community then you are quite deceived. With COPPA going into effect, the amount of revenue being earned by kid channels is plummeting from what Iāve heard.
Also you can kind of tell he has other motives because he just released another video where he was complaining about the āyoutube algorithmā and how his videos are not getting recommended but really what he is complaining about is lower earnings overall. Less views = lower earnings. He was apparently trying to counter the lower earnings by getting more subs but that also isnāt workingā¦hence the frustration for him. My guess is he is going to have to cut the vintage stuff from his channel and will probably focus on opening cheap modern product only. COPPA is essentially a death sentence for kid channels, especially if you are spending a lot to make each video overall. He might also shift into more āsponsored contentā type material.
Iām sure he makes a respectable amount of income from opening Pokemon cards but when he first started his channel (his earliest videos), did you get the impression he was in it for the money or because he enjoys opening up packs of Pokemon cards. If the latter then everything that has happened is just a byproduct of blogging about his passion and without the youtube channel he would probably be opening packs today (maybe not vintage if he couldnāt afford it).
I randomly noticed that there was a comment left 7+ years ago from Leonhart (same youtube ID he uses now with the checkmark and all that) - in his comment he says that he had just gotten a 1st ed Base Charizard back from PSA. He was so excited because he was expecting to get a 9 but ended up getting a 10. I know he later ended up selling this card, which of course he deeply regretted later on. But then he got his YT channel going and the rest is history.
