As someone who has lived through a lot of cycles and was fully involved with Magic pre Pokémon and after one thing is abundantly clear:
The collectible side of Magic, Yugioh, et all owes EVERYTHING to Pokemon. If we hadn’t built up the collectible side of Pokémon into a great success, no model would have been made for the others to follow.
I’ve stated here many times that back in 2000-2001 you could search PSA POKÉMON on eBay and only get a dozen or two hits. At the same time, had you searched PSA MTG/Magic you would have gotten ZERO results.
Today PSA Pokemon gets almost 50,000 and PSA MTG and PSA Magic combined gets about 7000.
You’ll find 890,000 with an MTG search
and
about 1.4 Million with a Pokémon search
Probably the PSA search is more indicative of the collectible side of each hobby.
PSA Yugioh checks in with about the same as Magic though the general “Yugioh” search brings up about 450,000 hits…half that of Magic the Gathering.
There are actually some Magic cards that are much rarer than the Alpha Black Lotus, like 1/200 and 1/1 rarity. A lot of collectors fixate on the Alpha Black Lotus because it gets all the views and publicity but some cards are so rare most collectors have never even heard about them. If comparing set cards, the Alpha black lotus will always be king. If comparing the hobby in general, some Japanese YGO prize cards have exchanged hands for over $300k ‘trade’ value.
@chok, @charizandrew
For sure but the most valuable card in MTG is the Alpha Lotus, just like the Illustrator is not the rarest Pokemon card but it is still the most valuable.
The trade value example was that a pristine or gem BGS Alpha lotus I can’t remember? The Illustrator while technically the highest grade in PSA 9 (not counting the Psa 10 copy with issues) I’m guessing a true PSA 10 copy or for the hype beasts a pristine BGS I don’t think the Illustrator has far to go to overtake the top MTG card whatever it may be given time.
I’m not saying 1st Ed Charizard I’m saying the most valuable modern card in time should/will be a Pokemon card, like the Illustrator I.e. the top card in the hobby.
I should probably qualify it by saying non sports as I don’t know anything about modern sports cards and there is probably a weird 1 of 1 jersey patch sweat molecule diamond platinum signature embossed card that goes for $20 million
I’ll concede that Pokemon definitely heralded collecting in terms of graded services (which I guess is the hyped up modern form), but what about non-graded collections?
MTG collections were pretty serious in the day to present. Alpha and Beta sets were seen as the prize cards and the access to Legacy as a format ensured that interest in the old sets would live on - creating an emphasis on keeping collections just for that reason alone.
As for Yugioh, it had its own struggles. Binder collections were serious - often overtaking Pokemon collections in terms of interest by the time kids reached high school - seeing it as a more “mature” game. Condition was EVERYTHING. 1st Edition was everything. People more readily discussed condition and sets than Pokemon prior to about 2010 when Yugioh no longer held the World Record for most played TCG. Back when the original game came out in the early 2000’s, interest in certain cards wasn’t as highly sought after since the TCG only had a Ban List updated every 6 months - making some cards obsolete. This changed when Restricted List and Tournaments allowed previously-banned cards into the meta-game as long as you only had ONE card and no duplicates. So in that case too, older sets became more highly sought after as they had some pretty powerful cards.
Pokemon definitely paved the way for more serious collecting from the financial aspect and through grading services, but I would argue that interest in other TCG’s is still incredibly lively - Yugioh still being a highly popular game and MTG now holding the current World Record for most played TCG.
Go to any card store and ask for a binder to look through. I bet you anything they’ll have a good number of Yugioh cards and a HORDE of MTG cards with only a couple of binders for Pokemon.
Pokemon leads PSA/BGS, but where Binder collections are concerned, pretty sure MTG leads that path.
All in all, I’m pretty sure interest in any of the three have helped each other out together. Though, I’ll admit. Pokemon introduced me to all of the other TCG’s.
You know what I think helped me be more interested in Pokemon collecting versus all the other TCG’s?
Is it due to the stupid episode of Rick saying “Pokeman”? Or was it just for show? I forgot what year that was but I felt like it was kind of disrespectful to you in that episode when they talked about Charizard. So should we partially thank you?
@teamrocketop,
Yeah, Rick got a lot of heat over that but, knowing him, he meant no harm. He’s actually very sweet,
As far as thanking me, I guess time will tell;)
