I’m not sure where you get this feeling but it doesn’t seem to be backed up by any reality. Star Wars? Disney? But I see it does make sense the journey would be harder for a fictional character to be beloved vs a real person. Which is why Pokemon is an impressive brand. Let’s look at the differences:
Sports cards - around for 150 years. Cards are photographs of popular people from popular sports. Propped up by the mainstream real world with massively popular sports industry. Zero creativiy. Zero originality. Most current top sale 12.6 million. Before this week: 6.25 million.
Pokémon cards - around for 23 years, 15% the time of sports. Cards are hand drawn and designed from grassroots unknowns artists not even in the US. Catches fire within a few years internationally. An entire world with fictional characters and IP created from thin air with zero real world concept help. Becomes biggest media franchise in the world. Most current top sale: 5.2 million.
One is cool and the other is extremely impressive. One required taking advantage of an already existing business and easily profiting from it. The other required building a business from scratch and maintaining it through multiple generations. One is the opportunist, the other the entrepreneur. I think I’ll put my faith in the latter.
I read some articles that said the amount of collectors and cards have decreased substantially from the Wax Era period in the late 80s-early 90s, but do we have an idea of what the numbers are like?
Because it also saw a massive boost like all TCGs during the pandemic and PSA still grades more sports cards than anything else.
I think I read an article saying it would reach 98.75b by 2027. That article linked to this below:
I see a ton of assumptions get thrown around with so many collectibles it really makes me wonder about these types of things. For example, in Magic collecting people always say that it’s a very small amount of people who collect the Alpha cards. I wouldn’t doubt it is maybe a very small amount of the former & existing playerbase who do collect them, but who actually knows for sure?
I know for a fact that many people from Magic and Sports have crossed over into Pokemon and vice-versa over the years for various reasons. I mean just watch SashaT’s video on the Charizard deal he made for example. So more and more people are getting into collecting on many different levels and the market continues to change a lot.
Anyway, I know this is sort of going into another discussion but my attitude with all this stuff now is we don’t really know in 2022 how many collectors both old & new are back into collecting compared to 20-30 years ago. My personal feeling though, we have way more collectors now than ever and especially because of the fact people are increasingly looking at collectibles as a place to park money long-term than ever before also (i.e. investment, store of value, etc). A nearly 10x growth by 2027 seems a little high to me, but I can definitely see it all growing more from here.
Lol exactly this. Those numbers look a lot like the pitch decks Fanatics and all the fractional share platforms were using which was basically “lets take the biggest growth the hobby has ever seen and just assume that growth number only falls off a little and lasts indefinitely “
Trophy cards will click those numbers down the road. I personally think the OG trophies will become more well known over the Illustrator, but that’s just my opinion. I have no real knowledge. Honestly, I think Charizard will crack $1M within the next 4-6 years.
Side note: I saw someone stated they collected Weiss cards so i finally googles wtf they were. F’n rad people invest in anime porn cards. I want one to sell for a fat number so it i hits the news. Not meaning to throw heavy shade, I just find it funny that it’s made for horny dudes
honestly, pokemon’s really not so far off all things considered. the highest sale is much closer to that than one may expect when comparing sports to pokemon imo. granted, i feel sports has more cards worth a ton of money, whereas pokemon has a smaller pool of several hundred thousand dollar plus items
As @smpratte always says, it’s not my thing but if it yours, just keep it to yourself. Haha it’s not the risqué aspect that makes it strange, it’s other things…. but in all seriousness - I can’t bring myself to get involved but there is money to be made I think. Don’t underestimate the power of the “waifu” craze. There are a lot of fans out there. We see it in Pokémon too with the full art female trainers.
I always wondered – are those anime girls from something? Or are they just designed for the card game? I at least understand the Poke-waifu collectors (look, of course I have a Misty or two) since there’s history and story to them.
But like… is Weiss just a pin-up calendar in card form?
Weiss Schwarz cards are all from something, yes- anime, video games, etc etc. You can only play with one series per deck, but you can play against any other series- it’s literally a waifu battle card game.
Sword Art Online, Love Live!, Hololive, the list of series goes on and on, and even people who don’t play will collect cards of their favorite character from their favorite anime or series.
People like you are the ones who miss out on gains. I’m sure you’re still banging your head on a wall when you could have purchased a psa 10 1st edition charizard when it was only 10k lol. If you think a Pokémon card can’t go to 500k why are you in this hobby still. Just sell your stuff and leave and you can invest your valuable resources elsewhere
It’s harshly worded but there’s still substance behind what is being said and not just an attack so I’ll let it stay up. That being said this conversation is 6 months old now so it’s long expired
