Rare Pokémon cards fetch premium prices among Gen Z, sparking thefts

A collection of Espeon cards from the Japanese media franchise Pokémon / Courtesy of Deadstock

A 1996 Japanese Pokémon base set recently sold for $178,120 at the international online auction platform Goldin. The 102-card set, which includes a holographic Charizard, Blastoise and Venusaur, recorded the highest price at the platform's Spring Pop Culture Auction that concluded June 17. A 2002 Charizard card and a 2003 Crystal Charizard card followed, selling for $122,000 and $109,800, respectively.

Pokémon cards evolved from childhood hobbies into alternative investments, fueling a resale market valued at $15.8 billion in 2024, cryptocurrency media outlet Decrypt said.

Hundreds of auctioneers, brokers and grading companies gathered at a major Asian trading card event in Hong Kong from Friday to Sunday to view 10 types of rare graded cards commemorating the franchise's 30th anniversary, Esquire Hong Kong said. The tokenized Pokémon card market hit a minimum of $230 million as of May.

Dominic Jang, co-founder of Pokémon card tokenization platform Deadstock, told the Hankook Ilbo on Sunday that the franchise is a global intellectual property whose narrative has remained unbroken for 30 years.

"Those who collected cards in their childhood become fathers and collect cards together with their children," Jang said.

People wait to enter a Pokémon pop-up store at Olive Young N Seongsu in Seongdong District, eastern Seoul, May 2. Yonhap

Forbes said June 4, citing a global collectorship survey by Art Basel and UBS, that a new class of investors who built their wealth through technology, artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency are less interested in traditional art. They grew up on Pokémon trading cards and treat them as an asset class.

Reflecting the digital familiarity of Generation Z, the cards are popular in the market for tokenized real-world assets, where physical items trade via blockchain to exchange ownership.

Roy Raftery, a trading card expert at London auction house Stanley Gibbons Baldwins, told CNBC that people who made big money with cryptocurrency are ploughing it into Pokémon. He said they are "not genuine collectors" but are instead "looking for high-end assets."

Jang noted that just as stocks are traded as digital certificates, Pokémon cards are evaluated by a grading company, encased in plastic slabs, kept in a vault and traded as digital tokens representing ownership. Investors can even use the tokenized cards as collateral to borrow money.

However, soaring prices and extreme portability draw a criminal element. Thefts targeting Pokémon cards continue nationwide in the U.S. ABC News said Saturday that thieves robbed two card shops in Stockton, California, of thousands of dollars' worth of inventory within hours of each other.

Spanish national police uncovered a Swedish criminal network in early April. The network laundered drug money by purchasing high-priced Pokémon cards and reselling them as a legitimate investment portfolio. Because the cards command high prices but remain hard to trace, they are highly vulnerable to financial crime.

People wait to register for the entry queue near the Pokémon Secret Forest event venue at Seoul Forest in Seongdong District, eastern Seoul, May 2. Yonhap

A financial crime expert told The Telegraph on May 21 that a few pieces of lightweight paper could be used to move millions of dollars, eliminating the need to carry a suitcase full of cash.

This article from the Hankook Ilbo, the sister publication of The Korea Times, is translated by a generative AI system and edited by The Korea Times.