FT: The Pokémon Card Market Has Gone Crazy
- 15.09.2026, 18:06
Rare copies sell for millions of dollars.
Pokémon trading cards are no longer just a children’s hobby; they have become a serious asset class—individual rare cards are selling at auction for millions of dollars, and the “crazy” trading card market is valued at billions. The Financial Times reports, citing dealers, analysts, and data from trading platforms.
The newspaper cited the example of Jordan Dunn, a British man who quit his job as a data analyst at a law firm in Chester in 2025, when his hobby became more profitable than his day job. “I went from earning £70,000 a year to running a multimillion-pound business. It was an obvious decision,” said 34-year-old Dunn. His business, Big Box Gaming, is on track for approximately £4 million in sales this year, up from £1.2 million in 2025.
“Over the past 12 months, the market has gone crazy. A lot of bankers, investors, lawyers, and crypto enthusiasts are coming in, and they’re just trying to get their hands on anything, regardless of the price,” says Dunn.
“It’s creating a sort of double effect. People are seeing things that remind them of their youth. And at the same time, they now have disposable income,” said Adam Ireland, global head of collectibles at eBay. According to him, it’s not people who just want to play with friends who are spending such amounts, but those who view trading cards as a “significant asset class.”
Oz Kara, co-founder of the collectible card platform Cardfolio, stated that the card market is “split in two”: there are no laws or regulations preventing The Pokémon Company from reprinting modern cards, whereas vintage cards are truly rare. As the FT reports, only 35 copies of one version of Pikachu from the 2002 Legendary Collection received a PSA 10 grade—a PSA 10 card is worth about £250,000, compared to roughly £15,000 for one graded one grade lower—PSA 9.
The boom in trading cards, the newspaper reports, has overwhelmed appraisers: PSA processed more than 1.3 million Pokémon cards in August—ten times more than in the same month of 2021. The collectible card audience has also grown: attendance at the Card Con event in Britain doubled to 10,000 people; buyers carried locked boxes of cash; and several dealers refused to give their names for fear of thieves, the newspaper notes.