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Two decades after the Japanese trading card
game became the biggest thing in schoolyards around the world,
Pokemon cards are fetching six figures at auction in a boom that
appears to have been fueled by coronavirus pandemic lockdowns.
"When COVID-19 hit, a lot of Gen X and Millennials were looking
for things to do and we found a lot of these guys and girls
started playing Pokemon again because they grew up with it,"
said Joe Maddalena, executive vice president at Texas-based
Heritage Auctions.
Maddalena said boxes of the 1999 U.S. first edition base set had
sold for around $400,000 at auction in recent months. A single
card in mint condition for the popular fire-flying character
Charizard sold for $300,000 in January, whereas in late 2019
asking prices for a Charizard card were around $16,000, he said.
Once stuffed into pockets or thrown into toy boxes, Pokemon
cards have become so sought-after that long lines form outside
stores when new batches are released.
"It's crazy, because I know just a few years ago you could go
anywhere and there were walls of Pokemon cards and it’s just all
come back," said Megan Meadows, 29, who lined up outside the
Next-Gen Games store in Los Angeles last week.
"For me, personally, it’s nostalgia 100 percent. I was a big
Pokemon kid in the late 90s, early 2000s, and it’s also finding
that joy again in a time where joy is a little hard to come by
and it’s kind of pure and fun," she added.
As Pokemon gears up for its global 25th anniversary celebrations
on Feb. 27, Heritage is holding its first auction dedicated to
Pokemon cards. The Feb 25 - March 25th online auction will have
200 Pokemon lots, including what Maddalena called "the Holy
Grail" - a sealed, 1999 Wizards of the Coast base set.
"The last one, we sold for $406,000 - who knows what it could go
for?," he said.
But you don't need to be rich in order to play the game or
collect the cards. Maddalena said the upcoming auction will have
lots of cards at lower prices than those in mint condition that
go for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Maddalena hesitates to use the word investments.
"I'm hoping they buy them because they love them," he said.
(Reporting by Jill Serjeant; Additional reporting by Rollo Ross;
Editing by Aurora Ellis)
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