3000% Return on Investment
I see people laugh reacting at this Wall Street Journal article (link down below) but this is no joke. It's serious investment news from WSJ. Pokemon cards are a real investment. They were even one of things (on a long list of issues) that contributed to my divorce in my first marriage, because my ex-wife saw it as a money wasting activity like gambling or alcohol addiction and I wasn't about to let anyone stop me, which I understand probably looked like an addiciton or problem to someone who is uninformed and unable to take a step back and logically assess the situation.
Anyway, I've personally experienced 3000% return on certain Pokemon cards. Yeah, the timing of the market was perfect but those were cards that I bought in 2014-2015 and sold only 5-6 years later.
Even after that we saw some cards bought in 2020-2022 go up 400% + in just a year or two.
Let's look at the math. One real example: I bought a card back in 2015 for $120. I later sold it around the year 2020 or 2021 for $1100. I took $400 of that and reinvested in some other vintage cards that I predicted will at least hold their value but likely go up at some point in time. The other $580? I kept to use for personal spending like food and gonig out or whatever. In my opinion, that was very conservative of me and I should have put more of the money back into reinvesting. I got nearly $1000 profit off that deal and invested ONLY $400 back into the market. Back in the old days when I was flipping cards on ebay for a living it would have been 80% invested back. But you gotta take a little out for your self eventually and enjoy the fruits of your labor I guess, right?
Did the $400 I invested back pay off now that it's 4-5 years later? The prices have gone up and down a bit but currently they are barely higher, maybe a 20% increase. You can't win all of them. But as I mentioned before, those cards I invested $400 into are now on my desk and I really wouldn't care if the value dropped to 50% of what I paid. Or really even if they became worthless. I'd still enjoy having them in my collection and looking at them.
That's the difference between me and a scalper or someone just using it as an investment asset. There's no risk for me because I literally don't care even if it all goes to zero value. Because ultimately this all came from zero. It stemmed from my childhood collection that maybe my parents invested a few hundred of dollars into over the span of 2-3 years while I was actively playing the Pokemon TCG when I was in elementary school. And I got a lot of cards for free every week for winning tournaments. But I didn't really pay for any of this and now I have a collection that was worth $30,000 in 2020 before I started selling off some cards.
The thing is, I enjoy it. It's not about the money for me. I was hoarding all these cards back when they were not worth enough to spend your time on it for most people. I enjoy the search for rare vintage cards that are still in good condition and the excitement of finding a gem. It's like treasure hunting. And I enjoy having a beautiful sparkly card in my collection and displaying it in my portfolio or on my desk, to admire on a daily basis. I enjoy buying that rare card that I wanted as a kid but it was $20 back then and I couldn't convince my parents to spend $20 on just one card (that was Base Set Zapdos, by the way, so if I see one at a shop I get a twitch to buy it if it's below market price). It's my hobby and just coincidentally it turned out that I can get a 3000% return by selling off some of the cards that I'm not so attached to.
Do I have a problem? Do I need to go to rehab for Pokemon card hoarding?
How to get started:
If you want to get started you can start by checking ebay for some vintage Pokemon card auctions. Look at the king of vintage Pokemon cards, Base Set Charizard. Make sure you filter the search results to see auctions that were actually sold to a buyer (ignore fixed price listings unless people are actually buying it).
Understand what the current market value is. Do this by checking websites like pricecharting.com and you can sometimes go back 5 years to see the flucuations over time:
Check multiple sources to make sure you have a good grasp on what the price is. Start bidding on ebay, looking at garage sales, flea markets, card shops, local Pokemon TCG groups on Facebook, etc. and when you find one below market value (or if you anticipate the price going up or the market as a whole going up for some reason) then STRIKE WHILE THE IRON IS HOT and snatch that fiery lizard boy for $200.
But the most important question to ask yourself is this:
Will I enjoy having this card in my collection?
That's all from me for today. Thanks for reading along and I hope you can get the excitement of a 3000% return on one of your Pokemon cards soon.
2025 WSJ article on the topic:
https://www.wsj.com/finance/pokemon-cards-investment-0163e058