Anybody else get the feeling that this is just pokemon marketing?
I think the biggest clue is that Youtubers who talk about brands only for money, such as Logan Paul, are suddenly head over heals about Pokemon™ trading cards.
I think the biggest clue is that Youtubers who talk about brands only for money, such as Logan Paul, are suddenly head over heals about Pokemon™ trading cards.
My theory is that people like Logan Paul are involved with them because they are currently hot and zooming up in price, not the reverse. But I guess them being involved amplifies the hype and keeps the hype train rolling, so who knows where it begins and ends.
It's a feedback loop, hard to say exactly what got it going, how big it can get, and what happens when it slows or stops, but for now you can enjoy the mania.
Matt Levine might credit this to his "boredom markets hypothesis" during the pandemic. If you can't go out to a bar or a movie or a casino, then speculating on stocks or crypto or Pokemon cards is more fun compared to the now more limited options you have available, so more people will do that. https://archive.is/X8qY6
> At the time of this writing, PSA was receiving more cards every five days (over 500,000 per business week) than what we used to receive every three months.
Of course, the number of cards submitted for grading is not an indicator of market depth, but clearly something is going on.
Three years ago, one of my online gamer friends was sorting and organizing their older brother's pokemon card collection and the final count was well over 5,000 cards. They were in the process of building a website to sell them off but I think the brother got back from college and shut it down. Hopefully they are getting them graded.
I don't think it's marketing. It seems like the people who were scalping sneakers/graphics cards/ps5's have added to the already existing lunatics who are into Pokemon.