8 ms·

All Hail King Pokémon

86 points by nomoreplease 5y ago

phoe-krk 5y ago
Just so you know, Pokemon Trading Card Game is still alive and it has a pretty good online client[0] (that runs well on Wine). Poke me if you'd like a game someday. [0] https://www.pokemon.com/us/pokemon-tcg/play-online/ https://www.pokemon.com/us/pokemon-tcg/play-online/
- christiansakai 5y ago
  It is more fun to play in person!
  - phoe-krk 5y ago
    I agree! It's much harder to play in person due to the pandemic though. There's a bonus though: each new physical deck and booster pack that you buy is also redeemable online, so you can buy a deck or two, redeem their codes in the online version, and immediately start playing them there.
  - tasogare 5y ago
    Yes but that require buying cards. Sometimes I want to do it to make friends, but that would require a decent time and money investment. And while I saw few girls playing it at the university, I think it’s mostly kids playing, so it would be a bit weird too (in addition to being a visible foreigner).
    - ipsum2 5y ago
      You don't have to buy cards. In high school people were playing with cards printed at home, and put into card sleeves. I assume no on photoshopped their card to change the stats.
      - tasogare 5y ago
        Store hates people playing with proxies. It’s obvious illegal in tournament. That would make me stick out even more. So no. But I’ll ask acquaintances around if some are playing the game.
        thaumasiotes 5y ago
        Proxies are only illegal in official tournaments. For a long time the major M:tG Vintage tournament wasn't even run by WotC, and proxies were allowed.
salamandersauce 5y ago
What amazes me is that Charizards can sell for so much when they are so worthless to the game. In MTG the most expensive card Black Lotus is basically broken and can be used in some formats and so actually desired by players. Charizard from the the original Pokemon base set is bad now. His HP is laughably low, his attack throws away tons of energy and it's a 3rd stage evolution making it slow and hard to get out. Even the buffed 2016 Pokemon Evolutions version isn't much more playable.
- monocasa 5y ago
  Nostalgia is a hell of a drug. I bet most of them are ending up framed on walls or what have you by people who wanted it in middle school. And I bet there's way more of those people than people playing the game.
- tasogare 5y ago
  I remember being kid and other kids telling back then, when the card game was released, that a charizard was worth 500 francs (around 75€) and I didn’t really believed them. Funny how it raised to even crazier prices. Someone gave me a free Ponyta, which I traded against other cards, growing my collection without buying any pack. One day I was with only three cards remaining but managed to trade again them for a bigger collection. My brother did the same, also with a free starting Ponyta. A year or so later, I bough two packs of the Fossils extension. A guy stole my whole collection in junior high school and I wasn’t able to bring it back. I still hate him to this day.
- rogerdb 5y ago
  I don't think it's too surprising - cards from this era are primarily collector items, so among equal rarity cards, the most "iconic" ones are the ones that demand the highest price. Charizard had a pre-existing (and continued) level of popularity that made it the obvious most desirable card, even if it's not particularly playable. MTG didn't have the existing IP, so the cards that became iconic are more based around their playability, rarity, and associated mythos. Not too many people are dropping $20,000+ for a lotus to play it in vintage, but the prices continue to rise because of increasing collectibility. For what it's worth, Ancestral Recall is arguably a stronger card of equal rarity, but it's worth substantially less on the basis of being less iconic (if only slightly).
aloukissas 5y ago
For those in Pokemon cards, you should check out the Whatnot Slabathon [1], where we've been auctioning some super rare, PSA-graded cards on the app all May! [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFe8tseC85Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFe8tseC85Y
Animats 5y ago
There's a lot of money to be made exploiting people with no life.
- mberning 5y ago
  I think about that often. I know many people that are pretty much losing at life that have voluminous collections of junk. Anime figurines, comics, video games, movies, etc. It’s a sad pathology.
  - mountainethos 5y ago
    Thinking often about how your mode of living is superior to others' is a sad pathology.
  - sichtlinkair 5y ago
    Wish I had the downvote button
- gen220 5y ago
  I gave you an upvote on a charitable interpretation, because I think it’s actually a humbling observation: how much money some motivated individuals are willing to spend on objects with no bona fide “value”. That is, things that are not edible (food) and do not produce something edible (fire, farming tools, soil), that do not shield you from the elements or help produce such goods that do. We all possess things that are basically irrational to possess. Many even pay for the opportunity to possess and protect things with no boba fide value. For me, it’s books and records, in spite of easy access to the library and the internet. For others, it’s clothes, exotic food ingredients, streaming services/TV, season passes, and Pokémon cards. I used to think like this, judging people by their value functions. But as I’ve gotten older, I increasingly find it unfair to knock people for the irrational things they choose to possess, as long as it brings no unreasonable harm to others (i.e. it’s OK to shame the person who invests their life savings in Pokémon cards, using it as a vehicle for speculation, but I still think it’s wrong to say they have no life).
aphextron 5y ago
Getting some real 1999 vibes here
an_opabinia 5y ago
“Why isn’t he cashing in?” Probably the #1 question you should pose unsophisticated people.
Negitivefrags 5y ago
I would be suprised if the most valuable collection of Pokémon cards was worth only $10M. I personally know multiple people with card collections in excess of $10M. They are using it as a form of investment and it’s been their best performing asset class in the last several years. While those collections are not of Pokémon cards, I’m sure that there must exist people who see Pokémon cards as an investment too and are similarly wealthy.
- alisonkisk 5y ago
  That only works until they actually try to sell, which crashes the market.
kevinventullo 5y ago
As an adolescent in the late 90’s, my friend group played the Star Wars version of this, Star Wars CCG. At the time I had cards worth $40-50 and thought if I held onto them for decades they’d be worth thousands. Looked them up recently and they’re going for... $20-30. Oh well. Interestingly, unopened packs seem to fetch a fair amount, certainly more than their “expected value”, which aligns with my experience trading loot boxes on Steam.
- hsndmoose 5y ago
  > Interestingly, unopened packs seem to fetch a fair amount, certainly more than their “expected value” Yeah it's a phenomenon seen in a few different CCG markets actually. Roughly 2 years after a set's release the Sealed box price and the EV start to drift apart.
- alisonkisk 5y ago
  That has to be true because all sealed packs that are worth less than EV will be opened and then no longer be sealed packs.
  - ivanbakel 5y ago
    Why would all the packs worth less than EV have to be opened?
    - IanCal 5y ago
      On a large scale that should make sense. If you have an EV of £20 for the contents of a random pack and can buy them for £10, it makes sense to buy as many as you can to open and sell on the contents. They don't have to be opened, but if the difference is large it would make sense for people whose only interest is in getting a return to buy & open them.
      - ivanbakel 5y ago
        That explanation only makes sense if you take alisonkisk's use of "worth" to mean "price", which makes it a very different comment. That all packs with price less than their EV get opened makes sense. At the same time, packs with price more than their EV don't really make sense - it's better to just buy singles in that case. But to me, the comment meant that packs with worth (total value of their contents) less than their EV i.e. underperforming packs were guaranteed to be opened, so the EV of remaining packs would rise, justifying the price increase.
njdullea 5y ago
When the first thing someone asks is why isn't a collector cashing in they clearly don't understand what motivates a collector in the first place.
- 63 5y ago
  There's also a sort of survivor bias to it. If he were willing to cash in, then he wouldn't have a $10,000,000 collection and they wouldn't be writing a story on him
throwaway287391 5y ago
Why am I hearing so much about Pokemon cards in the past few weeks? Are they having a resurgence? What prompted it?
- GloriousKoji 5y ago
  They've always been mildly popular with a smaller crowd but recently it's all Twitch and Youtube. One streamer bought something like $10,000 worth of pokemon, others followed suit and now everyone's into it again.
  - capableweb 5y ago
    Hence, people are spending money on a new thing so cryptocurrency markets are going downwards.
- Avalaxy 5y ago
  There is nothing else left to invest in.
- morsch 5y ago
  They are less perishable than tulips.
mattbeckman 5y ago
Pokemon will enter the NFT digital collectibles space, and it would be absolute crazy if they don't already have a team working on it. All of these collectors are making assumptions based on information other collectors have shared about "how many are known to exist" etc., whereas NFTs are provably scarce and they never get scuffed up.
- Salgat 5y ago
  It's highly unlikely that The Pokemon Company would want it to be publicly known how many of each card are in existence, and even then they'd likely prefer hosting this on their own self-hosted and fully controlled database over a blockchain.
fnord77 5y ago
I wonder what the next thing will be that will be super collectible. Please do not say "NFTs" :)
- pwillia7 5y ago
  Probably NFTs
- aloukissas 5y ago
  In 15-20 years: analog, ICE cars. Not just rare ones that are already collectible today, but normal, fun-to-drive ones that we sleep on today.
  - fnord77 5y ago
    I doubt it. it is not like you could buy a bunch of cars and stick them in your closet. I've never found any commodity car that fun to drive compared to commodity EVs
thom 5y ago
As a long-time Magic: the Gathering player it’s been fun introducing that to my kids and also learning Pokemon and Yu Gi Oh with them. I think Pokemon is slightly less satisfying than MTG without a lot of concerted deck building, and there’s a lot more to keep track of, but I do enjoy it. Yu Gi Oh I will just never understand. Absurdly complex, both at the macro level of the rules and the micro level of every card having a paragraph of tiny text to read. My boy learned to play MtG to a pretty functional level way faster than these other games, and while I’d never call MtG’s rules simple I still think it has an elegance some of these other games lack, but obviously nostalgia and familiarity colour that.
franciscop 5y ago
> Charizard, an extremely powerful fire dragon Please, we all know that for some reason Charizard is not a dragon for some funny reason :)

86 points by nomoreplease 5y ago

Just so you know, Pokemon Trading Card Game is still alive and it has a pretty good online client[0] (that runs well on Wine). Poke me if you'd like a game someday. [0] https://www.pokemon.com/us/pokemon-tcg/play-online/ https://www.pokemon.com/us/pokemon-tcg/play-online/

christiansakai 5y ago
It is more fun to play in person!
- phoe-krk 5y ago
  I agree! It's much harder to play in person due to the pandemic though. There's a bonus though: each new physical deck and booster pack that you buy is also redeemable online, so you can buy a deck or two, redeem their codes in the online version, and immediately start playing them there.
- tasogare 5y ago
  Yes but that require buying cards. Sometimes I want to do it to make friends, but that would require a decent time and money investment. And while I saw few girls playing it at the university, I think it’s mostly kids playing, so it would be a bit weird too (in addition to being a visible foreigner).
  - ipsum2 5y ago
    You don't have to buy cards. In high school people were playing with cards printed at home, and put into card sleeves. I assume no on photoshopped their card to change the stats.
    - tasogare 5y ago
      Store hates people playing with proxies. It’s obvious illegal in tournament. That would make me stick out even more. So no. But I’ll ask acquaintances around if some are playing the game.
      - thaumasiotes 5y ago
        Proxies are only illegal in official tournaments. For a long time the major M:tG Vintage tournament wasn't even run by WotC, and proxies were allowed.

salamandersauce 5y ago

What amazes me is that Charizards can sell for so much when they are so worthless to the game. In MTG the most expensive card Black Lotus is basically broken and can be used in some formats and so actually desired by players. Charizard from the the original Pokemon base set is bad now. His HP is laughably low, his attack throws away tons of energy and it's a 3rd stage evolution making it slow and hard to get out. Even the buffed 2016 Pokemon Evolutions version isn't much more playable.

monocasa 5y ago
Nostalgia is a hell of a drug. I bet most of them are ending up framed on walls or what have you by people who wanted it in middle school. And I bet there's way more of those people than people playing the game.
tasogare 5y ago
I remember being kid and other kids telling back then, when the card game was released, that a charizard was worth 500 francs (around 75€) and I didn’t really believed them. Funny how it raised to even crazier prices. Someone gave me a free Ponyta, which I traded against other cards, growing my collection without buying any pack. One day I was with only three cards remaining but managed to trade again them for a bigger collection. My brother did the same, also with a free starting Ponyta. A year or so later, I bough two packs of the Fossils extension. A guy stole my whole collection in junior high school and I wasn’t able to bring it back. I still hate him to this day.
rogerdb 5y ago
I don't think it's too surprising - cards from this era are primarily collector items, so among equal rarity cards, the most "iconic" ones are the ones that demand the highest price. Charizard had a pre-existing (and continued) level of popularity that made it the obvious most desirable card, even if it's not particularly playable. MTG didn't have the existing IP, so the cards that became iconic are more based around their playability, rarity, and associated mythos. Not too many people are dropping $20,000+ for a lotus to play it in vintage, but the prices continue to rise because of increasing collectibility. For what it's worth, Ancestral Recall is arguably a stronger card of equal rarity, but it's worth substantially less on the basis of being less iconic (if only slightly).

aloukissas 5y ago

For those in Pokemon cards, you should check out the Whatnot Slabathon [1], where we've been auctioning some super rare, PSA-graded cards on the app all May! [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFe8tseC85Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFe8tseC85Y

Animats 5y ago

There's a lot of money to be made exploiting people with no life.

mberning 5y ago
I think about that often. I know many people that are pretty much losing at life that have voluminous collections of junk. Anime figurines, comics, video games, movies, etc. It’s a sad pathology.
- mountainethos 5y ago
  Thinking often about how your mode of living is superior to others' is a sad pathology.
- sichtlinkair 5y ago
  Wish I had the downvote button
gen220 5y ago
I gave you an upvote on a charitable interpretation, because I think it’s actually a humbling observation: how much money some motivated individuals are willing to spend on objects with no bona fide “value”. That is, things that are not edible (food) and do not produce something edible (fire, farming tools, soil), that do not shield you from the elements or help produce such goods that do. We all possess things that are basically irrational to possess. Many even pay for the opportunity to possess and protect things with no boba fide value. For me, it’s books and records, in spite of easy access to the library and the internet. For others, it’s clothes, exotic food ingredients, streaming services/TV, season passes, and Pokémon cards. I used to think like this, judging people by their value functions. But as I’ve gotten older, I increasingly find it unfair to knock people for the irrational things they choose to possess, as long as it brings no unreasonable harm to others (i.e. it’s OK to shame the person who invests their life savings in Pokémon cards, using it as a vehicle for speculation, but I still think it’s wrong to say they have no life).

aphextron 5y ago

Getting some real 1999 vibes here

an_opabinia 5y ago

“Why isn’t he cashing in?” Probably the #1 question you should pose unsophisticated people.

Negitivefrags 5y ago

I would be suprised if the most valuable collection of Pokémon cards was worth only $10M. I personally know multiple people with card collections in excess of $10M. They are using it as a form of investment and it’s been their best performing asset class in the last several years. While those collections are not of Pokémon cards, I’m sure that there must exist people who see Pokémon cards as an investment too and are similarly wealthy.

alisonkisk 5y ago
That only works until they actually try to sell, which crashes the market.

kevinventullo 5y ago

As an adolescent in the late 90’s, my friend group played the Star Wars version of this, Star Wars CCG. At the time I had cards worth $40-50 and thought if I held onto them for decades they’d be worth thousands. Looked them up recently and they’re going for... $20-30. Oh well. Interestingly, unopened packs seem to fetch a fair amount, certainly more than their “expected value”, which aligns with my experience trading loot boxes on Steam.

hsndmoose 5y ago
> Interestingly, unopened packs seem to fetch a fair amount, certainly more than their “expected value” Yeah it's a phenomenon seen in a few different CCG markets actually. Roughly 2 years after a set's release the Sealed box price and the EV start to drift apart.
alisonkisk 5y ago
That has to be true because all sealed packs that are worth less than EV will be opened and then no longer be sealed packs.
- ivanbakel 5y ago
  Why would all the packs worth less than EV have to be opened?
  - IanCal 5y ago
    On a large scale that should make sense. If you have an EV of £20 for the contents of a random pack and can buy them for £10, it makes sense to buy as many as you can to open and sell on the contents. They don't have to be opened, but if the difference is large it would make sense for people whose only interest is in getting a return to buy & open them.
    - ivanbakel 5y ago
      That explanation only makes sense if you take alisonkisk's use of "worth" to mean "price", which makes it a very different comment. That all packs with price less than their EV get opened makes sense. At the same time, packs with price more than their EV don't really make sense - it's better to just buy singles in that case. But to me, the comment meant that packs with worth (total value of their contents) less than their EV i.e. underperforming packs were guaranteed to be opened, so the EV of remaining packs would rise, justifying the price increase.

njdullea 5y ago

When the first thing someone asks is why isn't a collector cashing in they clearly don't understand what motivates a collector in the first place.

63 5y ago
There's also a sort of survivor bias to it. If he were willing to cash in, then he wouldn't have a $10,000,000 collection and they wouldn't be writing a story on him

throwaway287391 5y ago

Why am I hearing so much about Pokemon cards in the past few weeks? Are they having a resurgence? What prompted it?

GloriousKoji 5y ago
They've always been mildly popular with a smaller crowd but recently it's all Twitch and Youtube. One streamer bought something like $10,000 worth of pokemon, others followed suit and now everyone's into it again.
- capableweb 5y ago
  Hence, people are spending money on a new thing so cryptocurrency markets are going downwards.
Avalaxy 5y ago
There is nothing else left to invest in.
morsch 5y ago
They are less perishable than tulips.

mattbeckman 5y ago

Pokemon will enter the NFT digital collectibles space, and it would be absolute crazy if they don't already have a team working on it. All of these collectors are making assumptions based on information other collectors have shared about "how many are known to exist" etc., whereas NFTs are provably scarce and they never get scuffed up.

Salgat 5y ago
It's highly unlikely that The Pokemon Company would want it to be publicly known how many of each card are in existence, and even then they'd likely prefer hosting this on their own self-hosted and fully controlled database over a blockchain.

fnord77 5y ago

I wonder what the next thing will be that will be super collectible. Please do not say "NFTs" :)

pwillia7 5y ago
Probably NFTs
aloukissas 5y ago
In 15-20 years: analog, ICE cars. Not just rare ones that are already collectible today, but normal, fun-to-drive ones that we sleep on today.
- fnord77 5y ago
  I doubt it. it is not like you could buy a bunch of cars and stick them in your closet. I've never found any commodity car that fun to drive compared to commodity EVs

thom 5y ago

As a long-time Magic: the Gathering player it’s been fun introducing that to my kids and also learning Pokemon and Yu Gi Oh with them. I think Pokemon is slightly less satisfying than MTG without a lot of concerted deck building, and there’s a lot more to keep track of, but I do enjoy it. Yu Gi Oh I will just never understand. Absurdly complex, both at the macro level of the rules and the micro level of every card having a paragraph of tiny text to read. My boy learned to play MtG to a pretty functional level way faster than these other games, and while I’d never call MtG’s rules simple I still think it has an elegance some of these other games lack, but obviously nostalgia and familiarity colour that.

franciscop 5y ago

> Charizard, an extremely powerful fire dragon Please, we all know that for some reason Charizard is not a dragon for some funny reason :)