Pokémon, sports card craze during pandemic sees spiking prices

TUCSON, Ariz. (KOLD News 13) -Pokémon cards aren’t quite worth their weight in gold, but they are worth a lot right now. Over at Showtime Cards on the east side of Tucson, they said the card buying, trading and collecting industry is “crazy” right now.

For 12-year-old, Kayleigh Middleton, the thrill of opening a new Pokémon pack is something she looks forward to every week.

“It’s more exciting to see if you can get a rare one from a pack,” she said looking at the cards in a glass case.

Middleton and her dad visit Showtime Cards about once a week. He collects sports cards while she hits up the Pokémon section. It’s bonding time for the father-daughter duo. They are not alone, either. Many people have started collecting, or recollecting, the popular 90s card game and sports cards.

“Once people got those stimulus checks, we saw a spike in almost everything, mainly in sports, but then later on it came to Pokémon, Yugio, just everything has gone crazy,” said Max Gootter, clerk at Showtime Cards.

Cards are going for hundreds of dollars online—or even up to hundreds of thousands of dollars for some the rarest and original Pokémon cards.

“I mean some can go up for hundreds of thousands”

“We pulled a $300 dollar card out of the Pokémon pack,” said Chris Middleton, Kayleigh’s dad. “Just about an hour ago somebody pulled a card that was $1,000.”

There are a few reasons why the prices and value have gone up. Stimulus checks mean more money for hobbies, quarantine has people picking up new hobbies and the main factor—YouTubers have recently been getting into the card game, sparking people’s interest globally.

“I saw YouTubers collecting them, and they looked really cool, so I started collecting them,” said Kayleigh Middleton.

Pokémon TCG, the company that runs the game and cards, released a statement that said in part high global demand and shipping constraints are impacting availability.

Folks over at Showtime Cards said similar things are happening with sports cards. More people are having more time to collect them, plus, shipping and grading delays are inflating costs.

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