this post was submitted on 16 Feb 2026
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Cecilily discusses the financialisation of Pokemon cards as an investment vehicle.

It's one thing that makes me pause in teaching my niece how to play, I don't want her to get caught up in the abstraction of the cards as anything other than pieces of cardboard with funny pictures of animals

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[–] Kefla@hexbear.net 31 points 2 months ago (4 children)

One thing Pokemon does pretty well though is keeping the collector side and the player side largely separate. If you just want to buy singles of the cards you need to play, that's cheap. You can get a top tier competitive deck for like $50-100 last time I checked, which is dirt cheap in the TCG space.

The high value Pokemon chase cards are like alt arts and stuff, the normal versions of good cards are usually plentiful. Unlike a game like Magic where all the highest power cards are also the most expensive.

[–] EstraDoll@hexbear.net 22 points 2 months ago (2 children)

You can get a top tier competitive deck for like $50-100 last time I checked, which is dirt cheap in the TCG space.

Wait, I can get a competitive Pokemon deck for the same price as a competitive Pauper MTG deck?

man wtf is MTG

[–] HiImThomasPynchon@hexbear.net 17 points 2 months ago (1 children)

man wtf is MTG

Collector prints and crossovers now. In the end, Phyrexia won 😔

[–] BanMeFromPosting@hexbear.net 6 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Hey guys it's your friend, Homer Simpson^TM^! Don't you love The Simpsons©? Now you can experience The Simpsons© in card format!

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[–] Acute_Engles@hexbear.net 3 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Pokemon tcg sells boxes called trainer toolkits that contain a ton of meta cards, usually the release of a new one lowers the price of all the staples that you see in most decks.

This keeps the price of base rarity cards low and pushes the price of the art versions of playable cards down too.

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[–] Infamousblt@hexbear.net 14 points 2 months ago (1 children)

The flip side is that if you want to crack packs and make decks with what you get from packs it's prohibively expensive because collectors. So it really only is cheap if you know the deck you want to build and go build it rather than playing with cards you get from packs.

[–] Kefla@hexbear.net 18 points 2 months ago (1 children)

This is true, but if you want to teach a kid to enjoy card games in a healthy way, then teaching them to bypass the predatory gacha bullshit because it sucks and is designed to devour all their money is the correct way to go.

[–] Tabitha@hexbear.net 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

at that point, just buy deck building board games?

[–] Speaker@hexbear.net 4 points 2 months ago

Correct take detected, close the thread.

[–] KuroXppi@hexbear.net 10 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

That's a really good insight thank you. It does largely reflect my experience getting back into the game . literally decades after I first picked it up. We have a few pre-made sets, three from the Battle Academy training set (Pikachu, Armarouge, Darkrai) $45 and one my brother was able to find at a retail store (Team Rocket Mewtwo) $90 AUD. I have some Chinese decks that were cheaper, so all in all we have eight decks that were about $150 aud. It's not something she can buy with her own pocket money, it's definitely christmas or birthday gift territory. The fun of building your own deck with singles is probably a bit further down the track, so far we've only mucked around with swapping like for like (like an ampharos in the Pikachu deck, and a rotom for a pachirisu).

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[–] purpleworm@hexbear.net 22 points 2 months ago (1 children)

You could show your niece how cool proxying is

[–] KuroXppi@hexbear.net 15 points 2 months ago

Good suggestion catgirl-salute

[–] thelastaxolotl@hexbear.net 21 points 2 months ago

Boil all Finance Bros

[–] Dort_Owl@hexbear.net 21 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

Yeah it sucks because the actual card game was pretty fun for a while.

People forget that Pokemon started out as a bunch of dorks making an homage to bug catching. Pokemon's own success kind of fucked it over.

I'd say the bigger something gets, the more likely it is the investor ghouls come out and strip it for parts.

[–] KuroXppi@hexbear.net 20 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

Did I already rant about my friend who bought $3000 of cards and they're just sitting on a table til he can onsell them for 20%+? He just said he paid something like $100 annual for an ebgames member account and he would preorder everything he could. He didn't even know the names of the box art mons kiryu-pain

[–] KnilAdlez@hexbear.net 20 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Sorry but I truly hope your friend ends up holding the bag


[–] KuroXppi@hexbear.net 12 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Likewise but sadly he can afford to take the hit, he has a regular turnover of mtg, baseball and basketball cards too, so Pokemon tcg is just a different market he's 'diversified' into

[–] KnilAdlez@hexbear.net 11 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

Can you ask him who the hell is buying these off of him?


[–] Kefla@hexbear.net 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Anyone who actually wants the product. Scalpers like that asshole buy literally everything, so if you want any of it you have to buy from them.

[–] KnilAdlez@hexbear.net 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (3 children)

Sure, but do people want pokemon cards bad enough to pay that much?


[–] Kefla@hexbear.net 6 points 2 months ago
[–] SerialExperimentsGay@hexbear.net 5 points 2 months ago

In total sales, Pokémon is as big as Star Wars and Harry Potter combined. No other media franchise is better at parting people from their money. Yes, Disney makes more money, but only because they own a ton of different brands. Individually, none of them come close to Pokémon in sales.

[–] Acute_Engles@hexbear.net 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I was lucky enough to get a big costco box that, after sales tax, cost me $72 CAD(14 packs, promo cards, etc)

The cheapest one could see for that same box on marketplace was $200. Local card shops were selling it for $300

Yes people will pay a lot

[–] KnilAdlez@hexbear.net 3 points 2 months ago

That's just straight up addiction at that point. Or it's other scalpers paying each other.


[–] KuroXppi@hexbear.net 6 points 2 months ago

It sure ain't me

[–] Dort_Owl@hexbear.net 11 points 2 months ago

desolate I hate that

[–] DinosaurOuijaBoard@lemmy.ml 16 points 2 months ago

I'm a Garbage Pail Kids collector. Or should I say was... eBay and Topps' artificial scarcity have ruined what was once a fun hobby. Now every new set is an opportunity to get fleeced.

We knew a week in advance a Valentine's Day set was coming. $60 a box. Sold out in 3 minutes. Almost immediately they were on eBay, some listing for as much as $250!

Sorry for the rant.

[–] BobDole@hexbear.net 10 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Ohhh, now I get why all the shops I used to buy TTRPG books at are just Pokemon and MTG now, and all the TTRPG books I find (not counting D&D and Pathfinder etc) are expansions with no core books

[–] Sneakytrickyyy@hexbear.net 10 points 2 months ago

Cecilily is has some cool vids on her channel, she does a good job at presenting some Pokemon-hobby related issue as a way to bait and hook in casual viewers and before you know it, boom critiques of capitalism, I would recommend her to slightly woke normies who like Pokemon ig rat-salute

[–] Chana@hexbear.net 10 points 2 months ago

I think it's a good idea to generally steer clear of anything that's basically gambling, particularly gambling targeted at kids. Collectible-focused card games, gacha games, games focused on loot boxes.

[–] BanMeFromPosting@hexbear.net 8 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Started with MagicTCG. Hasbro just has them spitting out tons of slop, it's sad.

[–] KuroXppi@hexbear.net 6 points 2 months ago (4 children)

Wdym you don't like jumbo cactuar We've got harry potter themed cards I thought you liked the potterverse

[–] BanMeFromPosting@hexbear.net 4 points 2 months ago (8 children)

I have such a hard time with this because on the one hand a lot more of my friends are suddenly playing magic the gathering, on the other hand I'm playing commander against Aang and the 12th doctor.
And before that Hasbro was also fucking shit up by having them spit out ever more gimmicky blocks. Mark Rosewater talked in his Drive To Work series about keywords and complexity - how a game has a sort of ceiling for how complex it can be, before it becomes incomprehensible. Playing now I constantly need to look at cards and I have no fucking idea what's going on with dungeons and sagas (though I do love sagas, they're kind of straightforward, but still, there's too much going on) and 17 bajillion keywords everywhere. 10.000 needles isn't a fucking keyword, fuck offff

[–] KuroXppi@hexbear.net 4 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Mark Rosewater talked in his Drive To Work series about keywords and complexity - how a game has a sort of ceiling for how complex it can be, before it becomes incomprehensible

Oh that sounds like some fun game theory I'll check that podcast out

1208 episodes

scared

[–] BanMeFromPosting@hexbear.net 4 points 2 months ago

I haven't listened for years and don't think I could get back into it. If I were to I would go some years back - to when he didn't have to defend dogshit game design and then I'd pick an episode with a title that interested me. He used to be a pretty good yapper that would say interesting stuff.

[–] BanMeFromPosting@hexbear.net 3 points 2 months ago

So I couldn't find the episode, but this is an article where he touches on the same subject, from around the time that episode would have been out I think. https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/making-magic/lenticular-design-2014-03-31
12 years ago... Christ.

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[–] iByteABit@hexbear.net 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I've been playing Riftbound, the game itself is great but overall it's completely ruined by the scalpers and investment bros.

And proxying is hardly an option because you can only really play with mutliple people on tournaments and proxies aren't allowed, also people tend to get defensive about this I think, because they have spent money on the game and want it to still be meaningful.

[–] KuroXppi@hexbear.net 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Gatekeeping the crab bucket

[–] BanMeFromPosting@hexbear.net 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

It's so silly. But printers have gotten pretty good I hear. Better foils than what WOTC deliver at least.

[–] booty@hexbear.net 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I've never had someone inspect any of my cards closely enough that they'd even be thinking about whether it's "fake" except for when I'm playing commander and I drop an OG dual land and before they can finish the question I'm picking it up to show them the "you wouldn't download a card" cardback lmao

[–] BanMeFromPosting@hexbear.net 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Where do you get you prints done?

[–] booty@hexbear.net 2 points 2 months ago

I always used mpcautofill, so makeplayingcards.com does the prints

[–] batsforpeace@hexbear.net 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

‘friend of the channel Carl has been predicting this for a while’

reminds me of a video from a few months ago where this guy was explaining how hard getting cards is nowadays, lineups of mostly scalpers an hour before the store opens

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