How I Built a $100K Pokémon Card Portfolio in 2 Years

本站添加: 2026-05-25

[00:00:00]Nearly 2 years ago, I made a goal to earn $100,000 in profit from Pokémon cards. And I did it while spending as little effort as possible. I didn't wait in line at stores. I wasn't refreshing the Pokémon Center website every second.

[00:00:16]And I want to share the thoughts and strategies I employed every step of the way. Why did I pick a 100,000? Because it's big enough to be ambitious, but not so crazy that it's impossible. I knew that with thoughtful planning and a long-term mindset, Pokémon cards, especially sealed product, can be a serious investment.

[00:00:38]Some people flip cards dayto-day. That's fine. But as a lifelong collector, I enjoy playing the long game, finding product with real potential, and watching it grow over time. I promise I'm not crazy. Or am I? In this video, we're going to talk about one, what convinced me to go allin on Pokémon, two, the historical gains and wins we've seen in Pokémon sets. Three, how I strategize to maximize my returns. And four, my thoughts on the future of Pokémon as a collectible investment. Hey everyone, this is Jesse at Poke Wall Street. This video is the first in a series I'm calling Journey to 100K, where I document my Poke investing strategy, the wins, the losses, and everything in between. My initial goal was to see how long it would take me to earn $100,000 in appreciated value. And beating even my most wild expectations, I managed to do it in just a couple years. Now, before anyone jumps to conclusions, I want to be clear with what I actually mean. This is not $100,000 sitting in my bank account.

[00:01:55]This is appreciation. It's the difference between what I paid for my cards and what they're currently worth on the market. As any financially savvy person would tell you, appreciated value is not guaranteed money. Markets change, prices fluctuate, and gains are not real until you actually sell. That's something a lot of people ignore, and I just don't want to do that here. But even if it's just on paper, it still feels unreal saying out loud that my collection value experienced a six figure growth. As part of this series, I wanted to share with you what I did and the exact philosophy behind my investments. And the neat part of this series is that it isn't purely a retrospective. I actually recorded videos throughout my journey that showcase my thoughts at the time. So, some of the footage and clips you will see in these videos are actually from 2024 or 2025, back when my portfolio was nowhere near 100K in value. And now that I've built this 100K portfolio, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to rip it all. That's right. Ah, yeah. Each week on this channel, I'm going to be ripping the sealed packs in my collection, we'll be going through the hottest sets like 151 and Crown Zenith.

[00:03:15]I'll show you the wins and the losses I make with each opening. And it'll be good to finally rip through all these packs because holy do these sealed boxes take up a lot of room. And now that I'm doing filming for this channel, I actually needed to move almost everything out of my apartment here. It was getting in the way of my camera setup. So, by the time you watch this video, many of my boxes will have been moved off site. But you're probably wondering about the origin of all this.

[00:03:42]To begin, let me provide some background on where I started. When I returned to the Pokémon TCG during the pandemic, I initially bought cards purely for enjoyment. But soon, I began to wonder, how valuable are these cards actually becoming? This simple question led me down a rabbit hole of research into the market's historical performance. What I discovered genuinely surprised me. If you had bought an equal amount of booster boxes from every set that has come out over the last decade, the value of your collection would have beaten the S&P 100 nearly 8 to1. And keep in mind, this was before the massive bull market we saw occur towards the end of 2024. To top it off, in the entire history of Pokémon, there is not a single booster box that hasn't appreciated in value. I have a long history of tracking different collectibles markets. And let me tell you that this is astounding. You don't see many brands that can boast such an impressive track record. After reviewing all the data, I decided it was finally time to take the plunge. I had always wanted to start a YouTube channel as a creative outlet. So covering my journey through this video series seemed like a natural thing to do. Now let's go over the initial challenge I set for myself. The challenge going into this, I knew this was something I wanted to do longterm. I wasn't interested in short flips. I wanted to buy products that I could set and forget. I also wanted to buy things that would be easy to liquidate in the future. I have a lot of experience with eBay and selling items in general. One of the things you quickly learn is this. If something's very hard to sell, it doesn't matter whether you bought it at a good deal, it often isn't worth the hassle. Therefore, the vast majority of my portfolio had to be things that I thought would be easy to offload in the future. For better or worse, the Pokémon market is a lot more complex than it was even 5 years ago.

[00:05:50]There are new mechanics, new product lines, and new release strategies that have completely changed how people invest in this hobby. We've also seen how powerful modern sealed product can be. Things like Hidden Fates ETBs or Evolving Skies booster boxes didn't just do well, they doubled, tripled, even quadrupled in value in a relatively short amount of time. But the market's also trickier. Reprints, scalpers, and short-term hype can wipe out value fast if you're not careful. A huge number of people have jumped into Pokemon investing over the past year. And honestly, I'm worried that a lot of them are going to get burnt. They've only experienced a bull market where it feels like everything goes up. So, they're buying some pretty questionable products without really thinking through the downside. And while my own portfolio is spread across different types of items, there's always a focus I try to stick to with every single purchase. And coming right up, we're going to go exactly through the things I focus on to build a winning portfolio. Investment strategy.

[00:07:01]My investment framework boils down to four key things. Is this four? Is Is this four or is this eight? Don't even tell me. I Is this four? Oh god, what am I doing? No, we're not doing that. My investment framework boils down to four key things.

[00:07:20]One, scarcity. Is the product hard to find? Will it stay that way? Two, timing. Is it too new to invest in yet?

[00:07:30]When is the best time to move in? Three, set strength. Are the chase cards desirable? Is the card or set I'm looking at tied to a special anniversary, classic characters, or a throwback to a beloved theme or mechanic? This will help determine whether this product has legs to hold long-term demand. Essentially, the question you should ask yourself is this, why would a collector desire this product over other products 10 years into the future? And four, buy in cost.

[00:08:04]Do I feel like this product is currently undervalued? If it's a sealed product, am I buying something that has good price to pack ratio? I'll evaluate every product I consider through that lens.

[00:08:16]I'll explain my thought process so you can apply it to your own strategy, too.

[00:08:21]Each episode in this series will track my actual investments, what I bought, what were my biggest winners and losers.

[00:08:28]I'll show real numbers, walk through price tracking tools, and give you the behindthescenes logic of my moves. And I want to hear from you, too. What would you buy right now? What trends are you watching? I'm actually going to do a ton of pack openings on this channel where I'll rip open booster boxes from the hottest sets and do analysis on the cards we pull. On top of that, I'll be answering some of your top collecting or investing questions in a Q&A format during the video. So, if you're into Pokémon, collecting, investing, or just curious how far this can go, hit that subscribe button and let's build a community that's grounded, informed, and ready to help each other. Now, let's get into the financial analysis that got me very intrigued with the Pokémon market.

[00:09:18]The numbers speak for themselves. Over nearly three decades, virtually every mainline Pokemon's card set has shown significant financial growth. Today, I'll share with you a detailed chart tracking the value growth of Pokémon booster boxes starting from the X and Y era, which launched back in 2014. Now, before we dive into the numbers, let me provide a few important notes about this data. This analysis was originally put together around the fall of 2024. I will show updated numbers in the future, but late 2024 kicked off one of the biggest bull markets Pokemon has ever experienced. If I were to include the latest data from this recent bull market, the growth figures you're about to see would appear even stronger and crazier. But I think it's more valuable for us to take a realistic snapshot from before this exceptional market phase.

[00:10:14]This way, we get a clear picture of Poke investing during more typical market conditions. You might notice I've decided to exclude sets released before X and Y. The reason is simple. As you go back further into vintage territory, the growth figures become almost absurdly high. Those numbers, while impressive, can distort our analysis when we're trying to look at what's achievable for newer investors. Additionally, sets from the current Scarlet and Violet era are not included in this analysis either.

[00:10:47]That's because they're just too new and because of their volatility that would skew our results. All right, with those caveats out of the way, let's walk through exactly what those numbers on your screen mean. You'll notice a column labeled annual gain percentage on the right side of the chart. This figure assumes that you initially purchased each booster box at an even $100. To be completely transparent, this $100 price point is actually pretty conservative.

[00:11:17]In reality, many investors often manage to purchase booster boxes for as little as $80 to $90 by patiently looking for deals on platforms like eBay or during special sales events. But for simplicity and clarity, we've standardized the initial investment price to $100 across the board. Now, what does the percentage you see actually represent? It shows what's called the average annual return or a AAR on the initial investment into booster boxes from each Pokémon card set. When we aggregate the AAR of every mainline Pokemon set from the X and Y era through the Sword and Shield era, we arrive at an incredibly impressive number of approximately 84%. To put that in perspective, the S&P 500, the index for traditional investments, has historically averaged around 10.3% annual growth over the last 30 years at the time this data was originally compiled. So, what does this comparison reveal? It means that investing evenly across Pokemon card sets would have significantly outperformed the S&P 500 by roughly 8:1, which is genuinely remarkable. And keep in mind, this 8:1 outperformance is achieved even if you took a simple approach and diversified equally into every single Pokémon set released during this period. You wouldn't need special insights or the ability to predict the winners, just consistent investments into sealed booster boxes. In other words, Pokémon cards have demonstrated an incredibly strong and consistent track record as an investment vehicle, even when approached in the simplest way possible. Many people point to the sheer number of cards being printed and claim that there is no way these modern sets can be valuable when they're being printed to oblivion. Other criticisms point to the pool rates for many Scarlet and Violet sets and the significant number of reprints we've seen on the Japanese side of the hobby. I have many thoughts on each of these topics, but long story short, I'm extremely bullish on Pokémon.

[00:13:34]TCG has never been more playable, more collectible, and more investable than it is today. To thrive, every TCG needs people engaging with it in all of those different avenues. From collectors to investors to players, Pokémon has grown a healthy population in all three. Is this crazy? Well, we are dealing with an alternative investment. There are a slew of terrible things that can kill your investment. These are physical products that you have to store and manage.

[00:14:07]Keeping all that cardboard in good shape takes some time and effort. We've already started to move a great deal of money into our positions, and we plan on sharing our wins and losses throughout the journey. I'm excited to share our journey, diving into the investment side of this hobby, and I can't wait to show you the research and analysis we've done so far. My friend John, who is a data analysist, has been working with me to create a guide that covers the foundation of Poke Investing. He's been the lead analyst for multi-million dollar budget projects in the healthcare industry, and he's bringing his expertise to analyze the card market every week. The investing guide series we are creating is meant to provide foundational knowledge on the TCG such as the cause behind price changes and movements. How to identify investable slabs and singles. Eventually, we'll cover more advanced topics such as how a set's unique mechanics such as master balls or god packs can influence its growth. If that's of interest to you, you can find the video to the starter of our investment guide here. If you don't see it, that simply means we haven't uploaded it yet. Be sure to subscribe so you can get notified when that or our other videos get published. If you have questions, reach out or put them in the comment section below. I may turn your question into a video, so please let me know what you'd like to see next.

[00:15:34]Starting this investing journey took me quite some time. This dream seemed very big and intimidating, but I've learned the importance of taking things one step at a time. Things are usually built on small, consistent actions. Life is a marathon, and the key to growth is consistency. So, keep believing in yourself and the journey you're taking.

[00:15:57]I hope you enjoyed watching this small slice of my life. Thanks for watching and I'll see you next