Why Pokémon Cards Could Go to Zero

Added: 2026-05-26

[00:00:00]One of the biggest questions that my friends ask when I talk about Pokémon is, [music] "Isn't it all just shiny cardboard? Is it actually worth anything? Could it all just become worthless one day?" Normally, I just laugh that off because you and I both know that there's a lot of value in Pokémon cards. But, the more I thought about it, the more I think it's a question that's worth exploring, especially if you have a decent amount of money in Pokémon cards or if you're holding things like sealed products for a long period of time expecting to get a large return on your investment. Because at the end of the day, Pokémon cards only have value because we collectively believe that they have value. So, what would need to happen for that belief to break? Could Pokémon cards realistically become worthless? And if they could, what would cause it? In this video, I'm going to take you through four key reasons why I think Pokémon cards could become worthless. At the end of the video, we're going to compare all four of these reasons and think about whether or not we actually think Pokémon cards are going to become worthless and what all of this means for your longer-term holds in Pokémon cards or Pokémon sealed products.

[00:01:03]>> [music] >> While we go through this video, I'd also be really keen for you to share in the comments ways that you think Pokémon cards could go to zero or also tell me why I'm wrong about how they definitely won't go to zero. Keen for your thoughts. I feel like this is a good question for the responsible investor to consider when they're thinking about Pokémon cards and their Pokémon collection because there's a lot of hype in Pokémon cards. You can get really caught up in the wave of that hype and forget to reconsider what are the downside risks. It's not necessarily a very fun question to ask yourself, but it's definitely, I think, one that the responsible collector should ask themselves. Now, a lot of people will collect Pokémon cards with completely no regard for the value of the cards and that is A-OK. That's great. That's fantastic. You're collecting >> [music] >> in the way that you should do, really.

[00:01:49]However, a lot of people do collect for the love of the cards, but also for the value side of it as well.

[00:01:54]>> [music] >> And if that's you, hopefully you find this video helpful in considering the downside risks of investing a lot of money in what is effectively just shiny cardboard.

[00:02:03]Okay, so the first reason why I think Pokémon cards could become worthless is counterfeit cards. As more and more money goes into the Pokémon economy, and as cards become more and more valuable, the incentive for bad actors to replicate and create counterfeits of cards goes up. And as Pokémon cards become more valuable, the upside of investing in technology that can replicate and counterfeit cards very accurately goes up. In other words, if there is a big prize of creating counterfeit cards, then people are more likely to spend more money in investing in the technology to develop counterfeit cards that are more convincing than counterfeit cards are today. Obviously, in the Pokémon community, we've all seen counterfeit cards. A lot of them are very easy to spot if you know what you're looking for, and some of them are easy to spot even if you don't know what you're looking for. But as the value of Pokémon cards goes up, the amount that people are willing to invest in technology to replicate cards goes up as well. And the differences between counterfeit and real cards becomes much, much more difficult to see. That means that people will find it really difficult to know if their first edition Charizard really is a first edition Charizard, or if it's just a really good fake. That means that the whole economy and premise of Pokémon can completely come crumbling down. Cuz people won't know what's a real card, what's a fake card, and therefore won't be confident in spending a large amount of money on something that could well be fake.

[00:03:35]People just completely stop trusting what they're buying. Now, today you have like PSA authentication services, and there are often giveaways of what is a fake card, and you can find those online, etc. But if the counterfeits become so real that it's almost impossible to see the difference between the real and the fake card, everything just unravels so quickly. Imagine hypothetically there's 10,000 shadowless first edition Charizards. A counterfeit producer comes along and prints a million first edition Charizards that look exactly the same. All the tails are the same. They have randomized holo foils. They've invested a huge amount of money in making sure that these Charizards that they create look exactly like the originals. That means that the original 10,000 shadowless Charizards that were actually real become indistinguishable from the fakes.

[00:04:29]Therefore, how is someone meant to know that that is the original Charizard?

[00:04:33]Therefore, the value of those 10,000 Charizards comes plummeting down.

[00:04:37]This is obviously just one example. It's with the most sought-after Pokémon card in the world. Uh it doesn't have to be that card. It could be many others, but you understand the premise. There are things that Pokémon Inc. can do for future printed cards to increase the authentication elements of them. Almost like how passports have really interesting like infrared authentication quality checks in them. You could also have some sort of like RFID that authenticates the card. But for historic cards that have already been printed, it's really difficult for Pokémon Inc.

[00:05:07]to ensure that those original cards are actually the originals if the technology becomes excellent at replicating them.

[00:05:14]So, I think this is a really real risk and something that could completely undermine the entire Pokémon economy.

[00:05:21]And I think a pretty viable way that Pokémon cards could at some point go to zero.

[00:05:27]Keen for your thoughts in the comments, so let me know. Okay, so that was the first reason why I think Pokémon cards could go to zero. The second one is Pokémon reprinting existing cards without being able to tell the difference between the old and the new cards.

[00:05:42]Pokémon Inc. is a private company.

[00:05:44]Private companies like Pokémon can do really whatever they want. If you're a private company, you're a private actor.

[00:05:51]You're not necessarily guided by democracy. You're not guided necessarily by government. You can choose to do whatever you want with your product. One thing that keeps Pokémon cards valuable is limited print runs. As an example, what Pokémon do right now is for the 25th anniversary and for the 30th anniversary, Pokémon print cards that are replicas of previous cards, historically important cards, and they put a little stamp on it that says 25th anniversary or 30th anniversary. That means that these super famous and iconic cards become really cheap and usable for different people. Everyone can have a copy of that card in their binder, but it does say that it's the 25th celebration or 30th celebration. So, you know it's not the original card. That means that the original card maintains its value, while the newer card is much cheaper. However, Pokémon don't need to put that stamp on the card. Yes, they do today because they want to maintain the value of the older cards. However, if they felt like for whatever reason the Pokémon economy was getting out of hand or they wanted to reduce the value of some old historic cards, then they could just reprint them with the same serial codes, the old trademark on them, no stamp to confirm that it's a reprint.

[00:06:59]That is within their power to do.

[00:07:01]They're a private company. No one controls them but themselves. They can do that if they want. Equally, you'll see, for example, Evolving Skies booster packs are really expensive now because they finished their print run. Have done for many years. People open the packs, the supply of the packs goes down, the price goes up. However, Pokémon Inc., if they wanted to tomorrow, could decide that they want to release more Evolving Skies booster packs because they want more people to get access to the cards, for example. If they don't confirm that this is a completely different print run of Evolving Skies, then the value of the Evolving Skies booster packs that people have been collecting and investing over a long period of time completely diminishes. And Pokémon Inc. just able to do that if they want. They might also have a lot of the cards from this era or a lot of these booster packs somewhere in some sort of storage unit that they want to then just distribute. I know that's unlikely, but again, they're a private company, no one controls them.

[00:07:53]They could do that if they wanted to, hypothetically. So, I think that's a risk that's worth thinking about. It feels silly now because Pokémon do do the 25th celebration stamp, they don't do print re-runs, but if their philosophy changes, if they think for whatever reason that the Pokémon world has gotten out of control and they want to change what it's all about, they want everyone to have, I don't know, Moonbreon, then they could change their mind on how they approach these things and that could completely undermine the value of the cards. So, as unlikely as it may seem, that's something I think is worth considering. There have been examples in the past where Pokémon have released cards in some sort of promo capacity and it's felt like the card was going to be really scarce, the price of that card went up and subsequently Pokémon flooded the market with these cards that were really accessible to get. I think, for example, this happened to the Pikachu on the ball promo where initially it was super scarce, then after a while Pokémon just released loads of them to the market. It's a slightly different point that I'm making, but it's that same mechanic of apparent scarcity, but then Pokémon deciding they just want to flood the market with a card and therefore the price coming tumbling down.

[00:08:59]Okay, now the third potential reason why Pokémon cards could potentially go to zero is some sort of major fraud scandal. And this could be within Pokémon Inc. It could be, for example, within PSA. It could be with staff that work for Pokémon. It could actually be quite a number of different things, but the key thing is it would be something that would completely undermine trust in the production of the cards or the real value of the cards. For example, what if there was a staff member or a group of staff members at PSA who essentially graded his friends' cards that they knew got sent to PSA, they had the certification number, and the friend was able to track down that order within PSA, and that PSA staff member gave every single card that that person submitted to PSA a 10. Seems a bit far-fetched, but as I said earlier, the more money that is in the Pokémon economy, the more risks that people are willing to take, the more lengths that people will go to in order to make money. What if also there were staff members at Pokémon Inc. that were somehow taking cards out of circulation and keeping them for themselves. For example, what if there's a massive sheet of Mega Charizard EX 125s, and a staff member or group of staff members somehow managed to keep back a box of those cards? For cards that are rare, that can be a huge shock to the market. It can therefore drastically reduce the value of that card on a very kind of short-term basis once those cards do hit the market. And if news broke about the fact that staff members had been doing that, then that would completely distort what people thought the value of a card should be. If they see a card become scarce, the price go up, they might assume that a staff member within Pokémon Inc. is taking cards out of circulation. Therefore, that value attached to that card isn't relied upon.

[00:10:49]People don't trust the number.

[00:10:51]Therefore, people buy it less, the price decreases. This can waterfall onto a lot of different cards in the market and the whole Pokémon economy essentially reduces. Collectors need to know that pull rates are real, that gem rates are real, and that the economy is controlled properly. Without those facts and without robust data behind the market, then the entire structure of the economy just becomes undermined. People lose trust. People are less likely to put their money into something that they don't actually really believe is robust, and consumers therefore look elsewhere and bring the value of the Pokémon economy way down.

[00:11:26]Okay, and the last reason why I think Pokémon cards could go to zero is that people just move on.

[00:11:34]This one is quite a basic argument. It's not something that looks very likely right now. It's not necessarily something that I really believe will ever happen, and certainly not to the extent that Pokémon cards would become worthless, but stranger things have happened, and it could well be that some other new shiny collectible economy emerges that is much more attractive to people for whatever reason. Maybe it's a combination with some of the things that we spoke about already in this video, and it leads to consumers just looking elsewhere beyond Pokémon to scratch this collectibles itch. You don't know what new franchise is going to emerge. You don't know what role technology will play in what collectibles look like in the future. The entire TCG market can become completely usurped with a new product overnight. And if it draws a significant number of people away from the hobby, then certain cards could just come plummeting down. It can trigger a bear market. It can trigger sell-offs as people panic. And also, if the hype of another collectible increases so much, people would continue to sell off their Pokémon in order to put their money into the other collectible. And then you get this complete recessionary snowball within the Pokémon economy that just plummets so many prices of cards. Or there's some sort of recession in the global economy that means that everyone needs to sell all their Pokémon cards in order to have actual real cash to survive in the real economy. All of these reasons why people can just move on from buying Pokémon cards and keeping these collections.

[00:13:00]Now, again, do I think that this fourth point is actually realistic? I personally don't really think so, and that's because there's a lot of advertising that you see with a Pokémon for the younger generations today.

[00:13:11]There's an enormous amount of nostalgia as well as that new generation coming in, and I think therefore a pure kind of like demand argument for Pokémon, I think it's quite weak in terms of crashing the whole price of the market.

[00:13:24]But, you never know with these things, especially when a competitor collectible could come into the space and completely take everyone's attention. What that collectible would look like, I don't know, but we're very good inventors, technology moves very fast, who knows where we might be in 5, 10, 20 years time.

[00:13:41]Okay, so that's my four potential ways that Pokémon could theoretically become worthless. Now, do I think that Pokémon cards could actually become worthless?

[00:13:53]I think fundamentally, the only way that Pokémon cards could become worthless is if Pokémon Inc. want them to become worthless. The reason why I say that is if Pokémon Inc. wants to continue to be a profit-seeking private company, they will do what they need to do to protect the value of the cards. For example, they will make sure that counterfeit cards cannot be distributed to the market, they will make sure that original cards always remain identifiable as the original cards, and they will continue to market themselves and maintain their foothold in the TCG market. All of those things would keep the Pokémon market up and robust and stop it from free-falling.

[00:14:35]However, if Pokémon Inc. decided that the way that they saw Pokémon going, as in it's looking more and more like an investment class, it's bringing the wrong sort of people to the hobby, they just want to bring joy to children and collectors and give them access to all the cards that they might want, maybe they want to emphasize more on the actual playing of the game and therefore they want to distribute all cards to everyone. If they have that fundamental philosophy change that isn't necessarily profit-seeking and value-maintaining, that's when I think that the Pokémon economy could really crumble. And that is a real risk, but how often do you see companies actually completely turn around and say, "We don't really actually want profit, we're willing to let all of that go because of this particular principle that we have."

[00:15:22]You don't see it very often. Yes, there are examples such as like Patagonia, for example, but they are very rare, very few and far between. And I also think Pokémon Inc. might have a bit of a duty to maintain the value of the Pokémon cards that are out there in circulation today because they know that a lot of their collector base has a lot of money in Pokémon cards, and this could significantly disrupt their own personal finances. So, I can't imagine Pokémon Inc. pulling the rug on Pokémon cards anytime soon.

[00:15:50]But my final thought is this.

[00:15:52]If Pokémon cards did become worthless, would that actually be such a bad thing?

[00:15:58]Where you see the hobby going at the moment is you have a lot of interest coming from people that aren't necessarily in the hobby to collect the cards. They're in the hobby to make money. That means that real collectors can't necessarily access the cards that they want for their collections to enjoy in the purest form. It means you get more and more bad actors generally in the hobby, more stealing, more violence, more general pressure and negativity within the market as people are looking to make a buck. So, therefore, if all the money came out of the economy, would the actual collector base probably be happier?

[00:16:33]Maybe.

[00:16:34]Collectors in 2026 often hark back to the days before the Pokémon booms through COVID and remember how cheap and accessible cards felt at that time. And maybe that isn't actually such a bad thing to aim for in the future for Pokémon. Aside from the fact that quite a lot of collectors might lose quite a lot of value on their way to getting there.

[00:16:54]So, I hope you found this video interesting. I hope it's made you think about your Pokémon collection a little bit differently. And I hope it's made you consider what the potential risk could be of Pokémon cards reducing quite significantly. It's not necessarily a fun conversation to have, but I think it's one that is definitely worth doing if you're a responsible collector. I'd be so interested to hear your thoughts in the comments as well. I'm sure there's other reasons why Pokémon cards could go to zero that I haven't thought about. And I'm also sure there's very good reasons why they can't go to zero, which I'm sure you guys can tell me about in the comments. Thank you so much for watching. As always, thank you for your continued support on the videos.

[00:17:28]You guys are seriously the best. Look forward to seeing you in the next one.

[00:17:31]Until then, peace.