Pokémon trading cards are their own economy

The Pokémon Trading Card Game isn't just a game, it's an economy. Livestreamers provide vicarious dopamine hits to viewers who tune in to watch them open booster packs, and the rarest cards can resell for hundreds or even thousands of dollars. The game's 30th anniversary collection just launched, putting more copies of the game's rarest cards back into circulation. Guest host David Imel talks about the state of the Pokémon TCG market with The Verge's film, TV and pop culture reporter Charles Pulliam-Moore. Further reading: OpenAI launches Dots Nothing Headphone 1 Pro Your new Chromebook won’t get 10 years of ChromeOS support — because support now ends 2034. Pokémon card scalpers have turned collecting into an online blood sport Subscribe to The Verge for unlimited access to theverge.com, subscriber-exclusive newsletters, and our ad-free podcast feed. We love hearing from you! Email your questions and thoughts to [email protected] or call us at 866-VERGE11. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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• 1:46David Pierce?

  Welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of the Pokémon Trading Card Game. I'm David Amell. In the last couple of years, Pokémon cards have gone from a fun, collectible card game to an entire market. There's a massive ecosystem taking place here, from casual collectors to players to bulk buyers and even Discord bot servers. The Pokémon Company recently released a 30th Anniversary Celebration Set of the cards, which was notably different from the way that other sets have been released, both in just the sheer volume flooding the market and in the rarity of these cards. This has caused a lot of drama and sparked a lot of conversations in the community, so I wanted to bring on The Verge's Charles Pulliam-Moore to talk about it. But first, here's what's happening on The Verge today.

• 2:31David Pierce?

  This is 90 Seconds on The Verge for Tuesday, September 29th, 2026. Today's OpenAI Dev Day, one of the biggest events of the year for the company. And it kicked it off by announcing Dots, a Meta Muse competitor. OpenAI says that Dots is an always-on AI assistant that can do nearly anything across connected apps in the background while learning your preferences over time. Dots is powered by GPT-6 Astra and lives in a cloud computer, which gives it access to a web browser and over 4,000 supported apps. Dots will also be available in Microsoft Teams and Slack. OpenAI says soon you'll be able to interact with it over text messages as well. Next, Nothing announced its first pair of professional headphones, the Nothing Headphone 1 Pro. The $399 pair of overear headphones

• 3:16David Pierce?

  offers a triple-driver design, Aurocast support, and a dedicated flat EQ switch, which removes the audio processing. The goal here is to offer a single pair of headphones that you can use to enjoy your music as well as a profile you can use to mix your music with. John Higgins says that the active noise cancellation's not quite as good as the industry leaders, but it is the best of any Nothing headphones so far. And finally, Google officially confirmed it will stop updating Chrome OS in 2034. On the one hand, it's not that big of a surprise as the company shifts its attention to Google Book OS. But on the other hand, it means that if you bought a Chromebook this year, you probably won't be getting those 10 years of software updates. Or maybe your Chromebook will just turn into a Google Book? Google has said that many Chromebooks

• 3:59David Pierce?

  will be capable of upgrading to Google Book OS, so hopefully more details emerge before 2034. You can read more at theverge.com. That's 90 Seconds on The Verge for Tuesday, September 29th, 2026.

• 4:14Speaker 00

  Support for the show comes from Amazon Prime. I know what you're thinking. It feels like you've blinked and suddenly it's October. Before you start asking yourself where the year went, ask yourself if you're ready for the holidays. If the answer isn't a confident yes, don't sweat it. Prime Big Deal Days is here. And that means two days of epic deals with new deals every day. October 6th and 7th only, Prime members can save on home decor, fitness gear, electronics, toys, and so much more. You can get something for everyone on your list and maybe something special for yourself, too. And it's all happening with plenty of lead time into the holidays. So no more scrambling to come up with something last minute. The hardest part will be finding a good hiding place for it all.

• 4:58Speaker 00

  Sometimes the best gifts are the ones you just give, well, because. I'm constantly inspired by the people around me, and when I see something that reminds me of someone, I love being able just to get it for them, whether I'm planning a gift weeks in advance or I just suddenly think of something at the last minute. Prime makes it easier to find something that feels right and get it when I need it. Prime Big Deal Days is here. Shop deals now.

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• 6:41David Pierce?

  Charles Pulliam-Moore, welcome to The Vergecast.

• 6:43Speaker 03

  Hello, hello. Thank you so much for having me here.

• 6:47David Pierce?

  So you just wrote a story on the site about the state of the Pokémon scalping ecosystem and what's happening with this 30th Anniversary Set. Just to set the stage here, can you explain why Pokémon cards in particular are such an insane commodity right now? I feel like I could buy these when I was a kid, but the last couple of years, it's just exploded into like its own ecosystem.

• 7:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, you know, you bringing up you being able to buy them when you were a kid, that's part of it, right? I'm not sure how old you are exactly, but I imagine we were both there for the beginning of Pokémon. What's happening right now is kind of sort of similar to what happened when the cards first like hit the streets. There were all like, there was all kinds of news coverage about how popular the game was and how like cards were just out of stock. Back in the 90s, people were not so sophisticated in terms of their, uh, their pursual of these things, right? It was just kind of like, all right, you're going to go to your Toys R Us or Acady Toys and see what happens to be in stock, and you just make do with what you've got.

• 7:52Speaker 03

  But now in 2026, the Pokémon brand hasn't gone away, right? Like, it has only gotten bigger and sort of more popular over the years. And that has translated into an intense focus on the cards, right? And in 2026 in particular, in this moment in which like hustle culture has sort of evolved into this beast of a thing where everyone's sort of like looking for quick ways to make money and then encourage other people how to do it. Pokémon sort of represents like an ideal kind of commodity to sort of like pounce on to. I feel like every, every other month we're hearing our story about like, oh, uh, these, these cards from the base set just sold for an exorbitant amount of money. That makes absolutely no sense.

• 8:37Speaker 03

  And some of that is because, you know, people have nostalgia for the cards, but it's also sort of the, the, the card collecting has kind of taken on a life of its own that is fascinating and distressing all at the same time.

• 8:52David Pierce?

  Yeah, just to sort of brief people on this, do you know why these decided to randomly take off? When exactly did these start taking off? Because I feel like it was around 2020 or so, but I could be mistaken here.

• 9:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, um, I mean, Pokémon has, again, Pokémon's always been popular. It's always like, shades of this have always sort of been present within the Pokémon fandom and within the Pokémon card collecting community. But I do think that the pandemic really made things worse for a number of reasons and in a number of different ways, right? In the pandemic, people were at home and everyone was just on their computers because they couldn't go anywhere. And Pokémon's an easy way to grab attention, right? Whether it be, oh, I have some cards here and I'm going to open them on camera or like, I'm going to show you the, the, the kinds of unexpected places that you might be able to buy Pokémon cards. That all really got big at a point in time when everyone's attention was much more on the internet

• 9:48Speaker 03

  because they just weren't outside. And now, you know, things that the pandemic, it's not over, but it's, you know, lockdowns are obviously relaxed. We're able to go outside. But this intensity has sort of not gone away. It's just sort of intensified over time. And now... With the rise of platforms like, like, I don't like, the rise of platforms like TikTok has kind of exacerbated it just because there are more avenues through which people can consume this kind of content.

• 10:18David Pierce?

  Yeah. So you're saying that there's sort of like a new market for this content's consumption, which is driving people to actually go and make it.

• 10:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. Like Pokemon's always been here. I feel like, you know, uh, social media in 2026 has given Pokemon a new level of brand exposure to people, right? There are just more people who are aware, like, oh, those games are still going on. Oh, the card game is still like a thing. I remember being in New York in like 2017 and like walking through a Target and you just walk by the card selection or the card section and there would just be stacks and stacks and stacks of Pokemon cards. You could just buy them very casually, which wasn't indicative of them not being popular, but it was more that the community of people who were focused on it was much smaller. And now it feels like more people are much more aware of the fact that like, yeah, certain Pokemon cards can be very valuable.

• 11:10Speaker 03

  There are people who are willing to spend quite a bit of money for them. And in that realization, people like, ooh, I could also make some money off of this. And so people have just really kind of pounced on it. A lot of what we're seeing with Pokemon right now, it's not new. Um, right. This is, this is, this is like sneaker heads now. Like this is just how it's always been. Not always, but it's sneakers have been, they've existed in this kind of space for a much longer time where people are willing to line up out front of, uh, out front of stores for hours on end, just to get like a pair of Jordans that they are maybe gonna wear, maybe gonna wear once or twice before they flip them to someone else. Um, sneakers, there are all kinds of like difficulties with selling

• 11:53Speaker 03

  sneakers, right? Like people don't have the same size feet. So it's like, all right, like I've got like this shoe in a size eight. So maybe, you know, I can, I can flip that. But with Pokemon cards, it's just kind of like, it's just the card, right? Um, there, we don't have to get into the whole like ecosystem of like grading and stuff, because that's its own kind of thing.

• 12:12David Pierce?

  Probably it's on Vergecast, yeah.

• 12:14Speaker 03

  Yeah. But it's like, oh, you pull, you know, this Lugia card and you know that like it's worth a few hundred dollars. And so the goal is to like buy up as much product as you can, maybe pull that card, flip it, or you sell that product, um, with the intention being like you are looking to get this into the hands of people who are trying to like chase that thing.

• 12:36David Pierce?

  Yeah, I want to get into that because I think we've all seen a lot of people taking videos of Target store openings, right? It'll be like 7:00 AM or 8:00 AM. There's a line of people outside of a Target. They're rushing in, trying to grab as much product as they can. What's the deal with that? Are they like just reselling as many cards as they can in unopened? Or are they ripping them open and then trying to sell the rare cards? What's generally happening there?

• 13:02Speaker 03

  It varies. Um, I've gone to a couple of these, like, I want to call it like a lineup event. Like I've, I've been standing out in front of a Best Buy, you know, before it opens, uh, just to get my hands on some cards. Cause it's almost impossible to buy them online at this point. Uh, it's, it's brick and mortar stores tend to be sort of like your best bet to like get something and, uh, just having conversations with those peoples. It's a multitude of different types of folks who are doing this. Some of them are, um, scalpers, resellers. Uh, some of them are just like casual fans like myself. Um, I've got a huge collection and I just, you know, I, I, I have them to, to look at them. You know, I'm not a competitive player or anything. Um, it, it's, it's a mix, right?

• 13:47Speaker 03

  Uh, I, I think weirdly enough, the let's line up in front of a store of it all. Where does that come from? Some of it is like sneaker head culture, but like a lot of it, I feel like got popularized by Apple, right? Like with iPhone launches, like I don't think people, uh, Apple's gotten better about, um, making sure that they have adequate stock to deal with, you know, the people who actually want to get the phone. But in those early days, it was a thing that people did for fun. It's like, I'm going to be, I'm, we're gonna camp outside of the Apple store to get the thing. That was the, the Apple of it all. That felt very much sort of like, uh, an event of sorts, right? It was something

• 14:30Speaker 03

  that people treated like a fun thing to do. Whereas with Pokemon cards, it's more sort of like get there early, get your stuff, go home and do with it what you will.

• 14:38David Pierce?

  Mm hmm. Yeah. Well, a lot of these people are basically scalping these cards, right? So I want to, I want to talk about the scalper ecosystem a little bit here.

• 14:46Speaker 03

  Talk about them.

• 14:47David Pierce?

  In your piece, uh, you sort of mentioned that there are these Discord channels that you can pay for that will give you access to scalping bots that can basically automatically buy a ton of different packs online as soon as they release. Can you talk a little bit more about that ecosystem and how that's evolved over time?

• 15:04Speaker 03

  Yeah. So like I mentioned earlier, um, buying things online is very difficult. Uh, in large part because the reseller economy has sort of adopted these tools that make it easy for them to accumulate product like in bulk in a way that like your average person can. So when you hear people talking about bots, what they're talking about are automated programs that basically, how to put this, they brute force their way, uh, through sales where it's sort of like the bot will continuously try to, uh, add something to a cart and then check out. Um, they are programmed to have access to your credit card, uh, which is

• 15:47Speaker 03

  usually, how to put this, they usually use virtual credit cards. So you come up with like a fake credit card number that's actually attached to a real credit card. That fake credit card is attached to a fake account. Um, because a lot of these retailers, what they do is, um, they do take some, uh, steps to prevent this kind of behavior. Like if they see too many orders coming from a certain IP address or from a singular account, they'll be like, nah, you clearly aren't a person who's just buying this for yourself. You are trying to accumulate stuff. But what these bots do is they make it really easy for you to pretend that you are multiple people, um, and sort of source all of this to yourself. Um, and so these resellers frequently use these tools in order to buy up all of

• 16:32Speaker 03

  this stuff. Uh, in addition to those tools, they will commonly congregate in Discord servers where they have automated pings that are designed to let you know when like, uh, a certain product has been loaded into a store's backend. Target is known for doing drops at like three in the morning for whatever reason. And if you are interested in this kind of stuff, you find a couple of these discords, they're like buzzing around like, like 12 to 2:30, people are just like chomping at the bit, foaming at the mouth, ready to like pounce, pounce, pounce, pounce, pounce. Notifications go off, they activate their bots and they will just secure multiple orders in order to get this stuff for themselves.

• 17:12Speaker 03

  After they acquire it, um, oftentimes the sites will cancel some of their orders, but usually the more of these things that you're using, you are upping your chances of getting a successful sale. After they acquire it, they usually end up flipping it, um, to a number of different kinds of people. Sometimes it's to individual people. Um, it'll be, you know, a collector who missed out on like a site's, uh, sale. And so they'll come to one of these resellers, knowing that they're going to have to pay, you know, anywhere between double to triple the price, like the MSRP. Um, but oftentimes these resellers go and sell things to card shops. They sell to card shops or, uh, they will take them

• 17:56Speaker 03

  to card, uh, shows, all with the intention of like offloading it for much, much more. It's never, they're never trying to break even. It's always about trying to make a profit, which means that all the prices are ridiculous. Um, and it's just kind of, just kind of makes the whole, the whole collecting hobby very not great.

• 18:18David Pierce?

  Right. So there's multiple middlemen here, right? There's the Discord servers that are selling access to the bots. There's the people buying them. There's people reselling them. There's different types of resale. There's individual cards. There's whole sets.

• 18:30Speaker 03

  Yeah. And the thing that's fascinating about the discords, you know, I get into this into the piece. Um, the people who are in these discords are obviously interested in reselling. Like that is a particular kind of like money that they are trying to make. But the people running the discords, um, will often, uh, they treat it like a subscription service where it's like, uh, if you pay us, you know, $75 a month or $600 a year, we will give you access to all of these tools. We'll teach you how to do it, right? So the people running the discords, the Discord in and of itself is a business, right? Like that is a, a revenue generator for them.

• 19:05David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 19:06Speaker 03

  Which is fascinating. Um, I think that's, that's, that's like, oh, well done. But also like, oh my God, you guys, this is.

• 19:13David Pierce?

  Another middleman.

• 19:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 19:17Speaker 04

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• 19:47Speaker 00

  Support for the show comes from Amazon Prime. I know what you're thinking. It feels like you've blinked and suddenly it's October. Before you start asking yourself where the year went, ask yourself if you're ready for the holidays. If the answer isn't a confident yes, don't sweat it. Prime Big Deal Days is here. And that means two days of epic deals with new deals every day. October 6th and 7th only, Prime members can save on home decor, fitness gear, electronics, toys, and so much more. You can get something for everyone on your list and maybe something special for yourself too. And it's all happening with plenty of lead time into the holidays. So no more scrambling to come up with something last minute. The hardest part will be finding a good hiding place for it all.

• 20:31Speaker 00

  Sometimes the best gifts are the ones you just give, well, because I'm constantly inspired by the people around me. And when I see something that reminds me of someone, I love being able just to get it for them. Whether I'm planning a gift weeks in advance, or I just suddenly think of something at the last minute. Prime makes it easier to find something that feels right and get it when I need it. Prime Big Deal Days is here. Shop deals now.

• 21:01David Pierce?

  I want to get into this 30th anniversary set that just dropped recently. It seems a little bit notably different from the way the other sets have gone. You know, other sets, it's like, there's all these unique cards and they haven't been printed before. But now there is all these sort of original cards that are being reprinted for 30th anniversary. As well, it seems that there are just a lot more cards being printed in general, right?

• 21:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:25David Pierce?

  What is the drama going on with this 30th anniversary set?

• 21:28Speaker 03

  So the 30th anniversary drama is... So there have been anniversary sets before. I wrote about this back in whatever five years ago was for the 20th. The 20th, for the 25th set. Where the big chases were Charizard is always a chase regardless of whether it's original or like a new one. But they reprinted the Charizard, Venusaur and Blastoise cards from that base set. And everyone was like, oh, my goodness, like Charizard is one of the... Charizard is consistently one of those cards that, you know, auctions off for crazy amounts of money. And so people were really sort of dead set on trying to get their hands on the 25th set. Charizard is that same Charizard card is once again back in this new set.

• 22:13Speaker 03

  What is different about this? More so than anything else, it does feel like the culture that exists around it is the thing that's really changed, right? Because while the 25th anniversary set was still a little hard to get your hands on, you could still just walk into a store and find it pretty easily. You might have to check a few stores, but it would usually be there. What's different now, it just feels like this reselling economy has really just blown up in a way that has made shortages feel huge to people. The Pokemon Company has tried to take steps to mitigate this, right? Because it's not, this is not unique to the 30th celebration set.

• 22:53Speaker 03

  30th Celebration, I think, gets into a lot of people's heads because they're not necessarily following it very closely. Every Pokemon set that drops has had shortages like this because of the reselling economy. Pokemon Company, what have they done? They have instituted all kinds of onsite measures to try to keep you, to try to keep resellers from being able to get through. They've got this queue system that's really, there's a queue system and there is a really aggressive, are you a robot? Sort of system that like, I can't buy cards from the Pokemon Center on my home computer because my IP address has been flagged as like, there was suspicious behavior. The suspicious behavior was me refreshing a lot.

• 23:34David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 23:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, right. But in addition to the things that they've done on the website, the Pokemon Company has also upped production for these things. I think this is the second year in a row that they've printed something like 10 billion cards globally. And that's, you know, cards in multiple languages. These are, we're not just specifically speaking about cards printed in English that are printed in English speaking countries, like everywhere that Pokemon cards are sold. I don't necessarily know that the reselling problem is so huge in other countries, but the company has sensed that this is so much of a problem that we need to be printing more. Even with that increased capacity though, we're still seeing this being an issue, which is...

• 24:22Speaker 03

  It's tough, right? Obviously, I imagine that the Pokemon Company does not like this, being attached to their product, right? I'm sure they love the sales, right? Because at the end of the day, they win, the product is bought. It's not being stolen per se, and so they're just sort of like, great. But it isn't a good look when a game, a card game that is aimed at children, is inaccessible to children because of unethically behaving adults.

• 24:54David Pierce?

  Yeah, I was gonna ask you about this because a lot of people would make the argument, including a lot of these scalpers, that they're actually doing Nintendo a favor by making sure that they sell out of every single card that they print, right? It's a function of supply and demand. And if you have limited supply, there will always be demand. And so what do you think of those claims that people are making? Obviously, the scalpers are gonna say this because they just want to keep scalping.

• 25:19Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 25:19David Pierce?

  But what incentive really does Nintendo have to make more cards besides the, the look of it not getting into the hands of enough kids?

• 25:29Speaker 03

  I mean, I think the more that they increase production, the more sales there are going to be. I don't know how much the Pokemon Company would have to be printing in order to fully stamp this problem out, right? There are, there are a few different solutions that they could take to try to address the issue. Printing more rare cards is the easiest, right? Like you flood the market with these things and then they're value tanks, right?

• 25:52David Pierce?

  Yeah. People... Is it good for Nintendo or bad for Nintendo for value tanks?

• 25:56Speaker 03

  I don't think, I think it's neutral for Nintendo, right? Because the value of a card doesn't really have any direct impact on Nintendo's bottom line. They're just sort of like, thank you so much for buying this pack of cards. The contents don't really mean all that much to us because we have your money.

• 26:13David Pierce?

  But you could note that like, if people are chasing a certain rarity of a card, then they're gonna be more willing to buy more cards, right?

• 26:20Speaker 03

  I think that's true, that's true to a point. As much as people sort of fixate on the idea like, I'm the only one that has this. I don't think that cards dropping in rarity would actually stop people from buying Pokemon cards en masse. Yeah. Just because they're, they're, they're cool. You know, the resellers feel like, we're doing you a favor. Baby, I want to hold your hand when I say this. Pokemon doesn't need help.

• 26:49Speaker 03

  They are, they are, they are one of the most durable and popular pieces of IP of all time. And, you know, your Discord, it's, it's, yes, it's contributing, but the, the business would be flourishing without that input.

• 27:08David Pierce?

  Right, right. There's a couple of weird new types of businesses that have popped up around this. And you noted earlier that this probably started with like TikTok Live and TikTok Shop. There's services like Whatnot where people will, they will open Pokemon cards for customers that bought the pack live on like a live stream. Can you tell me about this? What exactly is the draw here?

• 27:32Speaker 03

  So Whatnot is, how was I describing it to my boyfriend earlier? Whatnot is like the unholy cross between TikTok, eBay and QVC, right? All rolled into one where it's sort of like, hey, come watch me open stuff. You can pay for a certain amount of the stuff that I open. So the way that Ripper, it's called like ribbon ship. That's the, that's the, the general term for it. People will buy a box of Pokemon cards and usually organize them into like little sections unopened, where it's like, here's columns one, two and three. You, the viewer, have the ability to purchase a certain amount of cards.

• 28:12Speaker 03

  So you can be like, I want two packs from row A or row one, three packs from, you know what I mean? You can do that. And then the person who was hosting the live stream will then rip them open with the idea being that everyone who is watching is sort of like getting in on the dopamine hit of like, ooh, you're opening some packs, what's gonna come out? And the person who has purchased or purchased the dibs or the rights to that pack then is supposed to receive the cards that are ripped on stream. So the person who has been paid is meant to ship these things out.

• 28:44Speaker 03

  I don't love it. I think it's very, what are we doing here? But it's a thing that people do.

• 28:51Speaker 03

  And as scummy as it sounds, it gets even scummer when you watch it. In particular, because there are, I get into this in the piece, there are so many videos of people on these live streams clearly just like trying to scam people. They'll be ripping a card and they will see, because if you open a pack of Pokemon cards, if you aren't careful, you can give yourself a little peek at what the rare card is in the back. They usually occupy a specific slot within the pack. There's a, I can't do it myself, but there's a way that when you open a pack, you can shuffle the cards around so that the rare card is like the last one. Often times, these rip and ship people, they won't do that. They'll just like, open it up and, you know, start showing you one, two, three.

• 29:36Speaker 03

  There's so many videos where you see people... Oh, that's, that's like the chase card of the set that someone has bought for like $5, right? Uh, the person on camera will then, you know, ooh, uh, and do some finagling off screen to bring the cards back and be like, oh, wow. The rare card in this pack was a not so rare card. Whoops. Um, it's very, it's ridiculous because everybody can see it. Do you know what I mean? Um, you would think that if you were, if you're really committed to scamming, you would find a better way to do this. You, you, you, you develop your sleight of hand skills a little bit so that your, your, your thievery wouldn't be so obvious. Um, but

• 30:20David Pierce?

  Do people have any recourse in this? Because I feel like if people don't trust that system, the entire marketplace falls apart.

• 30:26Speaker 03

  So whatnot, so I, I forget what the exact percentage is, but like rip and chips only make up a small percentage of all the commerce that happens on whatnot. A lot of it is more like QVC where it's like, look at my shirt. Do you want this shirt? Come buy this shirt. Um, so I don't think it's enough of a problem for the platform to fully crack down as hard as they possibly could, could on these, like on these particular kinds of scammers.

• 30:52David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 30:52Speaker 03

  Um, but it's, it's, it happens enough that I always find myself thinking, why would you do any kind of business there? Why would you?

• 31:01David Pierce?

  Sure.

• 31:02Speaker 03

  Why would you engage with the platform?

• 31:03David Pierce?

  Yeah. Do you see all of this whole like ecosystem and set of marketplaces expanding in the future? Do you see it contracting? Do you think it'll just keep sailing the way it is? It seems to have exploded quite a bit just in a few years. So I'm, I'm just curious if you think it can get even crazier than it currently is.

• 31:21Speaker 03

  I mean, it could, right? I, I, it's hard to say, like Pokemon's not going away. I don't think Pokemon is going to fall out of favor anytime soon. There's new children being born every day and quite a few of them are going to be into Pokemon. Um, will this reselling economy go away? Probably not, right? Like we are, we are hurtling towards a recession. Um, and everyone is out here sort of hurting for cash. And this for, you know, the people who choose to get into it, it is a viable way to make quite a bit of money doing minimal work, work, if that, you know what I mean? Um, so I, I, I don't imagine this going away anytime soon.

• 32:03Speaker 03

  A few of the, I reached out to a few scalpers to sort of ask them, like, what? What would it take for another franchise to sort of pop off the way Pokemon has and to sort of like supplant it in this space? And they were all sort of like, I don't know. Um, because there have been so many imitators, right? We, I, I do not think that there's ever going to be an aftermarket for Pal World cards.

• 32:26David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 32:27Speaker 03

  You know what I mean? Like that's a

• 32:28David Pierce?

  Right.

• 32:28Speaker 03

  I think Pal World cards exist. Um, but even for like more established pieces of IP like Digimon, right?

• 32:34David Pierce?

  Baseball cards.

• 32:34Speaker 03

  Or baseball cards. I don't, I don't, I know there are people who collect baseball cards. I don't know what they do with them. Um, but they, again, baseball cards are just always in the store, right? Like they are not, uh, they're not hard to come by. In order for something to sort of take on the, the, the prominence that Pokemon has, it would have to be a phenomenon like Pokemon. We're talking about the cards, but the franchise includes, you know, the games, the spinoff games, the movies, the TV show. Uh, that is the kind of full court press that's necessary to make this particular kind of product uh, an object of desire for a huge group of people.

• 33:17Speaker 03

  And without, without all of those other mechanisms in place, I think it would be really hard for another kind of product to, um, to supplant Pokemon in this position. As I say that, I'm thinking to myself, like, the kids are right now are really obsessed with squishy things. I don't know if you've seen any of those videos. Uh, there's

• 33:38David Pierce?

  No.

• 33:38Speaker 03

  I, I, it's, it's, I keep saying fascinating because I am fascinated and deeply confused by it. But, um, I don't know what they're called exactly, but they are these blind boxes that are shaped like steaming containers. And within the container is a squishy bow that has eyes and a face and

• 33:57David Pierce?

  Bow like a, a bow bun that you would eat?

• 34:00Speaker 03

  Like a, yeah, like a, like a bun or like a dumpling. And they have eyes and faces. And the only main difference is like the, the color and the, the glitteriness of them. I don't know what the kids are doing with them, but they are huge. I was in a Five Below the other day and there were signs up saying like, oh, two squishables per person. And there was a, a mother and her daughter in front of me and they both, they got into like a conversation like, well, we're two people, so give us four.

• 34:29David Pierce?

  Wow. Interesting.

• 34:31Speaker 03

  And they were like, no, no, two, two per sale. Um, and that comes and goes, I feel, right? Like I feel the last time I was attuned to, I don't have children in my life, so I'm not really always sure what's going on with the kids. But it feels similar to the way that, um, remember silly bands? They were like rubber bands that were shaped like things, like this one shaped like a dinosaur. They were huge with

• 34:52David Pierce?

  No.

• 34:54Speaker 03

  They were huge with kids for like a hot second and then they just, and they, they just sort of disappeared and

• 35:00David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 35:01Speaker 03

  I think that's, I think that's normal, right? Cause again, these are things for kids and kids get fixated on like weird little things that don't necessarily have any function or value. They're just like, I like it. I like stretching it or squishing it and it becomes, you know, the, those, those sort of, those come and go. But Pokemon, because that system that I was talking about before exists.

• 35:24David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 35:25Speaker 03

  There's, you can collect Pokemon cards, you can play with them, you can get into the competitive scene and try to get into that whole world. And if you go all the way, you can make some serious money becoming a competitive player. Or you could get into the reselling thing, right? There's all these things that you can do with Pokemon cards that I think gives people incentive to be interested in them.

• 35:45David Pierce?

  Mm hmm. So you think they have more staying power than something like a Beanie Baby or a, uh, or a Poppy flower?

• 35:51Speaker 03

  But exactly, right? Like what are you meant to do with the Beanie Baby? You look at it, you put it in a little case and you have to say, wow, this one is dedicated to Princess Diana. Wonderful.

• 36:03Speaker 03

  But it doesn't, it doesn't do much more than that. But you know, Pokemon cards have multiple, um, use case, like uses to them.

• 36:10David Pierce?

  Yeah. All right. Well, Charles, thank you so much for joining us. I really appreciate it.

• 36:14Speaker 03

  This was great.

• 36:14David Pierce?

  Everyone should go read his piece. That's it for the Vergecast. Let us know what you think. Call the hotline 866 VERGE11 or email [email protected]. And to support everything we do here and to get ad free podcasts, subscribe to The Verge. We're part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. The Vergecast is produced by Josh Kahas, Eric Gomez, Brandon Kiefer and Travis Larchuk. See you next time. Rock and roll.