When something you loved as a child turns out to be worth real money, you feel a certain kind of shock. Real money, not just spare change. The kind that changes their minds, pays off their debts, and buys homes.
Johnny Murphy knows how you feel. Murphy is a police officer who lives in Port St. Lucie, Florida. He tried hard all last year to save up for a down payment on a house. He didn’t just have $80,000 lying around. He did, however, have a collection of Pokémon cards that he had been saving up since he was four years old. They were hidden away and mostly forgotten.
He began selling them on the web. First slowly, then with more thought. One card, a PSA-10 2003 Pokémon McDonald’s Squirtle Promo, sold for about $10,000 all by itself. Murphy had raised the whole down payment by the time he was done. After 26 years of collecting as a child, the things were now worth a lot of money and were being stored while the market grew.
It’s possible that most people still think of Pokémon cards as something you can get at a gas station or put in a 10-year-old’s birthday card. That picture is from a while ago. Fortune magazine says that over the last 30 years, the value of Pokémon cards has gone up by about 3,261%. It’s not a mistake. The rise is mostly due to nostalgia among Gen Z and millennials and a growing market for collectors. This has made cardboard more like a commodity. “I bought some cards for $100, and now they’re worth over $1,000,” Murphy said. “It taught me how the market runs, and how supply and demand works.” That’s kind of funny—a police officer learning about market economics from a hobby he started before kindergarten. But that’s how collecting works sometimes. You don’t even notice the lessons coming.
In this world, not everyone is sitting on a six-figure salary. Devan Nakayama, 24, lives with his mother, grandmother, and uncle in a small apartment in Miami. He goes to flea markets and local events with two binders full of cards in his backpack. He also uses a platform called Whatnot to livestream his sales. It was a Gold Star Registeel that brought in $500 and was his biggest sale. For Nakayama, the cards are a way to remember the past and stay alive. He said, “Every card has a story.” “Every sale helps my family.” That’s not a very strong claim. The truth is that this market has changed into something else for people who knew it as a market.
George Machado, who runs Pro-Play Games in Westchester, has been there to see this change happen. A 2005 Espeon ex Unseen Forces Holo is for sale in his store right now for $3,000. People come in looking for rare chase cards from the newest sets, but old cards with Charizard, Pikachu, and Mewtwo are still very popular. More people are interested, which is good for business but also brings in fakes. Machado’s store has a strict rule: any fake cards that are found are destroyed right away. These things don’t get used again.
It seems like the bigger cultural moment is still happening here. There has always been a mix of emotion and speculation in collecting, and Pokémon is one of the few categories that really hits that spot. In the end, Murphy doesn’t care about the money at all. “It makes me feel like I’m still a kid with no worries,” he replied. “It helps me forget about the world for a bit.” He has no plans to stop getting money. He keeps more than just valuable cards. They’re more than a price—a piece of his childhood that he’s not ready to give up.
