A teenager who makes more money from trading cards than his parents do from full-time employment is quietly remarkable. Not spectacular or eye-catching. It’s the kind of thing that causes you to pause and consider how the world is changing beneath everyone’s feet.
That is precisely what has been taking place in Perth, Western Australia. A local teenager who is still in high school and living at home has established a Pokémon card company that, by most accounts, brings in more money each month than either of his parents. Ambition wasn’t the beginning of it. It began with cards strewn all over the floor of a bedroom and a fixation on which ones were becoming more difficult to locate.
Pokémon cards were first introduced in Japan in 1996, and by the late 1990s, they had become a worldwide sensation. The majority of people believed that the craze ended with the year 2000. It didn’t. Since 2004, the market has steadily increased by more than 3,800 percent, and it is currently valued at nearly $20 billion USD. In 2022, a single Pikachu Illustrator card brought in almost $5.3 million. It’s not a typo. Adults dismissed the market as a childish fad, but it turned out to be more akin to a collector’s economy, operating alongside and sometimes even surpassing traditional finance.
It’s important to comprehend what motivated the second wave since it clarifies how a teenager in Perth can earn actual money doing this. With the release of Pokémon Go in 2016, millions of Millennials returned to the franchise they had grown up with. All of a sudden, nostalgia was active rather than passive. Individuals who had previously saved pocket money for booster packs were now earning salaries, which they used to purchase cards they couldn’t afford as children. The supply of rare and vintage cards remained constant. Demand increased. The rest was done by the math.
This seems to have been intuitively understood by the adolescent in question. Speaking with members of the collecting community gives me the impression that the best young traders are students of scarcity rather than merely enthusiasts. They monitor which sets are being discontinued, follow auction results, and keep track of grading services like PSA. They understand that condition is just as important as rarity. The value of a card with a perfect score of ten can be five times higher than that of the same card with an eight. These are not children engaging in a game. In between homework assignments, they are conducting inventory assessments.
Families in the Asia-Pacific area have begun to observe comparable trends. With the goal of turning a $10,000 investment into $1 million, a family-run business in Singapore called Pokemakase pooled $2,500 from each of its four members and started trading at card shows. Two months after purchasing a card for $125, a 35-year-old operations executive sold it for $500. According to reports, a $1,800 Van Gogh Pikachu collaboration card doubled in value in a matter of months. These are not isolated incidents; rather, they are a part of a larger change in the way that people of all ages are considering the place of value.
How long the circumstances that enable this will last is still unknown. Although the mystery factor—purchasing sealed packs without knowing what’s inside—drives massive spending, it also maintains some degree of market volatility. It exhibits characteristics of a legitimate investment class, a market for collectibles, and something more akin to gambling. It has previously been referred to as a bubble by critics. It hasn’t exploded. However, sentimental and nostalgic markets carry risks that a spreadsheet might miss.
It’s highly likely that the teen from Perth is aware of this. Timing is important to anyone who is paying enough attention to know which cards to sell and which to hold. Seeing someone that young handle an inherited childhood passion with such clear-eyed discipline is difficult to avoid feeling a certain quiet respect. It’s another matter entirely whether the market will support him into adulthood. He currently has a better hand than most because of the cards.
