2:49
Every weekend in towns across the US, Americans of all ages flood into shopping malls, convention centers, and stores with binders full of Pokémon cards and sling bags full of cash. These local card shows are flourishing as real world spaces for the Pokemon community to meet, trade, and connect. The modern Pokemon card market is a mass market phenomenon unlike any other. Part hobby, part investment, and part cultural revival. While sneakers and labu dolls turned into cold, transactional secondary markets driven by exclusion and exploitation, the Pokémon card scene has thrived on community spirit. This culture of inclusion and transparency has remarkably persisted even under this
current boom as money, scalpers, and scammers have all flowed in. Pokémon cards have reached record value across the board as the ones that were worth tens or hundreds of dollars just 2 to 3 years ago have reached thousands this year. Even though personal profit is the primary motive, information and insights circulate openly. Personal wins and losses get documented publicly. Veterans act as teachers and historians as much as traders, broadcasting their experiences, tips, and philosophies online before they even have audiences. Vendors operate like long-term enterprises rather than short-term flippers, leaning into relationships, personality, and education rather than product to drive sales. All of these
help blunt the learning curve for newcomers and reinforce a culture of camaraderie rarely seen in secondary markets. The commercial resurgence of Pokémon cards has not gone unnoticed. Entertainment franchises with comparable universes like One Piece and Disney all have launched trading cards of their own. But what's happening today is not unique. Humans through centuries have pursued a variety of collectibles motivated by the universal psychology of completionism, the desire of ownership, the impulse to chase rarity, and the speculation of future profit. What has driven all these markets in every generation is the promise of money. Not
just for the producers, but also for consumers, where their purchase holds the potential to turn into a life-changing fortune. Yet, collectibles are more emotional than economic as markets where herd mentality drives value as much as rarity. From this lens, Pokémon cards are just the latest in a long history of tradable assets. To get beyond headlines and conjecture, we've scraped every valuable Pokemon card from every set and era to quantify the rational behind the irrational and to form a comprehensive objective look inside this crazy world. With record prices, appreciation, and sales volume, the line between hobby and business has rapidly disappeared. In this modern NBA original, we go boots on the ground to
understand what it takes to succeed beyond blind luck in this unpredictable volatile market through the eyes of Ricky, a savvy part-timer who earns just under $250,000 a year dealing cards on the side, and Jason, an elite globe trotder who pulls in nearly a million as one of the leading sellers of Japanese exclusives. Every business is asking the same question. How do we make AI work for us? The possibilities are endless and guessing is too risky. But sitting on the sidelines is not an option because one thing is almost certain. Your competitors are already making their move. No more waiting. With Netswuite by Oracle, you can put AI to work today.
Netswuite is the number one AI cloud ERP. Trusted by over 43,000 businesses. Netswuite is a unified suite that brings your financials, inventory, commerce, HR, and CRM into a single source of truth. Every business produces data. But whether you have the time to make sense of it is the difference between stagnation and success. Even great instincts only get better with data. By connecting all of your data in Netswuite, your AI gets smarter. It doesn't guess, it knows. Netswuite intelligently automates routine tasks so your staff can focus on real value, deliver actionable insights, and help you cut costs, and make fast AI powered decisions with confidence. Netswuite isn't another bolt-edon tool. It's AI
built into the system that runs your business. As we scale modern MBA, we'll be using Netswuite and you should too. We sit on a mountain of data across viewership, engagement, demographics, revenue, and cost. But production is so intense that no one has the bandwidth to analyze the business. It's only gotten tougher as we've expanded production across multiple countries, increased budgets by double, and tripled the research per video. We're constantly balancing creativity with economics, but insight is hard to get without pulling ourselves away from what we do best. And we can't trust a random AI tool that doesn't have the full picture and pretends to be right when it's actually
wrong. Whether your company earns millions or even hundreds of millions, Netswuite helps you stay ahead of the pack. Right now, get the business guide, Demystifying AI, free at netswuite.com/modernba. The guide is free to you at netswuite.com/modernba. Like many millennials who grew up on the franchise, Ricky didn't get back into the scene until this recent boom. Today, he's one of the fastest growing content creators and vendors recognized at card shows nationwide. I'm a huge fan. Oh, thanks for watching. Oriama, right? Yeah, that's me. Nice to see you. I'm a big fan, bro. Can I take a photo with you? Of course.
Can I do this? Yeah, no problem. There are three ways to make money in Pokemon cards. The most popular method is trading singles, where you buy specific cards with the goal of reselling them for a profit once their market value increases. With tens of thousands of cards in circulation, you need to be able to identify the few that are valuable, recognize all their possible variants, and then form a thesis as to why it will be worth more in the future. Appreciation can range from tens to thousands of dollars. And in this bull market, there's opportunity at every level. After selling $10,000 worth of inventory last weekend, Ricky today is sourcing cards to restock for his next show.
Do you have any of the Lucario seal? Are those sealed or no? Three of them sealed. How much are you asking? 20 bucks. 17. 20 bucks. Can I take all three for 45? I'd probably be closer to like 47. That's fine. 47. Thank you. Yeah, appreciate it. Thanks, Andy. Pokemon cards operate on engineered scarcity, randomized distribution, and pack-based sales. This playbook is the foundation of the entire trading card game genre. Card makers purposely design certain cards in a set as rare and
desirable chase cards. They print them in small quantities and generate demand through aesthetic and/or competitive differentiation, but not all chase cards are created equal. In 1999, the probability of pulling a chase card out of a Pokémon pack varied as there was a hierarchy to rarity. For holographic rares, the odds hovered between 1% and 3%. But to get the rarest, the odds were below 1%, meaning unlucky customers would need to buy hundreds or thousands of packs for a chance. Back then, collectors were encouraged to buy packs to assemble the most powerful Pokémon deck for competition. The market chased cards that gave the strongest competitive edge. Today, scarcity is still the main ingredient, but the boom
is all about nostalgia and aesthetics. This is why the secondary market is so heavily concentrated in singles. Consumers can make efficient, targeted purchases for the exact Pokémon cards they want and bypass the randomized lottery pack model entirely. The ROI for pulling Chase cards is at a record high, even for the latest sets that are only a few weeks old, as the lucky few can instantly flip their halls at massive premiums. Ricky represents the demographic that's driven most of this present-day boom. Educated, economical, sociable millennials that have brought their professional backgrounds, career mindset, and childhood nostalgia into the hobby. His stable tech job gives him freedom to run
the business on his own terms. Ricky deals in singles where he can control spend and exposure to the exact cards he believes in. There are more than 23,000 English language Pokémon cards in circulation, spanning over a thousand species and 400 human characters. Every year, new characters are introduced into the franchise roster and card game. Ultimately, every card in every pack is exclusive to a set, and every set is part of a larger series that typically runs for 2 to 3 years, comprising a total of 1,000 to 3,000 distinct cards. Like most collectibles, age drives the greatest value. It's why the Chase cards of 1999 and the early 2000s are worth exponentially more today than their
modern counterparts. But even the dedicated fans, let alone part- timerrs like Ricky, must rely on an even higher level abstraction of quote unquote eras to make sense of the everexpanding supply. Pokémon TCG started in Japan in the late '9s and really hit Western audiences uh around the same time or early 2000s. Anything that's over about 20, maybe 25 years old would be considered vintage. And then it kind of moves into mid era. In the mid 2000s, particularly the trading card game, its popularity was sort of overtaken by other trading card games like Yu-Gi-Oh. And the Pokémon Company always prints to demand, and they're historically very good at doing that. But roughly 2002 or
three into probably about 2007 to 2010ish, that's an a lost era for a lot of people who now find those cards very soughta because they're sort of novel to them. That moves us into like Sun and Moon and XY era, which is sort of late mid era. A lot of people that are vending here that are in their late teens or early 20s probably grew up on that. And then uh it moves into more modern cards over the last few years where really the current market boom probably started around 2020. Like most grassroots terminology, there's no official consensus on when each era begins or ends. Ultimately, Ricky's framing is reflected in the data. At a macro level, the Pokémon Company is cashing in as they're printing more cards in this modern era than ever
before, and they've refreshed Chase cards as mainstream collectibles that can appeal to outsiders as much as fans. Modern chase cards in lie of nostalgia boast layered textures, edge-to-edge artwork, dynamic poses, full illustrations, and vivid color palettes that surpass the simplicity of their predecessors. Art has become the primary justification for modern cards, soaring to hundreds or thousands of dollars just weeks after their release. There are effectively two different markets within English Pokémon cards. The vintage era is a low-volume, high-value, high-cost niche market where profitably trading singles requires specialized knowledge and deep pockets. Prices here are generally more stable and the appreciation is more consistent. The
modern era, by contrast, is high volume, high liquidity, broadly accessible, and low cost. Under conventional logic, the high supply should push prices down, but what's out there is still not enough to meet today's unprecedented demand. The downside to dealing in modern singles is volatility. The abundance of public data means less risk and success is more timing than expertise. Like most in the hobby, Ricky's inventory has grown to encompass a little bit of everything. But modern English remains his bread and butter. And like every buyer and seller, Ricky doesn't trade without checking the numbers.
What are you looking to get for it? So, how about you mark it? Well, the low list is 300. So, this card is also like actively moving down probably 250 and then do you give me two though? That 175 looks scary. Um, I can give you 200. Okay, I'll do that. Okay, awesome. Thank you so much. One of the reasons the market is the way that it is because there's so much data available in our pockets. You pull out your phone and there's websites and recent sales on eBay and there's apps that can aggregate sales and average prices. So, everyone has roughly equal access to the information around what these cards recently sold for and that tends to dictate the approximate market
value for most things. The demand for individual cards is also fueled by the widening cost gap between singles and packs. Modern singles are hitting record prices at record speed, but it's still cheaper and faster to buy one of these singles outright than it is to gamble on sealed packs. For packs, the odds have never been worse. In 1999, the average serieswide pull rate for top chase cards was 1.4%. Today, it's 0.3%. Over time, the Pokemon Company has stuffed sets with more cards to maximize sales. The 1999 set had 113 cards for a total of 1,129 cards in the series. Today, there are over twice as many cards in a set and three times as many in a series,
dramatically diluting the chances of pulling the most valuable chase card. Like lottery tickets or slot spins, Pokémon packs are deliberately priced to feel harmless. The MSRP is $5 for a single pack of 10 cards, $14 for three packs, $27 for six packs, and $162 for a box of 36 packs. But scalpers snap up pallets as soon as they hit the sales floor, while scammers weigh packs to identify the ones containing Chase cards, as the special foils, textures, and extra ink allegedly make them heavier. Some open packs, replace valuable cards with worthless commons, and then reseal them before flipping it to the unaware. As a result, consumers have shifted towards factory-sealed
bundles, boxes, and tins. They've become collectibles themselves, where a single unopened box can sell for thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars. This dynamic has created the second way to make money in Pokémon cards, holding sealed product. The appreciation of a sealed booster box is directly correlated with the market value of the top chase cards available in that set. And in today's environment, where even new releases are still impossible to find, sealed products from sets that are still in active print, appreciate rapidly, selling double or triple their MSRP. Everything we've covered so far, Chase cards and sealed product all fundamentally derive their value from
supply rarity. The fewer copies that exist, the higher the price. As time passes, their greater scarcity leads to appreciation. But rarity isn't just about how many cards exist. It's also about how many survived in perfect condition. Print quality is a long-standing issue among English language Pokemon cards where the rush mass production results in constant visual manufacturing errors like offcentering, miscut edges, smudges, or scratches. This means that condition rarity actually starts at the factory. But because condition is subjective, companies like PSA, CGC, and BGS have emerged as third party authorities that grade cards on a 10-point scale. A PSA 10 is a virtually perfect card with no perceptible defects or damage. But if
there's one minor flaw, a single white spot on an edge, a corner that isn't perfectly sharp, or the faintest of scratches, the grade drops to a nine. Two or more flaws and the grade drops to an eight or lower, and all of these translate to massive price differences. The percentage of a Pokémon card that gets submitted to a grading company and achieves that perfect 10 is called a gem rate. The lower the gem rate, the higher the condition rarity and the greater the premium a PSA 10 commands. For most series, there's an inverse relationship between gem rate and price premium.
Ultimately, supply rarity and condition rarity are both fundamentally tied to age. This is why the most expensive English Pokémon cards are the vintage, first ever printed PSA 10 singles. But elite collectors don't just want the rarest, they want the pinnacle. Their willingness to splurge for the best of the rarest is precisely what drives these five and six figure prices. But grading itself remains unpredictable and inconsistent. At PSA, cards are inspected manually by humans. People mail in their card and wait weeks, sometimes months, for the card to be returned in a slab with its grade. Because the jump in value between a 10 and a nine and even between a nine and an eight is so large, collectors will
crack open their slabs to resubmit the same cards, hoping they'll land with a more lenient grader and secure a grade bump. What all of this boils down to is that if you want to hit the jackpot, you need to win three lotteryies. One, the card had to be printed perfectly at the factory before it even made it into the pack. Then you need luck to be the one to pull it out of the pack at those 1% or lower odds. And lastly, you need some degree of luck that PSA will grade it as a 10. Over the decades, the Pokemon Company has invested in quality control. Consumers have been conditioned to sleeve or slap their cards right out of the pack, and more collectors are grading to secure their investments. But
while the average serieswide gem rate for Chase cards in the vintage and mid- eras is 5% or less, gem rates for leading singles in the modern era are as high as 70%. Nearly half of modern cards that get submitted to PSA for grading get a 10. The value of vintage and mid-air singles are fundamentally driven by their genuine scarcity. But the modern era defies both collectible convention and historic Pokémon fundamentals with valuations that are forgiving of both supply and condition. Every vintage and mid-air single loses between 85 to 95% of its value when it's graded below a 10. A modern single that gets graded as
an eight or a 9 strangely retains far more of its value despite the abundant population of 10 with only a 69 to 70% reduction. One explanation is that supply has simply scaled with demand as modern singles have artwork that has drawn millions of new mass market buyers who might never have engaged with vintage cards. But it's unlikely that the present-day hype will last long enough to sustain such supply. This makes the modern era inherently more fragile and speculative than any other era Pokémon cards. Still, that hasn't stopped Ricky or most of the community from making modern singles 80 to 100% of their business. A natural question would be then why doesn't everyone grade their cards? Grading fees range between $30 to
$300 per card depending on value. Because of this risk and cost, the market for singles splits between ungraded and graded cards. Graded cards, often referred to as slabs, command a premium because the seller has paid upfront to certify authenticity and condition. Raw cards, on the other hand, are cheaper because the buyer takes on all the risk. If you can spot an ungraded card, negotiate the right price, and secure that high grade, you can capture all that upside as profit. How bad's the shining Magikarp? Um, kind of beat up to be honest with you. Do you have any room on it? Um, could be 220.
Uh, I don't think I could be at 220, man. Where are you at? I don't want to be at like 200. 210 just cuz it's it's got a I mean, yeah. Let me try to see what I think I sold one that was LPish for like 250 recently. Oh, really? Yeah. Is it cash? cash. All right, thanks. Yeah, there's a lot of different variables besides just market price. How often does a card sell? How easy is it to sell in a market like this one? How much room do I believe they have on the card based on when they purchased it or how they
acquired it or if they graded it themselves. So, I'm looking at all those dimensions before I really even get to talking about the price. I want to see what their sticker price is and establish do I even think that's a fair starting point for the negotiation. You have to figure out where in that range allows them to win and for you to have some margin as well if you plan to resell that car. How long have you had the Deoxys V-Max last weekend? Some are selling like 230 220. Was it Did it sell at three or did they take best offer?
They took best offer. It didn't sell at three. It sold at 266. I think. though 420. No. I think 410 would be my best. Okay, I'll do 410. I appreciate you. Yeah. This B, right? Yeah. Thanks, man. Yeah. Thank you, man. Ricky's 10 years in tech sales gives him a professional edge over other vendors and collectors. By focusing on near mint modern RAWs, he isn't trying to predict where the market is going as much as he is looking to maximize where it is now. And in today's frothy environment, eating out $5 or $10 in a deal makes all the difference.
All right. I don't know what you guys need right now. God, like I'd love to trade for singles mostly if that works. Yeah, I love it. I already have these. I don't need two of these. I have one of those. Uh I already have one. The sales are around 40 for this. I 35. Okay, no worries. What are you asking? Uh 14,400. Okay, I'll pass. How much did you say? Oh, this is 100. Okay. I see why. I'll pass. While trading singles and sealed product are the two main income streams in Pokemon cards, Ricky has harnessed a third in creating content. In just one year, he's become one of the fastest
growing creators in the space, catering to low-nowledged beginners and nostalgic fans rediscovering the hobby just as he did. When I got back into the Pokemon hobby the beginning of last year, I noticed in watching a lot of the vendor point of view content that started coming out that it's cool to watch vendors negotiate, but the vicarious living I thought sat more with the buyer. And so I strapped a camera to my chest and started walking around these shows. And actually the first video of that I uploaded was at this show in late June of last year. And that video almost overnight did thousands of views, which blew my mind. I enjoy selling cards, but I spent 9 to5 for over a decade selling. So, that part of it feels more like work
listing things on eBay and packing and shipping them and negotiating those prices. A lot of the sourcing I do now is not that active. I just wait around for Instagram DMs and emails and people who say, "I have $10,000 of Pokémon cards I've been sitting on. I know I can trust you and that you'll give me a fair price for it and I'll give them a fair offer to offload everything." It's an offer that gives me 15 to 30% margin depending on the item. And those are things I bring to shows and sell online and I create more content and that leads to more people reaching out and the sort of flywheel continues that way. I consider myself a content creator in the space maybe more than I am a buyer or
collector or reseller or anything like that. It's a really scalable business in the sense that I can take time off from it for a couple weeks and it'll still earn the same amount of money. These days, every vendor understands the upside of content creation. Despite the friendly demeanor and communal spirit of the Pokemon card community, they're all direct competitors in a zero- sum game. The odds that there are multiple copies of the same card in the same condition are higher than ever, and getting a lower price just a few tables away can instantly kill a deal at this one.
Content is more than just a third income stream. It's the ultimate differentiator. Without the content to make as much as I am now in this business, I would have to vend two or three times as frequently. But because of the content, each show has sort of more bang for its buck and I have a pretty good chance of performing well at any show just in a lot of cases on the strength of the fan base of the channel coming to do deals. Could I give you 70 for these three? So the offer is at 90% after that. too fun. So I can say I'll do 72. That's you. I just want to say 71. Let's split the difference.
Okay. Pokemon cards are like an iceberg and Ricky operates at the surface where demand is most visible, supply is greatest, profits are quickest, and knowledge requirements are lowest. In the limited hours that he can dedicate to the hobby, he excels by following the data, flipping what sells, and catering to the mainstream population. He doesn't have the bandwidth to go any deeper or to expand towards high-end vintage or Japanese cards. Ricky averages $10,500 a month in Pokémon card sales for an annual run rate of $126,000. While he sells 10 times as many RAWs as slabs in volume, slabs and raws each contribute 50/50. 70% of his sales are in person, even though he typically works just one card show a month. On the
content side, Ricky grosses on average $5,500 per month across AdSense and sponsors for an annual run rate of $66,000. Combined, Ricky under Oyama's trading grosses $191,000 a year. And flashy numbers like these are what attract newcomers. But this is a business about value capture, not value creation. Ricky's gross margin on cards after deducting the cost of inventory and grading has surged from 29% to 41% this year, a jump he admits feels too good to last. His overall operating margin after travel, table fees, and production costs sits at 54%. But that doesn't factor the thousands of unpaid hours he spends sourcing, selling, filming, and studying the market. These profit margins are based on capital alone. Ricky has one foot in
and one foot out and wants to keep it that way. Tech is changing a lot right now. And the opportunity cost of jumping out is really high. And if it didn't go well, the opportunity cost of not making that salary for a few years is substantial in terms of how it affects my family and my own financial goals and me and my wife's future. If I were full-time, the risk of burning out on it would increase substantially and it would probably pull some of the fun out of it. I wouldn't trade that for a few tens of thousands of extra dollars a year from the hobby. Can you do 87 and a half or you got to be around 90? I'd like to be around 90. We could go a little under 90.850.
I get take 100 bucks off. Yeah. Okay, cool. Yeah. 850. Perfect. Thanks you two. Yeah. In this world, supply and demand are like clockwork. Chase cards drive pack prices. Supply shapes liquidity. And the best sellers are the ones who identify opportunity before the rest of the market. Timing is everything, and the faster you can find what you're looking for, the stronger your edge. While you may never find that life-changing card, this principle extends beyond Pokémon. Business is like collecting. Success is finding the right opportunities before everyone else. If you're hiring, you can find qualified candidates right away time and time again with Zip Recruiter. And today, you can try it for free at ziprecruiter.com/mbba.
If hiring to you means posting a listing and waiting for applications to trickle in, you're already falling behind. Zip Recruiter turns hiring from passive to active. Zip Recruiter's powerful matching technology works fast to find top talent. You're steering the process, not leaving things up to chance. In this day and age, good candidates will not walk through the door, and the best talent will always be recruited, not waiting around to be found. With Zip Recruiter's advanced resumeé database, you can unlock top candidates contact information instantly, giving you that leg up on bringing in the staff who will take your business to the next level.
It's no wonder that Zip Recruiter is the number one rated hiring site based on G2, an accolade that few companies in the world ever receive. Want to know right away how many qualified candidates are in your area? Look no further than Zip Recruiter. Four out of five employers who post on Zip Recruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. And right now you can try it for free at ziprecruiter.com/mbba. Zip Recruiter, the smartest way to hire. While this card show in LA is Ricky's biggest of the year, for Jason, it's just another stop on a weekend circuit that has taken him from San Diego to Atlanta. As soon as this show wraps,
he's catching a red eye to Tokyo. Between card shows, he fulfills eBay orders from home or scour Japanese shops for inventory. For 3 years, Jason has lived this Trans-Pacific grind, splitting his life between San Francisco and Tokyo. Jason deals exclusively in Japanese Pokémon cards. He admits he can't even name the latest English releases. Even though both markets share the same parent company and fundamentals of rarity, what drives value in Japan is not what drives value in the West. If the English Pokemon card market is the 100 ft tip of the iceberg, then Jason operates 1,000 ft deep below the surface. He's part of the top 1% of the hobby that's developed the knowledge, specialization, and skills to build a
highstakes full-time business on top of a children's card game. His eBay store is anonymous. His business logo is a stock image. His YouTube videos are just raw thoughts for close friends. And his table at card shows are as humble as his person. One of the reasons why I gravitate towards Japanese is that level of exclusivity, history, and just additional lore uh behind the entire collectibility aspect of Pokémon. For example, this is my favorite set of all time. It is 1997 Bandai Cardass. And these came out of vending machines, but these were Japanese exclusives. This artwork was only printed on this type of card. Obviously, the goal is to sell, buy, trade, and make this work for ourselves, whether it's as a
side hustle or a full-time job. But we also have a duty to educate and expose people to things that they haven't seen before and immerse customers further into our space and into their hobby, too. When I was first getting started, like four or five years ago, I saw Japanese as an opportunity, bit of a cheaper, for lack of a better term, safer alternative to buying, sourcing, grading English Pokémon cards. A lot of the main set English cards out of the pack were very tough to grade. Getting a PSA 10 or even a 9 for certain cards was pretty difficult. But Japanese card quality for the newest sets and even promos were very strong. The differences go beyond print quality. Every Pokemon
card is designed and released in Japan first before anywhere else. Japan gets a new set every month, while the English market combines two to three into one larger release every quarter. Because of this, Japanese sets contain significantly fewer cards than English sets. The cards themselves don't match one to one across languages, and not every Japanese card gets an English version. The other difference is pull rates. Under Japan's consumer protection law, Japanese booster boxes guarantee at least four chase cards in every 30 packs, whereas English distribution is completely random. With fewer cards in more sets, pull rates are generally higher, and Japanese Chase cards possess
less supply rarity. If we look at our data starting from the 2010 Black and White series, fewer than 10% of English cards earned a PSA 10 compared to roughly half of their Japanese counterparts. In the X and Y series, about seven in 10 Japanese chase cards were graded in perfect condition compared to just 1 in 10 of their English equivalents. And even today in the modern era, where English cards enjoy a record high gem rate of 40%, this pales next to the 90% of their Japanese equivalents. It's a trend that extends even to the vintage era. In short, supply rarity and condition rarity are non-factors for main set Japanese chase cards. Yet, because the American market is driven by
nostalgia, their Japanese equivalents can't be substitutes despite their higher supply and superior quality. Side by side, English Chase cards from main sets consistently sell for more due to the greater market size, demand, and buying power. Yet, the world's most expensive Pokémon cards are predominantly Japanese. These record-breaking singles are limited run exclusives that were produced outside of the main sets as one-time collaborations with local brands, publications, tournaments, or contests. Because they're so culturally specific, they have no relevance in any other market and thus never make it into an English release. These are the true chase cards for the Japanese market with genuine supply and condition rarity. Their
scarcity attracts high-end collectors and public figures at the tip of the market. Ultimately, both Japanese and American markets define value by supply and condition rarity, but their application is inverted. In Japan, rarity lives in promos because their main sets have none. Conversely, the US values main set cards because the low pull rates and print quality create rarity. And on the flip side, certain Japanese cards are desirable only in Japan, like waifu full art female trainer cards, which enjoy far greater appreciation, demand, and market value than their English equivalents. Ultimately, this broad niche of Japanese exclusives is where Jason has built his business for the past 5 years, but
they're less of a novelty these days. Below the 7 figure trophy cards, Japanese exclusives have begun to catch mid-market momentum in the US. Many vendors and collectors today are following Jason's playbook, diversifying their inventory with Japanese exclusives. Instead, the elephant in the room is the entry of corporations. Multi-billion dollar players like PSA and Fanatics are now aggressively looking to consolidate this atomized secondary market into their own walled gardens by offering cash for cards as soon as they're graded or pack ripping live streams on their platforms. These companies have the capital to intercept supply and control demand. But in the short term, the influx of competition
from individual sellers doesn't phase Jason. I welcome it. It gives a little bit more exposure to my space. It also pushes me to improve my craft. If we truly want to build this and do like a passion, you have to continue learning new concepts, expose yourself to in Pokemon terms like new releases, different types of releases, the history. If we can all do that, then as a space, we're continuing to move forward. Whenever people come to my table and they tell me, "Hey, you're the best table I've been to all day." Like, even if they didn't buy anything, like it means so much to me. It tells me that I've done my job and I can be confident even if that person didn't buy something from me, maybe someone else
will. Getting Japanese cards isn't as simple as ordering them online. Only a fraction of the country's inventory reaches marketplaces like Merkari Japan and Yahoo Japan auctions. The English market follows a similar dynamic. The cards that make it onto eBay are generally the high value graded slabs. This makes Japanese card shops identical to American card shows where the high volume and low information cash heavy environments allow skilled buyers to snap up hidden gems, bargains, and overlooked opportunities. But the barriers to entry in the online Japanese market go well beyond inventory and language.
You buy the items, they come to a warehouse, they consolidate them into one package for you and they ship them to you. It's funny cuz you don't know like what you're going to get from Japan. It's like you get something that's bulletproof in casing and then sometimes you just get saran wrap. Many platforms don't support international shipping, only accept Japanese payment methods, or require a local phone number and address. Private middlemen have tried to bridge this gap. But the difference in time zones, culture, and communication make each transaction slower, riskier, and more expensive in a market where timing and trust is everything. Even data is a barrier. The pricing tools and trackers that Americans rely on only work for
English cards. These structural and cultural obstacles keep the Japanese market essentially closed off to outsiders beyond the few singles that get traction and are already trading at premiums in the US market. The true selection, depth, and opportunity remain accessible only to those who have committed themselves as deeply as Jason. There was a learning curve to sourcing cards from Japan. There's no purchase protection. If you buy something off of eBay, if the card that you receive in the mail is damaged, you can open a claim on eBay. But buying from Japan, like if I bought like this in a PSA 10 and what I got was this, there's nothing I can do. because if I charge back on my credit card, then my account would get banned. Back then
as well, promos, Japanese exclusive cards were more easily attainable, too, because that level of knowledge and exposure wasn't there. So, just having the chance to be like one of the first or early adopters during that period relative to where we are now as a space where everybody knows about Japanese cards is a competitive edge. Jason's constant trans-Pacific grind is his moat. Today in Tokyo, he's hitting 45 shops across six districts. He'll do it again in Osaka, then Kyoto, then Nagoya, all over the next 2 days. He'll cycle through the circuit week after week until his next flight back to San Francisco. It's as exhausting as it is unglamorous. Jason's edge is curation, grounded in his near encyclopedic knowledge of Japanese
exclusives, their price history, their supply on a per city basis, along with their potential value when assessed through the lens of American buyers. His ongoing efforts to master Japanese only deepens this. And while most in the US constantly run numbers, Jason barely touches his phone when sourcing. In America, profit comes first. There are almost no raw vintage cars in good condition left as anyone holding some has likely graded them to maximize resale value. Those few slabs are what circulate in the US today. Americans with their focus on investment and profit go the distance to maximize returns as even the part- timerrs sell their own cards directly pay for grading and will travel to weekend shows just to extract every dollar. Japan, in
contrast, is oriented more on play and passion. Most cards never get graded. Anyone can walk into a card shop in Japan, but the real skill is in knowing which cards are truly valuable, whether they're fairly priced by local standards, and how likely you are to find copies that are cheaper or in better condition elsewhere. And none of that information is online. As a result, Jason's profit margins are driven by multiple layers of arbitrage. He capitalizes on geographic price differences, leverages cultural fluency to act on real-time information, and remains physically immersed across both worlds to find locally undervalued Japanese cards that would be in demand in the US market. There are two schools of thought in a collectible market. One
says it's all irrational. Don't overthink it. Just ride the wave, manage risk, and take profits wherever you can. But when you're allin like Jason, you can't simply chalk everything up to your rationality and let the market drag you wherever it goes. You need structure and logic for inventory and longevity. Jason sees the US market's obsession with sales data as not just lazy, but fundamentally flawed. I think comps are very valid for the mainstream mass market cards that have a lot of data and selling almost every day, every week. Those give us a guideline on what that card could be valued at by everybody else and what we should be asking on the card, but it's not applicable across the
board, nor should it be. It's about what can you buy the card for right now. And I think a lot of that applies to cards that have strong collectibility traits. When we start to get much higher in the condition rankings for a, for example, a PSA 10 Kardash checklist secret rare, you can look up what it last sold for, but very likely that sale happened 6 plus months in the past or 3 months in the past. There's a large difference between what it last sold for versus what you can buy it for right now. And because there's only 31 available in the world in PSA 10, if you want one, you have to work with the seller to work out a price that both of you value it at. Over time, Jason has built his own internal framework to
evaluate a card's potential. His apartment in San Francisco is filled with countless examples of inventory curated this way. Character release, language, exclusivity, is it a promo? Is it vintage? Is there a print limit to this card? Is this low pop? Is there a condition rarity factor? I sell cards as cheap as $4. This one's six. On the listing title, I have B59. It tells me which bin on this rack the card is located in. This is a card that I probably bought for a dollar in Japan. So, like $6 after fees and shipping, I'm probably netting like two bucks. But it's a Japanese exclusive card. It's vintage. This artwork never made it to America. So, there's a uniqueness to it.
But Jason's not married to his framework. For every rule, there's an exception. Ironically, the American mass market has stepped into his niche in recent months with the Japanese exclusive McDonald's Pikachu card as the latest target of speculation. The card went viral before its release, and Americans saw it as a rare opportunity to source a very specific, lowcost, lowrisk, high potential asset from Japan's normally closed off market. Scalpers swarmed McDonald's stores across Japan, dumping tons of Happy Meals just to hoard copies of the card. The public outcry over food waste forced McDonald's Japan to cancel the entire promotion within 24 hours. 2 months
later and the McDonald's Pikachu card has become the most graded card in existence. With an extraordinary 91% gem rate, the market has become flooded with PSA 10s and raw copies of this specific card. factors that should drastically depress value in a rational market. But despite this, speculation has driven the card's value to hundreds of dollars. Sellers who rush to be the first to market paid over $100 per card for the expedited grading. Those holding dozens or hundreds of these slabs are forced to anchor their price today at $150 just to simply recoup those fees, irrespective of saturation. This dynamic is also evident with other exclusives such as Van Go Pikachu, where popularity breaks
rationality and mass market hype can override conventional supply and condition rarity. The Van Go has art level of immediate appeal. It is an actual museum collaboration based on historic art. It has that recognition at even the most basic level where somebody who doesn't follow Pokemon at all and can name three Pokemon Tops, they would still recognize this as Van Go Pikachu. So something like this has immediate recognition in a showcase versus McDonald's Pikachu where right now McDonald's Pikachu is kind of like the flavor of the month type of thing. So, like the McDonald's Pikachu artwork is a little flat. It's only a half art, whereas the Van Go is the entire art. It's got a completely different
shaded color. It's wearing a hat. Like Pikachu wearing clothes. Like maybe if Pikachu was dressed as like Ronald McDonald, that would have a different effect. But in terms of the longer term trajectory, Van Go Pikachu is actually something I was wrong about, too. Jason has done this long enough to know that there's no prize for ideology. If it sells, it sells. Although he thinks McDonald's Pikachu are pure hype, he still maintains a tiny position in them, and the $15 he paid is a cheap hedge against his own skepticism. Yet, more and more cards this year are breaking Jason's framework. He sees instability, not just in the valuations of cards, but also in the new wave of vendors that
have flooded weekend card shows. I've learned in real time that not everybody is starting to vend just to sell their collection or do this as a job. We're starting to see it. Oh, I'm vending just to make shorts on Instagram or I'm vending because I just want to make the vendor POVs and have them go viral. I've seen a lot of people just sitting at their tables and if I had to guess they sell like between 5 to 10 graded cards if it's even that and they're packing up a lot of stuff and it's for the biggest card show in California. So there's definitely a skill level to this. I do think whoever is either good at their craft at what they do and those who have a genuine interest and passion for the right
reasons in the space will do well and we'll see the space in a positive light and then I think in 2026 for those who maybe aren't as good as at what they're doing or what they tried to do or aren't in the space for the right reasons we'll see them turn out the frothiness of the current American market with its unprecedented appreciation and prices that far exceed their intrinsic worth has made Jason cautious. His perspective and by extension business are in a state of constant evolution. He didn't develop his framework, choose to specialize in Japanese cards or decide to live between continents overnight. He snowballed his investment, inventory, and business from hundreds of dollars to millions one card at a time. In his first year full-time,
Jason got his first big break when he spent $15,000 on two raw full art Japanese trainer cards, sight unseen. This risk paid off when the waifu boom hit Japan. He flew to Tokyo, sold both cards in person, and walked away with over $120,000. In his early Japan trips, he would buy only graded cards, but soon found flipping Japanese slabs to Americans for a meager 5% profit margin was unsustainable. These realizations led him to focus exclusively on RAWs and to evaluate singles based on intrinsic collectibility, where he's able to enter the life cycle of a card before it arrives at its final state as a graded optimized asset. But Jason's current strategy is as contrarian as his operating model. He's shifted down market to more affordable
inventory rather than chasing the speculative peak where more and more people are getting priced out. Jason grosses on average $43,000 a month at card shows for an annual run rate of $516,000. His eBay business adds another $32,000 a month for an annual run rate of $384,000. Combined, his entire business hovers at $900,000 a year. 25% of his inventory gets graded, while the other 75% remain as RAWs. Slabs make up 95% of online sales, but only 30% in person. to Jason. Both sales channels are essential. Card shows provide rapid liquidity while online sales provide passive income and all the proceeds cycle back to Japan for sourcing. Historically, Jason's
operating margin has hovered at 20%, but this year has surged to 40%. Ultimately, Jason doesn't see himself as a visionary, just someone who's refined a single viable strategy in a market full of possibilities. He never expected Pokémon cards to be his full-time profession. It grew out of necessity during a series of tech layoffs. But despite grossing nearly a million dollars a year and mastering a market that few truly understand, he still considers Pokémon cards a temporary venture. I'm chasing passion. That's why I left my job to do this. But it's also why I got into this in the first place. If it's something I'm interested in, I'm going to go really deep into it and learn as much as I can about it and get immersed. At the same time, it
was an opportunity to buy more cards by selling. And from there, it just kind of built like day by day into what it is today. I don't think I want to be doing this into my 40s and 50s because for this year specifically, it's like taken over my life completely, like 24/7. And I don't think that's the healthiest way to live. So while this year has been really great for business, I've also learned a lot about how to achieve better balance in my life as well. Throughout the rest of my 30s, there could be a new hobby which is the lowest common denominator being introduced to something and naturally my personality. I might get really into that and that could be the next like passion project as well.
Jason's success is rooted in his dedication. He's uprooted his life to optimize a business that can't be scaled. And to sweep through every card shop around Japan week after week, there's no such thing as a day off. If he's not sourcing cards, his supply runs out. If he's not fulfilling orders as soon as they come in, his eBay seller rating drops. If he's not at card shows, he doesn't have cash flow for sourcing. Jason could certainly streamline things. Perhaps develop relationships with card shop owners or hire locals to source for him in Japan when he's not there. But Jason doesn't buy what he hasn't personally inspected. Each trip is a
chance for him to sharpen his knowledge. He knows he could hit seven figures if he worked every weekend at a card show, but he's increasingly conscious of how much of his day-to-day has turned into a reclusive life on the road, away from friends, family, and personal pursuits. In a bull market, everyone is a winner. The challenge with Pokémon cards is the same as every collectible. With time, they eventually cool, and demand rarely lasts beyond two generations. The silent generation poured money into stamps, coins, and books. Baby boomers speculated in furniture, baseball cards, comics, and vinyl records. Gen X collected watches, photography, and Persian rugs. Millennials and Gen Z have chased sneakers, cryptocurrency, NFTts,
and have Pokémon cards. The long-term survival of this specific market all depends on whether the next generation greets it with the same nostalgic reverence. Jason and Ricky represent opposite evolutions of the same phenomenon. One deals in intuition and inventory, the other in numbers and personality. One treats it as a side hustle and the other a full-time job. Both embody the best of the Pokemon card world. Ambitious but genuine, profit-minded yet communitydriven, competitive yet transparent, and united by an unspoken optimism that everything they do in this market today is just one chapter in a larger journey of professional and personal growth.
Want to know right away how many qualified candidates are in your area? Look no further than Zip Recruiter. Four out of five employers who post on Zip Recruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. And right now you can try it for free at ziprecruiter.com/mbba.
