DeFi rides Pokémon trading card boom as onchain marketplaces bring in $11m

A version of this story appeared in The Decentralised newsletter on May 5. Sign up here.

GM, Tim here.
Decentralised finance is notorious for being home to some pretty wacky ideas with dubious commercial viability.

Yet over the past year, developers have stumbled on one that not only works, but also happens to be quite profitable: letting users buy and sell virtual versions of trading cards.

Onchain marketplaces that allow users to speculate on the prices of Pokémon, One Piece, and sports cards have soared over the past year. They generated a combined $11 million in revenue last month, according to data from DefiLlama, generated on its new Pro dashboard.

That’s no small sum for an idea that was basically unproven just over a year ago.

The success comes as trading cards — particularly Pokémon — continue their popularity. Nostalgia, financial speculation, and a post-pandemic boom in collectibles have caused prices to soar in recent years.

Pokémon cards, as measured through the Card Ladder Index, have produced a roughly 4,000% cumulative return since 2004, vastly outperforming the S&P 500, an index of the top 500 US stocks, which is up 513% over the same period.

Pokémon card factories are operating at maximum capacity. Despite producing over 10 billion cards annually, they cannot keep up with demand, resulting in ongoing shortages.

Packs of cards from popular sets now routinely resell for more than their recommended retail price, fuelling speculation from investors.

Logistical issues

For avid collectors, buying and selling trading cards comes with a host of logistical problems.

Like most markets for collectables, illiquidity makes it difficult to buy and sell at scale, and often involves additional costs such as auction and postage fees.

Those issues are exacerbated for those who want to invest larger amounts. It’s not uncommon for investors looking to play the trading card market to buy hundreds of the same card, or shipping pallets of unopened packs in the hope they will be worth more in the future.

So, it makes sense for investors who want to trade the red hot market to gravitate to DeFi platforms that offer exposure without having to hold onto the cards themselves.

Most platforms work similarly. Users send cards and boxes of sealed packs to the companies, who verify their authenticity, store them, and issue digital versions on blockchains like Solana and Polygon as non-fungible tokens, or NFTs.

It’s reminiscent of how gold exchange-traded funds made buying and selling the yellow metal cheaper and more accessible, albeit on a much smaller scale.

Many platforms also offer so-called gacha machines that mimic the experience of opening packs of cards. Users pay a set price and receive a random card in the machine, which could be of a higher value than the price paid, the platforms say.

Redemption delays

The question among both investors and those running onchain marketplaces is whether the trading card gravy train will continue.

Pokémon card prices have gone up a lot already. Charizard cards from the first ever set of Pokémon cards produced in 1999 can sell for up to $550,000 in perfect condition.

The same cards could be bought for between $1,500 and $2,000 around 10 years ago.

If prices start to fall, the NFTs that represent the cards could see steeper declines than the rest of the market.

Although platforms let users redeem their digital trading cards for real ones, there’s a delay in doing so — the cards have to be shipped to their owners, after all.

If investors rush to exit the market, they will likely be willing to sell the NFT cards for less than the current market rate to account for the delay.

Yet for now, the trading card mania shows little sign of slowing.

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Tim Craig is DL News’ Edinburgh-based DeFi Correspondent. Reach out with tips at tim@dlnews.com.