Cecilily discusses the financialisation of Pokemon cards as an investment vehicle.
It’s one thing that makes me pause in teaching my niece how to play, I don’t want her to get caught up in the abstraction of the cards as anything other than pieces of cardboard with funny pictures of animals
Pokemon tcg sells boxes called trainer toolkits that contain a ton of meta cards, usually the release of a new one lowers the price of all the staples that you see in most decks.
This keeps the price of base rarity cards low and pushes the price of the art versions of playable cards down too.
I always thought MTG should have done the same thing where they make a pack of “10 random art basic lands of one/two colors” and sell them for like 3 bucks. Maybe toss in a few lightning bolts and land tutors in there too, idk
When i went through and sold off my old old cards i was amazed how much the bolts were worth still. When every deck runs 4 of something it doesn’t matter how commonly they show up in packs i guess