Pokémon card business: sell the pack opening, not price gains

On the morning of 28 March 2026, before opening time, a long line was already waiting outside a Smyths toy store in Staines, England. They had come for a new drop of Pokémon cards, according to CNBC. Seven months later, Card Ladder, a service that tracks collectible card sales across many online marketplaces, recorded $1.07 billion in collectible cards sold in October 2026, sports cards and trading card games combined. It was the first month the figure passed $1 billion (SI).

If you are thinking about a Pokémon card business, those two details make it easy to believe this is a product that simply goes up in price. Our view at 126Insights: the durable revenue comes from the moment of opening a pack in front of other people, meaning a live stream, an auction session or a game day. Sellers who price and pitch cards as appreciating assets will run out of steam when the craze cools. Sellers who offer an experience and a community still give customers a reason to come back.

What does the $1 billion figure actually count?

Read closely, the number is narrower than most people repeat it. According to Sports Collectors Daily, Card Ladder's data covers only single cards and sealed boxes. It excludes memorabilia and other collectibles, and it combines sports cards with non-sports cards. Pokémon is only one slice. Most offline transactions are not counted either (SI).

In October, eBay accounted for $633.4 million, Fanatics $213.5 million, Alt $124.9 million, Goldin $80.8 million and Heritage $21 million. The number of transactions rose about 65% from October 2025 (Sports Collectors Daily). The month saw 9.2 million transactions, averaging roughly $116 each. For Pokémon alone, 25 October 2026 was the biggest sales day in Card Ladder's data, at more than $18 million. The climb through the year was steady: $445.06 million in January, more than $912 million in August (SI).

The marketplace list above does not include Whatnot, the livestream selling platform that appears throughout the rest of this post. Whatnot's numbers are published by Whatnot itself, while the $1 billion comes from Card Ladder, so don't add the two together.

What are Pokémon card buyers paying for?

Whatnot has just released its 2027 consumer trends report, which combines search data, purchase data and input from both buyers and sellers on the platform (Inc.). By Whatnot's own figures, an average of 4 Pokémon cards sell on the platform every second, and September 2026 was a record month for Pokémon with more than 10 million cards. The number of Pokémon orders and buyers on Whatnot both more than doubled in a year, partly thanks to Pokémon's 30th anniversary (The Toy Book).

The more interesting detail is why people buy. According to Whatnot, many collectors choose cards by favorite character, by artwork and by personal attachment, rather than by value or rarity alone. On Whatnot, Pikachu was the most searched name in 2026, followed by Charizard, Eevee, Gengar and Mewtwo, in figures from Whatnot reported by The Toy Book. Also per Whatnot's report, cited by Yahoo Sports, hundreds of thousands of first-time buyers came to the platform through pack swaps, pack openings and single-card purchases, in live streams, buy-it-now listings or auctions.

Think of opening a gift on your birthday. The present may be small, but the fun is in tearing off the wrapping in front of friends while everyone leans in to see what's inside. People watching a live card break are buying that same feeling. A first-time buyer doesn't need to know which card is rare. Seeing Pikachu appear on screen is enough.

Photo by Detail .co on Unsplash

Four ways to sell collectible cards

Put together, card selling falls into four models:

1. Sealed boxes. The easiest to start, but your margin depends on whether you get a stock allocation.
2. Single cards. You need to price each card, keep inventory and have someone who can sort it.
3. Livestream breaks or auctions, Whatnot style. Viewers watch the seller open packs, buy by the slot, or bid on individual cards.
4. In-store game days. The shop can earn from entry fees, accessories and extra packs players buy at the table.

The first two models sell a product. The last two sell time spent together. In our view, a small shop should make models 3 and 4 its core and treat 1 and 2 as extras for customers who already know the shop.

Why selling cards like stocks runs out of steam

In the US, the Fort Worth Report describes independent comic and card shops in Fort Worth riding a collectibles boom tied to speculation, nostalgia and growing pressure from online retail. In the UK, CNBC quotes Stephanie Farnsworth, a media lecturer at the University of Sunderland, calling this period “kind of like a Pokémon renaissance.” She also said speculators create volatility and a panic that makes buyers afraid of missing out.

Panic over scarcity pushes sales up fast, and it drains away just as fast. A shop that posts a card photo with “last month's price, today's price” is teaching customers to look at cards like shares. When the price stops moving, customers trained that way have no reason to buy. Customers who come because there is a tournament every Saturday, or because the live host remembers their names, will keep coming whether card prices rise or fall.

The craze doesn't make selling easy, either. The Toy Box, a small toy shop in Beccles, Suffolk, received more than 500 messages in one week asking about the 30th Celebration set, the 30-year anniversary release. Manager Dan Lovett said the shop gets only a small allocation and can't keep reordering, according to Player.one, citing the Eastern Daily Press. The customers exist, the stock doesn't. A small shop will struggle to win the race for supply, but it can win on being the place people want to sit down and stay.

Vietnamese elders have a saying, “buôn có bạn, bán có phường,” roughly “trade with friends, sell within a guild.” For collectible cards, that guild is the community of players around your shop.

Photo by Aaron Douglas on Unsplash

Live Pokémon card breaks in Vietnam: where they fit and where they snag

Our post on shoppertainment, and how Shopee turned shopping into a show (in Vietnamese) analyzed how a platform turns buying into a performance. A live card break is a small-scale version of the same logic: the seller chats, opens packs and closes orders all at once.

There are three snags. The first is genuine supply. Before you go live, you must be able to say where your stock came from and prove it to customers. The second is counterfeit cards: a pack break is only worth watching if viewers trust that nobody opened the pack before. The third is young buyers. People watching a Pokémon live stream may be children, so how you set prices, invite bids and take payment needs more care than when selling to adults.

On the legal side, an auction livestream touches Vietnam's rules on auctions as well as its rules on e-commerce and livestream selling. Check the current regulations yourself, or ask a qualified professional, before you open your first session.

Your promise of authentic stock should be written down as a policy: how returns work if a customer finds a fake card, who pays the cost, and how long it takes. Our post on why the after-sale promise is part of the product (in Vietnamese) makes a similar point about Mall shops, the verified official-brand storefronts on Vietnamese marketplaces: a clear promise is something customers will pay for.

How to start a Pokémon card business in Vietnam

If you want to try, we suggest four steps, in this order:

1. Pick a niche community, for example players who compete with their decks, or collectors of one character. Whatnot's data shows characters and artwork are a reason to buy for many people, so a “Gengar fan club” bonds more easily than a “card investors” group.
2. Set a fixed live schedule: same time, same day each week, so customers can make a date with you.
3. Publish your authenticity policy before you sell the first pack.
4. Hold a game day before you think about hunting rare cards to resell.

The lesson reaches beyond Pokémon. According to Inc., Kinder, Chipotle, Backflip cereal and Garage Beer have all released their own card packs. Vietnamese brands selling blind boxes, collectibles or limited editions face the same choice: sell the rare item, or sell the unboxing together with the people who open alongside you. Our post on pickleball retail in Vietnam, selling gear to players instead of rushing to open courts (in Vietnamese) suggested following the players. With collectibles, the player community is what keeps customers coming back.

Whatnot expects the craze to carry into the new year because Pokémon keeps releasing anniversary products (Inc.). It may, or it may not. Before the year-end gift season, the question to ask yourself is this: if card prices stood still for six months, what reason would your customers have to come back next Saturday?