E213 | From Hobby to Investment: Can Trading Cards Become Young People’s First Pot of Gold?

Summary

• Trading cards have graduated from a niche hobby into an alternative asset. This August, a one-of-one Michael Jordan–Kobe Bryant dual-logo, dual-autograph card set a sports-card record at $12.93M; the PSA 10 Illustrator Pikachu card shown by Logan Paul was valued at $5.275M in 2022; UK-based Raisin UK says trading cards now offer greater investment value than classic cars or whisky. Da Bai’s verdict is blunter: “Trading cards may now deliver better returns than anything except gold”—provided you know the market.
• The card trade is fundamentally a game of musical chairs plus market control. Da Bai puts it plainly: “As long as you’re not the last one in, you can make some money—but every flower has its season.” Supply for rare cards is fixed, making them “easier to manipulate than a company’s stock”—buy the other 2 cards after pulling a 1-of-3, and “whatever price you say it is, that’s what it is.” Cartels coordinating inventory are now fully public: YouTubers issue calls, VIP buyer groups hoard product, and the inventory is ultimately cleared in overseas markets.
• Pricing rests on a promise of scarcity that cannot be reversed. Numbered cards—1-of-1s and 1-of-3s—hold their value because the issuer has promised never to reprint them; Pokémon’s systemic risk is that the company “will definitely print more once demand takes off,” while sports cards face player scandals and injuries. The conclusion: old cards are more resilient—“don’t look for anything from the past 5 years”; newer cards are more volatile, while top-tier numbered cards may offer better investment value.
• The best example is 1,510 China-exclusive Mew cards. Buyers had to complete 15 matches at 3 gyms to qualify for a draw; the cards sold for RMB10K-RMB20K early this year, and now buyers will pay RMB80K sight unseen, with high-grade copies reaching RMB200K. The formula is a major IP character plus regional exclusivity plus a disclosed print run. Da Bai’s personal allocation: “Other people save houses and gold bars; I save Pokémon for my son.”
• Grading companies make money while they sleep. Grading provides authenticity signaling while manufacturing a second layer of scarcity—30 PSA 10s out of 10K SSRs means “you’re effectively one of 30.” A 10 can sell for 2-3x an ordinary copy; grading fees are tied to card value and can run into the thousands or tens of thousands, with separate prices for 10-day and 50-day service. Cards worth less than a few thousand yuan generally do not need grading.
• CardFun’s ceiling is cultural, not industrial capacity. Vincent’s criticism is that CardFun “moves IP into mature production channels”; “today My Little Pony makes me money, tomorrow it’s Eggy Party.” The products look more like souvenirs, while its channels follow fast-moving-consumer-goods logic and miss the spending power gap between upper-primary school and university, when many consumers are buying Pop Mart. China still has no card game recognized overseas; if the League of Legends card game breaks through, it would be “the first shot fired overseas by Chinese card games.”
• Newcomers should follow 3 rules. Invest only in themes you genuinely like—“If you don’t like anything, don’t do this…go invest in gold”; buy at a fair price and avoid anything already trading at a premium; consider sealed product—“Schrödinger’s card: once you open it, the wave function collapses.” Annual boxes, first editions, and commemorative gift boxes are all relatively attractive sealed assets. For entry-level research, start with a physical store: “Get your legs moving first.”

Deep dive

1. From Cigarette-Pack Inserts to $10M+: A Century of Trading-Card Appreciation

• The opening anchor points: a one-of-one Michael Jordan–Kobe Bryant dual-logo, dual-autograph card set a sports-card record at $12.93M this August; Logan Paul’s PSA 10 Illustrator Pikachu sold for $5.275M, setting a private-auction record for Pokémon in 2022. Trading cards originated as cigarette-pack inserts in the United States in the 1880s; in 1993, Wizards of the Coast’s Magic: The Gathering became the first trading card game.
• Guest researcher Mahua supplied the generational shorthand: “People born in the ’80s traded stocks, those born in the ’90s traded crypto, those born in the ’00s traded sneakers—and after 2020, everyone switched to cards.” The central question of this episode is how cards became investment assets, and whether they can become young people’s first pot of gold.

2. CCG vs. TCG: A Century of Collecting, 30 Years of Competitive Play

• The basic distinction: CCGs, or collectible card games, have more than a century of history and resemble Raccoon snack cards or stamps, with limited runs built around celebrities and cultural phenomena. TCGs, or trading card games, are just over 30 years old; their defining feature is adding game rules and organized tournaments to collecting, which also created adjacent businesses such as card shops.
• TCG “masterpiece” products, such as Magic’s Secret Lair, do not abandon playability. Players joke that “Wizards finally started selling art,” but the products are fundamentally a combination of artistic collectible value and tournament functionality—players use them to “show their personality.”

3. Why Pokémon Leads the Big 3: Short, Round, Cute, Q-Style—and 70% Operations

• Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and Magic became the Big 3 because they have been around long enough; the earliest Pokémon cards and Magic cards even came from the same company. Pokémon won because it is family-friendly and cross-generational, while Magic skews older and Yu-Gi-Oh! toward manga and anime fans; its merchandise ecosystem is ubiquitous, and it has benefited from promotion at the Japanese government level. The IP’s visual language also matters: as with Disney making Mickey and Donald instantly recognizable, “animal characters are easier to popularize than human characters.” Magic did not introduce planeswalkers until after 2000, and its characters arrived late and in more realistic human proportions.
• Vincent’s warning to imitators: “Don’t think you can replicate the TCG path.” His formula is worth remembering: “IP may account for 20%, gameplay mechanics 10%, and operations 70%.” Operations means tournament structures, communities, and long-term relationships with target users. “IP is not the entire key to a game’s success.”

4. The Distinct Logic of Sports Cards: Real-World Emotion and Historical Memory

• Sports cards and TCGs represent “the difference between the real world and the two-dimensional world.” The spending power and capital sophistication around major sports in Europe and the United States operate on an entirely different scale. The core product is the emotional value of a living person: following a player from rookie season to superstar. The industry’s phrase captures it: “Sports cards record history, while eventually becoming history themselves.”
• High prices often come from accidents of provenance: jersey cards and floor cards let collectors “touch that moment,” while extreme cuts such as dual-logo cards create true trophy assets. But real people also introduce a flood of variables: injuries, trades, tactical roles, and the strength of opponents. “There are too many factors determining the value of a sports card.”

5. The Pricing Core: Numbered Cards and the Promise of No Reprints

• The numbering convention is straightforward: a 1-of-1 is globally unique; a 1-of-3 is one of 3 copies, with the numerator and denominator printed directly on the card. These are “even more elite than SSRs.” Numbered cards hold their value because the issuer has promised not to reprint them. The One Ring 1-of-1 is the most famous example; Magic’s card-pool listings similarly guarantee that certain cards will not be reproduced, sending old-card prices sharply higher.
• The contrast is risk. Pokémon is “a company that sells product”: once demand spikes, it can print more, making additional supply a systemic risk. Sports cards repeatedly use the same player’s image across series and brands, diluting ordinary-card value. Hence, the older the card, the greater its potential investment value; among newer cards, top-tier numbered issues may be the better investments.

6. How Cards Became Investments: Short Video, Pandemic Unboxings, and Musical Chairs

• Da Bai’s sociological explanation is that every generation has its own speculative asset: antiques, calligraphy, paintings, and stamps in the last century; blind boxes, designer toys, and sneakers among today’s young people. The catalysts that turned cards into a cultural phenomenon were short-form video and the pandemic. Livestreamed box breaks dismantled information barriers, and sports-card circles that had previously operated in private groups became public. “The domestic market is large enough, and this thing might even make you rich.”
• His most candid characterization: “To put it directly, trading cards are now a bit like a game of musical chairs. As long as you’re not the last one in, you can make some money—but every flower has its season.”

7. Coordinated Speculation Is Out in the Open: Market Control, Information Gaps, and Banned Lists

• The arithmetic of control is simple: pull one card from a 1-of-3 and buy the other 2; “then you’re the only person in the world who has it, and whatever price you say it is, that’s what it is.” A shipment contains 5K boxes: “If you can control 2K of them, aren’t you the one calling the shots?” The alliances coordinating inventory are now “clear and completely public”—YouTubers and short-video creators issue calls like stock commentators, while followers and VIP buyer groups hoard product. The cards may ultimately be cleared in international markets, so investors should not focus only on China.
• Two examples of information asymmetry: Kevin Durant’s card prices fell when he was hospitalized with an injury, while some buyers kept accumulating because “they knew the injury was fine.” In TCGs, expensive cards may suddenly be dumped cheaply because “the seller knows the card will be banned in a few days.” Banned lists are published on a fixed schedule; cards used by everyone in the dominant format face elevated ban risk, and experienced traders sell near the announcement window because they built positions at lower levels and “don’t wait for it to rise further.”
• The commercial logic behind bans is straightforward: publishers do not want a metagame where 7 of 8 top players use the same deck. “A hundred flowers blooming and countering one another” sells a wider range of cards, bringing the discussion back to the idea that operations account for 70%.

8. Small-Scale Value Investing for TCG Players: How a RMB5 Card Becomes RMB30

• The obvious strong cards will not be cheap. The opportunity is to find cards that are “still fairly cheap but may have a chance.” When previews for a new set reveal a supporting card or combo, a card bought for RMB1-RMB2 can rise to RMB20-RMB30. “What if you buy 100 of them, or 1,000?” The analogy is a talent agency scouting trainees.
• The positioning should remain honest: this is a small investment strategy for players, with positions worth only a few thousand yuan. Doubling on paper matters because it deepens understanding of the game and creates a sense of accomplishment: “Nobody else wanted it, but I did… I bought it for RMB5 and sold it for RMB30 a few days later. The satisfaction is huge.” Both guests stressed that this is a different game from chasing a single card worth tens of thousands; the latter requires “a big heart and deep pockets.”

9. Sports Cards as an Amateur Scout’s Game: Wembanyama, Flagg, and Haliburton

• The rookie logic is that the best cards each year are rookies: “They’re all blank slates.” Victor Wembanyama was an exception of Wembanyama’s scale—5 or 6 teams were tanking 2-3 years early to “collect the pieces” for him. This year it is Cooper Flagg; next year will probably be the Boozer brothers. The reverse example was last year’s weak draft: Risacher and Sarr “still haven’t broken out,” and not a single rookie card bought last year has risen so far.
• Vincent’s favorite draft call came years ago, when he told a friend not to hoard RJ Barrett cards and said he liked a rookie named Tyrese Haliburton. Haliburton went from a mid-first-round backup to a starting star with surging numbers; after paying tribute to Reggie Miller’s choke gesture in the playoffs, he was dubbed “the magical Harry Potter,” and his card prices climbed. The appeal is that “you get to play scout,” but market signals matter: Jordan Poole went to Washington and “shot until he smoked,” yet his cards still might not rise. “Don’t follow a purely manufactured hype cycle.”
• Da Bai’s self-deprecating counterexample—he does not understand the NBA—was: “My strategy is to buy every new player this year and bet that one breaks out.” The studio immediately shot back: “You deserve to go broke.” The lazy route is to buy only established superstars: “I only buy LeBron. I only buy Jordan. Less to worry about.”

10. What a Good Asset Looks Like: Major IP + Exclusivity + Age—the 1,510-Mew Case

• For people unwilling to do deep research, the formula is to find the best cards in a series. The IP character must be instantly recognizable—Pikachu, Mew, Gengar, Psyduck—because educating a buyer on who the character is takes a long time when it comes time to sell. Add regional exclusivity: a card released only in Japan carries a natural premium in China, while a China-exclusive card carries a natural premium internationally.
• The year’s best example is the 1,510-card China-exclusive Mew. Buyers had to complete 15 matches at 3 gyms to qualify for the draw. The cards sold for RMB10K-RMB20K early in the year; now, “if you just send it to me, I’ll give you RMB80K without even looking at what card is inside.” A high grade can take the value to RMB200K. A clearly disclosed global limit, attractive artwork, and Mew make it “a good asset.”
• The choice between old and new is clear: “Don’t look for anything from the past 5 years; old cards hold up better.” Da Bai explains the reprint risk directly: 1,510 cards were released this year, but “I never said whether they’ll release more next year, did I? That’s a major risk.” His ultimate holding: “Other people save houses and gold bars; you save Pokémon for your son… those things will always exist in abundance, but these cards might disappear.”

11. Grading Is a License to Print Money: Authenticity Signaling and Manufactured Scarcity

• The biggest risk in secondary trading is counterfeiting. Some grading companies explicitly say they do not authenticate, but the certification effect is real. More importantly, grading further subdivides the value of the same card: 30 10s out of 10K SSRs means “you’re effectively one of 30.” Collectors want the card at the ceiling; if they own a 9.5 and see someone else with a 10, “they’ll feel dissatisfied.” A 10 can be worth 2-3x an ordinary-condition copy.
• The operating threshold is practical: cards worth less than a few thousand yuan do not need grading. First estimate the grade yourself by checking borders, edge damage, white spots, print lines, fingerprints, and rough cuts; submit only if you think it has a shot at a 10. Fees are tied to card value and can run into the thousands or tens of thousands. Ten-day and 50-day service cost different amounts, “like express access versus a normal queue,” and the card’s price may have changed by the time the 50-day result arrives. Grading companies “make money while they sleep”; even antique-coin graders such as Poly and BaoCui have entered the market, while international firms have opened in Shanghai. “Shanghai is effectively China’s card capital,” in part because its anime and gaming culture is strong. Hongjun speculates that the city’s large population of stock investors may also make people more attuned to market opportunities.

12. Two Owners’ Confessions: The Pure-Fan Camp, a Selling Lesson, and “Pokémon Is an Open Secret”

• The ROI question exposed a split. Vincent says he does not collect purely for investment: he buys cards to use, and when he owns sports cards or Magic cards, “I just like them, so I don’t sell. I never look at the price.” He then qualified that position: “It’s not that I never sell; the price just hasn’t been high enough. If the price is high enough, anything can go.” There are cautionary tales too: one expert hoarded 50 copies of the same card, only to be left holding the bag when the ban list came out.
• Da Bai’s most useful post-mortem concerns last year’s Pokémon downturn, when dealer liquidation coincided with China lagging overseas release schedules and re-releasing weak cards already proven abroad: “I knew they had no future, so why was I buying them?” He believes he may have sold his best cards at a historic low—“I may have sold them at RMB200, and now they’re worth RMB2,000.” His lesson: “I underestimated this IP at the time… If the market gets bad again, I’ll keep going. I’ll adjust my buying strategy rather than abandon the sector.” This year, Pokémon recovered through misprinted packaging, China-exclusive cards, tournament operations, and gift boxes.
• Da Bai’s industry-level view is that “Pokémon is an open secret”: cards are a tool for keeping the IP alive among a new generation of young Chinese consumers. “Whether I make money from it is beside the point.” For card shops, Pokémon is the most profitable project; the best time slots, seats, and resources go to it. “How are your other card games supposed to compete with me?” One related lesson: single-card sales are “hard work,” with returns topping out at 50% while leaving the seller with cards rather than cash and tying up inventory. Their shop simply stopped doing it.

13. CardFun’s Ceiling and the “First Shot” for Chinese Card Games Going Overseas

• Hongjun observed that CardFun’s prospectus shows enormous scale, yet the company has not created the secondary-market effect seen with Pokémon or Magic. Vincent’s diagnosis is that low consumer age is only the surface issue; the deeper problem is “moving IP into mature production channels”: “Today My Little Pony makes me money; tomorrow it’s Eggy Party… It has no independent understanding of the culture.” The NBA cards sold during the National Day holiday—RMB10 or RMB20 per pack—still felt “more like souvenirs or picture cards.” The channels also follow fast-moving-consumer-goods logic and miss the spending-power gap between fifth- and sixth-graders and university students: “That segment is at Pop Mart.” He still credits CardFun with “laying the mass-market foundation”; once that foundation exists, deeper products will find an audience.
• The overseas verdict is blunt: “As of now, China has no Chinese card game that has been recognized abroad.” CardFun’s US product launched only in October and had been out for less than a month, so it needs time. The real opportunity is the League of Legends card game, which is scheduled for overseas release. “If it breaks through, it will be the first shot fired overseas by Chinese card games,” because League of Legends has a global audience.
• For new entrants, only one link in the chain remains open: IP. The printing barrier is surprisingly high—equipment comes from German and Japanese manufacturers, paper is imported, and many printers originally produced Apple packaging. Distribution is concentrated among agents such as CardFun, Pop Mart, and Miniso, making it difficult to break in. Most new players therefore focus only on monetizing IP: “Just sell it to the card companies.”

14. Advice for New Entrants: Like It First, Talk Money Later

• The shared starting point is: “Choose a card to invest in that you genuinely like. If you don’t have that, invest in gold.” Genuine enthusiasm provides the emotional value needed to “get through the volatility.” The key is the growth of the market as a whole, not one card: “The more people in the market, the more people there are to catch the flower.” As for following card reviewers’ calls: “If you believe them, that just means you’re still young.” Many are looking for bagholders or making money on the spread between your grading fee and theirs.
• Vincent’s entry thesis is simple: “I don’t want to be a gatekeeper… The threshold for a physical store isn’t that high. You can just push the door open and walk in.” Cards are “a very human business,” built around exchanges between people and playing together. “If everything is digital and everything comes through short video, you might as well speculate on something else.” His conclusion: “Get your legs moving first.”
• Da Bai’s practical add-ons: Before investing, ask yourself “who you’ll eventually sell this to.” Consider sealed product: “Schrödinger’s card—once you open it, the wave function collapses; unopened, everything remains possible.” Annual boxes, first editions, and commemorative gift boxes are relatively attractive sealed assets. The final rule is to buy at a fair price: “If it’s already trading at a premium, don’t touch it.” If you acquired something at retail, even a fall back to retail means “you haven’t lost money.”