Let me sound like an previous for a second.
I keep in mind within the late ’90s and early ’00s, accumulating Pokemon playing cards was an informal interest. You’d go to your native brick-and-mortar retailer with the cash you created from mowing the garden or no matter, drop possibly $10 on a few packs, rip them open, then go to your center faculty to commerce playing cards with your folks. Nobody knew easy methods to really play the sport; the playing cards simply seemed cool, and everybody needed one thing. Me? I needed a holographic Charizard, and I’d’ve traded actually something to get my fingers on such a rarity.
It was so low-key again within the day. Saying that grosses me out, as I sound like a Boomer or Gen Xer, however it’s true: Amassing Pokemon playing cards wasn’t that severe, and we did not put a lot inventory within the playing cards, stuffing them in luggage or pockets and watching them flip up in washing machines.
Now? Issues are completely completely different. You possibly can’t simply acquire Pokemon playing cards as a hobbyist anymore. You have to combat with scalpers trying to make a fast buck off nostalgia, in addition to the youngsters who’re both moving into the TCG for the primary time or hoping to get one thing tradeable for his or her pals. (I do not decry the youngsters. They don’t seem to be at fault.)
There have been loads of incidents involving card accumulating and violence these days. Robbers stole over $100,000 in uncommon playing cards from a California retailer in December 2025. A special set of robbers made off with practically $120,000 in uncommon playing cards at gunpoint in New York in January 2026. Police broke up a chaotic Costco scene over Prismatic Evolutions in April 2026. And extra just lately, a Connecticut man was arrested for assaulting somebody in a Goal after being confronted for exceeding the shop’s restrict for Pokemon card packs, whereas a 72-year-old Ohio man pleaded responsible to utilizing a GPS tracker to stalk a girl stocking Pokemon playing cards.
I get it–and I do not. The playing cards look cool, with fabulous designs on weighty cardstock. Typically there are alternate variations of the identical card which have a fuller design, like a tiny piece of paintings, as an alternative of simply an illustration of the Pokemon that takes up a tiny rectangle. Amassing them for that reason, them being tiny items of paintings, is smart.
I additionally perceive the worth of the playing cards, with a lot of them going for hundreds–if not thousands–of {dollars} on resale websites like eBay. It is an effective way to make some cash on this economic system, particularly in case you have classic playing cards that are not being pressed and printed anymore.
However turning towards violence since you “gotta acquire ’em all” or no matter is foolish at finest and petulant at worst. It is a kids’s interest. That is what all of my pals did in center faculty (regardless that we have been all keen on Yu-Gi-Oh). I get that Pokemon is celebrating 30 years this yr, however there’s completely no motive to resort to violence–like taking pictures someone–over some illustrated cardstock. Apart from, do these individuals even know easy methods to play the Pokemon TCG? I did not (nonetheless do not), and neither did my pals rising up.
That is maybe my foremost takeaway from all of those chaotic and violent incidents. Nobody even is aware of easy methods to play the sport, so why are we taking accumulating so severely? The reply is obvious–money–but what we’re robbing is youngsters’ enjoyment of a interest we barely understood ourselves. When you possibly can solely take one, you need to solely take one. Depart the remaining on your son or daughter. They could be making an attempt to commerce their pals for that one card to finish their assortment, and that is the true pleasure.
