Re the other thread on this forum "The future of our hobby" I note that todays 'bay has 2, 131, 635 entries listing cards for sale. Of them, 193,335 entries are Popkemon. Thats to all intents and purooses 8% of the total.
Maybe that's the future of our hobby. Maybe I've been collecting the wrong bloody thing for 20 years!

Unless they are completed sales that have sold they could take up 50 % and it would just mean they printed loads that nobody wanted.

Yes, there are two ways you can look at a selective statistic like that. You could say that there is great demand for Pokémon. Or you could say that a lot of people are TRYING to dump massively overproduced gaming cards.

I am quite content to say I never bought a Pokémon card in my life. It's very close to the only card I never bought in my life.

I looked up "Pro Set" on eBay under collectibles, and 68759 items came up. Anyone who knows Pro Set football and basketball cards knows these are the poster-child of valueless, overproduced cards in the late 80's- early 90's. In short, many listings does not equate to quality. Back away from the Picachu....

Like btlfannz noted, the statistics are related to the discussion on base sets. The count is indeed misleading, because Pokemon and many other game-related cards are frequently marketed as single cards, partly due to the ranges of rarities. Every "uncommon" or "rare" card can be listed, as well as international variants, much different for the non-gaming non-sports sets. There's even an optional sub-category for "individual Pokemon cards."

Out of 183,000 completed Pokemon auctions, over 150,000 auctions were for less than $5. And wolfie, only 39,000 of these were "sold" - so a lot of the auctions are single cards that are listed and relisted and relisted again. I wonder how many of these sellers do not combine postage, else I'd think they'd be eaten alive with repeat listing fees.

In the UK, it's more popular than in the US to have a single auction with a "pick list" for heaping handful of single cards, so the stats might be different for local listings on ebay.co.uk.

Some things never fail to fascinate me on Ebay.

I log in pretty much every day and for some time now have noted the same entry in the #1 slot on page one. It advertises a 100card lot of Pokemon.

Closer inspection shows that to date they have sold 14,316 sets of them!!

I 'm stunned that there are that many card collectors out there let alone just Pokemon.

Further, how rare are these cards when at least 14,316 of them exist.

Curiouser and curiouser said Alice

quote:

Originally posted by btlfannz:

Curiouser and curiouser said Alice

Or in some cases, more like dumb and dumber.

Just my two cents. I have a son who is about to be 16. When he was 6 he and his friends were all Pokémon mad for about a year. Around the time he was 9 he gave his Pokémon cards to a younger kid he knew that was Pokémon crazy. My daughter is 5 and one of the things that the kids talk about in her kindergarten class is Pokémon. So for 10 years I know kids are exposed to Pokémon enough that it is part of their lexicon and world view.

There is no question that Pokémon has made a fortune for its creators, both in the gaming cards and general entertainment, and that young children have grown up with those cards for more than the last ten years. But is it right to consider it an adult collectible?

I'm not sure about that. Disney items certainly are and you can make some comparison to that and the comic heroes of the past. Yet as you say, your son gave them to a younger kid and your daughter is still in the right age group. Will either one want to be in the hobby at 30 keeping up a collection of Pokemon? I tend to think they will find better subjects if they are so inclined.

And in the present, I'm not sure who is buying Pokémon off eBay now. I don't think grade school children with credit cards are doing it, so it must be parents at least. I see kids buying packs and sets in my LHS and parents with them usually. I do not see adult collectors, but I guess I might just not be exposed to it. I would like to know if there is a sizeable market for adult Pokémon collectors or if what we see on eBay is just an ever growing pool of childhood passage.

I know I bought packs for my son a decade ago. I never bought a pack for myself. My daughter shows no interest other then Pikachu is cute and she drew a picture of him.

I would never say it is an adult collectible.

To me it is a children's game ,others will disagree.

If people are buying the cards on ebay, they either have a) a collector gotta have them all mentality or b) has a kid that is asking for that particular card.

I was lucky. My son played with the cards he was "dealt" when opening the packs he got and never asked for anything specific.

quote:

Originally posted by barobehere:
I would never say it is an adult collectible.

To me it is a children's game ,others will disagree.

So who are you calling an "adult"? Some people think that non-sports trading cards are a children's game. If so, I cherish my inner child.