The Pokémon trading card market has experienced explosive growth, with estimated values ranging from $10-15 billion according to various market analysts. As reported by multiple sources, this transformation is evident in retail operations, with Costco stores seeing hundreds of customers lined up hours before opening to purchase high-value card boxes. The market has produced record-breaking sales, including Logan Paul's $16.5 million Pikachu Illustrator card sale, which reportedly earned him over $8 million in profit. The buyer was AJ Scaramucci, founder of venture capital firm Solari Capital and son of financier Anthony Scaramucci. Major retailers are responding to the surge, with Target reporting 70% growth in trading card sales and Walmart seeing a 200% jump in online trading card sales, both implementing purchase limits to curb scalping activities.
Blockchain startups are now entering the market with tokenization solutions to address the fragmented trading infrastructure. ATH Labs' Deadstock platform operates on the Arbitrum blockchain, featuring $139 million in volume over 30 days and $48 million in annualized fees. According to the company's co-founder Dominic Jang, the platform aims to tokenize multiple cards rather than individual ones, providing access to a continuously replenished supply pool. Courtyard platform processes $148.2 million in annualized fees with $77.8 million in 30-day volume, while Collector-Crypto generates $15.2 million in annualized fees and $7.4 million in 30-day volume. However, these volumes remain significantly smaller than established marketplaces.
ATH Labs has secured an exclusive agreement with Japan Trading Card Center (JTCC) to access one of the world's largest liquidity streams in the trading card space. As reported by ATH Labs, this partnership grants Deadstock exclusive access to tokenizing JTCC's inventory and sourcing network. JTCC reportedly booked about ₹2.4 billion yen in profit for the period from December 2024 to November 2025 and had total assets of ₹6.9 billion yen, according to publicly available documentation. According to ATH Labs' co-founder Dominic Jang, JTCC's scale gives the company access to a continuously replenished pool of cards that would be difficult for a new Western platform to replicate. The company argues that access to Japan's dense ecosystem of specialist card stores allows sourcing inventory closer to the source rather than competing for cards that have already passed through several layers of dealers in Western markets.
The trading card market has significantly outperformed traditional assets this year, with Pokémon cards rising 28% compared to the S&P 500's 13% gain and bitcoin's 29% decline. According to Kovoy VC's $13 billion market valuation estimate for 2024 and Mordor Intelligence's $15 billion projection for 2026, the market continues expanding beyond its traditional hobby-store origins. However, the transition from physical to digital trading faces practical challenges, as TCGCharts estimates the market cap of graded cards at approximately $10.8 billion. ATH Labs' ultimate goal is to make blockchain settlement technology invisible to users, allowing collectors to buy, hold, sell, or redeem cards without thinking about underlying settlement processes. The company argues that traditional marketplaces carry their own issues, including shipping costs, marketplace fees, and authentication concerns that tokenized platforms can address.
