It's hard to look at this graph and not see the impact that Pokemon Go had on the overall company. Consider the following graph of net profit from 2014-2020, taken from a financial report: While most people stopped playing after a month or two, the game had a big impact on The Pokemon Company. That was the year Pokemon Go was launched, and everyone was playing this game. Why the craze? If we really wanted to trace back this surge, we have to start with 2017.

While I imagine this craze affected Magic as well, we really didn't hear it mentioned as much compared to Pokemon. Considering this was in the first half of 2021 when people were still getting vaccines and in-store events were rare, this was a very unique situation. There was a period of time where people were fighting each other to get colorful pieces of cardboard with Japanese monsters on them. Remember, 2021 was the year that Target and Walmart stopped selling Pokemon cards for a while. I would venture to say that the issue is that Pokemon has 'rocketed' itself into the stratosphere. In the US, department store Target stopped selling the cards saying it needed to protect its staff from fans (and scalpers) desperate to snap up whatever crumbs of stock were available.These recent shifts in the CCG market is not Magic 'falling' off the charts. The Pokemon Company had to issue a statement saying the high demand and 'global shipping constraints' ( looking at you, Suez Canal) were making it tough for fans to get a hold of cards, and it was printing more as quickly as possible. Cards are such a hot commodity that sets not even released yet are already sold out. If you'd like to go and buy the latest release, forget about it. It's almost impossible to understate how wild the interest in Pokemon cards has been the past year. Here's what's going on, and why you might want to go digging in your closet for that binder of cards you forgot about 20 years ago. From the school yard to high-end auction houses that usually sell Picassos, the cards are everywhere. Like beanie babies, discmans and a Blockbuster video membership card - everyone wanted to be a part of the craze.Īnd like beanie babies and their ilk, they faded out as the world moved on, right? Wrong. In the late 90s, riding the popularity of two wildly successful video games, the first Pokemon cards were released into the world.

Is the pokemon card game still popular