Pokemon Trading Card Game's 2025 Hype Train: All Aboard!
Spenser Clark
Every few years, it seems like the Pokémon Trading Card Game (TCG) gains a massive amount of momentum and hysteria. This usually leads to Pokémania with sold out shelves, boxes and singles hitting all-time highs, and more players/collectors entering the hobby. Unlike previous high points though, these last several months have been a little more elusive and confusing for many as to what’s causing it and has led many to ask us repeatedly as to what has caused this hype train to go off the rails and given us thought about what direction we are heading in for the future of the Pokémon TCG market in 2025.
Looking back, it seems for the last decade, there have been several years and moments when the Pokémon TCG has taken off such as 2016, 2021-2022, and now within these last several months and what we believe will be most of 2025 with the current sets out and what sets have been announced for later. Earlier moments of intense interest in the Pokémon TCG space can be explained fairly easy with the launch of Pokémon Go in 2016 coinciding with interest then, or for the much larger boom during the pandemic years of 2021-2022, it was the high level of interest in goods rather than services and particularly the different collectible markets at that time. This particular moment of time for the Pokémon TCG though eclipses both of those moments by far as witnessed by the data shown by Google Trends:
Compared to the other two previous times of higher interest with special consideration for the pandemic years which were considered already to be a pinnacle for the card game then, these last few months have blown both of those out of the water and have understandably led to the confusion and hysteria from long-time fans and collectors in the market that we are seeing today.
Several factors it would seem are at play when it comes to explaining what is going on with the market today. The first one would be the launch of the new Pokémon TCG Pocket app which launched on October 30th, 2024, and led to mass fanfare and adoration. In the two months following its release, it has already amassed 60 million downloads and recently, they announced that fans had opened 40 billion cards:
The numbers don’t lie. People have really enjoyed the idea of a friendlier mobile version of the full-sized TCG game, and it has brought over a fair amount of people who wouldn’t traditionally be involved. Personally, my wife who had never expressed interest in playing the TCG game became a fan along with me and it has led me to become more involved in the full game digitally on their Pokémon TCG Live app. Some of my friends who never collect Pokémon cards have started playing the game daily just to get the experience of cracking packs for the simple enjoyment of it. It has brought a lot of people over to the TCG space, but this isn’t the only thing that explains what has been going on. In a way, it’s a perfect storm made just right for a banner year like 2025 will be.
Following the successful launch of their Pocket app, Pokemon released Surging Sparks on November 8th, 2024 which immediately skyrocketed due to the popularity of the top chase card of the set, a gorgeous terastal Pikachu EX!
This card as of today on January 21st sits at $476.73 market price on TCGplayer and has since launch bounced around $400 to $600. This card along with a few other chase cards has made Surging Sparks a very popular set with booster boxes typically sitting around $240-250 which is $80-90 higher than MSRP! Something that also worked in Pokémon’s favor was that their last two sets, Twilight Masquerade and Stellar Crown, both had been fairly popular sets after the first five sets of the Scarlet & Violet era cards had been priced and sold much lower than MSRP and were usually close to distribution cost for stores at launch. Surging Sparks was sold out everywhere you went and had people starting to get hyped for the trading card game but this with the Pocket app was just the start.
Other factors playing into this was the announcement of the return of a Team Rocket set and Gym Heroes/Challengers style reboot coming later in 2025 and the recently released, Prismatic Evolutions. Anyone who was collecting Pokemon back in the Sword & Shield era remembers one set in particular, Evolving Skies. This set, like Prismatic Evolutions, was all about the Eeveelutions and from it’s launch was incredibly hard to find. A few reprints back then helped lower prices some, but it was a very popular set that today has a single booster box sitting at a market price of $1351.33 on TCGplayer!! It's chase card, Umbreon VMAX (Alternate Art Secret) or Moonbreon as fans call it has always been the most popular card with prices today sitting around $1300+ these days.
Prismatic Evolutions following in its footsteps focuses on the Eeveelutions with its top hit being a terastal Umbreon EX or Moonbreon again. Umbreon, Eevee, and other Eeveelutions have turned out to be as popular these days as fan favorites, Pikachu, Charizard, Mewtwo, and the original three Kanto starters, Bulbasaur, Squirtle, and Charmander. History is repeating itself with this set already hitting high prices, unavailable for most fans to access, and both stores and distributors are out and was a heavily allocated set for stores.
These sets alone coinciding with another popular Pokémon mobile app have led to a lot of hype along with the product being incredibly hard to source for fans and stores alike. This has already to a hysteria of sorts with fights breaking out at popular chains like Sam’s Club and Costco and the news media picking up on it and reporting stories about this. It is only set to get worse with the release of the newest sets revolving around Team Rocket and Gym Heroes revisiting its past and Pokémon doing a great job of fanservice with popular Pokémon. Pokemon is aware of what is going on in the community and issued this statement just recently:
Not only are these sets going to cause more hysteria, but Pokémon also has their new game, Pokémon Legends Z-A coming out on Nintendo Switch, and is currently in McDonald’s right now with a promotion revolving around the trading card game with Mighty Kids Meals having exclusive Pokémon cards. 2025 is already shaping up to be a banner year for Pokémon and like in the past, Pokémon knows how to keep turning up the heat so that fans stay excited. But as far as helping fans and enthusiasts, they have to be careful moving forward based on previous actions they have taken such as massive reprints. During the pandemic when the fever reached its highest points, Pokémon had printed around 25% of all cards ever printed within those two years or so which cratered some demand and prices. It did cool the market, but caused prices to come down too much and can end up leaving a lot of excess product laying around. I will admit, it is a hard job that they have ahead of them. Getting the print run for any game is always very hard and no matter what you do, you must keep players and collectors both happy. Hopefully they will give generous reprints of any of their hottest sets so that they can keep the prices of those sets as close to MSRP or better for a reasonable amount of time before they skyrocket again.
Regardless, it’s always a great feeling to see so many people come into the hobby and enjoy themselves. Whether you’re a collector, a player, or even an investor, we are always grateful to see the Pokémon TCG grow and expand to new heights. Cheers to 2025 and as always, good luck on your pulls!
Source(s): https://press.pokemon.com/en/Pokemon-Trading-Card-Game-Pocket-Celebrates-60-Million-Downloads-Since
