As if the discovery of an unopened, limited edition box of Pokémon cards from 1999 wasn’t newsworthy enough — it just sold at auction last week for $56k.
Let’s take some time to reflect back on how the Pokémon franchise evolved to legendary greatness faster than a Magikarp to a Gyarados.
From the forests of Saffron City…
Created by Satoshi Tajiri in 1995 as a pair of video games for the original Game Boy, Pokémon quickly became a staple for kids of the new millennium.
From trading card mania (over 25.7B cards sold), to a hit anime television show (that aired for 20 years), to Hollywood movies — and of course, Pokémon GO — Pokémon is currently the highest grossing media franchise of all time, bringing in more than $59B in total revenue.
That’s a lot of Pokéballs.
And now, here we are…
Writing about a grown human paying 50 stacks for a box of cards with yellow animals printed on them. See, Pokémon has the perfect mechanism to keep the people coming back.
The gag is, single cards can go for wayyyy more than the entire limited edition box set — which is why people scramble to buy up limited edition box sets in the first place.
In this particular booster, there’s a possibility for the owner to find a Charizard Holo in the box — a card that went for $55k last year on eBay.