The Pokémon card market has evolved from a childhood hobby into a multibillion-dollar alternative asset. Now, blockchain companies are trying to solve one of its biggest problems: making physical collectibles easier to trade.
Pokémon cards are no longer just collectibles.
The market is estimated at $10 billion to $15 billion, with demand spreading from specialist card shops to major retailers. Target reported that trading-card sales rose nearly 70% last year, driven largely by Pokémon, while Walmart’s online marketplace recorded a 200% increase in trading-card sales.
The boom is also visible online.
eBay, one of the largest trading-card marketplaces, recorded more than $2.62 billion in individual card sales in 2025, according to GemRate data. The figure includes sports cards, trading-card games and non-sports cards, rather than Pokémon cards alone.
At the top end of the market, rare cards can command extraordinary prices. Logan Paul’s Pikachu Illustrator card was previously sold for $16.5 million, highlighting the value collectors can place on scarce Pokémon cards.
But as the market expands, another issue is becoming harder to ignore: the infrastructure for trading physical cards has not evolved at the same pace.
Buying and selling a high-value card can be a slow process.
A collector may first send a card to a grading company, wait weeks for authentication and grading, and then list it on a marketplace. Once it sells, the card still needs to be packaged, shipped and delivered to the buyer.
For a market attracting growing interest from investors and collectors, that process can feel outdated.
This is where blockchain enters the picture.
Blockchain companies are exploring ways to connect physical cards with digital ownership.
ATH Labs, the company behind Deadstock, is developing a platform that places professionally graded Pokémon cards in physical storage while representing ownership through digital tokens.
The platform is being tested on Arbitrum and focuses on high-grade cards.
The concept is straightforward: instead of physically moving a card every time it changes hands, the card can remain in secure custody while ownership is transferred digitally. The physical card would only need to move if an owner chooses to redeem it.
Other platforms are exploring similar models. Courtyard, for example, connects digital assets with physical collectibles held in custody.
The broader concept follows the same principle behind real-world asset tokenization: keep the physical asset secure while making ownership easier to transfer digitally.
But there is a major obstacle.
Making a card easier to transfer does not necessarily make it easier to sell.
That is where established marketplaces such as eBay have a significant advantage.
eBay already has a large network of buyers and sellers, along with years of completed transactions that help collectors determine what individual cards are worth.
A new tokenized marketplace has to build that network from the ground up.
This creates a classic chicken-and-egg problem: buyers want marketplaces with plenty of sellers and inventory, while sellers want marketplaces with plenty of buyers.
There is also a pricing challenge. Two Pokémon cards with the same grade can sell for very different prices depending on rarity, provenance, condition details and collector demand.
Blockchain can make Pokémon card ownership easier to transfer, but liquidity remains the bigger challenge. Whether collectors move from established marketplaces to tokenized platforms will determine if blockchain can gain a meaningful role in the market.
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