Gotta Catch ‘Em All: How Scarcity, Sentiment, and Secondary Markets Influence Pokémon TCG Financial Dynamics

Abstract

Collectibles markets have long been the focus of academic literature; however, the Pokémon Trading Card Game (TCG) and other card markets have widely been excluded. This study applies the hedonic pricing framework to the Pokémon TCG, using a novel dataset of 4.77 million observations across 138 sets spanning April 2023 through March 2026. I estimate implicit prices for supply-side scarcity and demand-side characteristics including rarity tier, Pokémon generation, character identity, and card age, and test whether the market exhibits properties consistent with financial asset classes. I find that supply-side scarcity alone does not generate price premiums, Pokémon-specific traits drive value, and the market its structurally segmented between sealed products and raw cards. Additionally, I find evidence consistent with weak-form market efficiency, present in the return-volatility asymmetry that characterizes mature financial asset classes. These findings demonstrate that a market often characterized to be driven by nostalgia, hype, and speculation exhibits an underlying economic structure that mirrors established financial economics and collectibles research. This paper hopes to provide a foundation for future investigations into the Pokémon TCG and other TCG markets.