Gotta Catch ‘Em All? Tokenized Pokémon Cards Are Exploding Right Now

Tokenized Pokémon cards are seeing renewed interest lately, partly due to the recent debut of a token for a Solana-based project called Collector Crypt.

Like several other projects, Collector Crypt offers customers "packs" that contain NFTs, which can be redeemed for physical trading cards that are graded and stored by third-parties. The project also operates a marketplace for connecting buyers and sellers.

The project conducted a presale for its CARDS token on Solana using the protocol Metaplex, and its market cap jumped to a peak of $85 million on Wednesday from $23 million a day before, according to crypto data provider CoinGecko. CARDS' market cap recently stood at $74 million.

Although the token’s price has increased 210% over the past day to $0.19, a warning provided by CoinGecko on behalf of Rugcheck.xyz stated that the token’s creator can make unrestricted changes to its supply, and among other things, disable selling.

On an FAQ page, Collector Crypt said it will provide details on how CARDS will be integrated into its products and services in the weeks following the token’s debut. On X, the firm said "100% of net funds" will go toward purchasing actual Pokémon cards for its ecosystem.

Decrypt reached out to Collector Crypt for clarification and comment, but did not immediately receive a response.

Collector Crypt says its most popular product is a digital gacha machine. Resembling loot boxes in video games, the service provides a user with a random NFT that could be tied to a "legendary" Pokémon card, but is more likely to be "uncommon."

The upshot is that Collector Crypt provides each gacha customer with a buyback offer that lets them exchange the NFT for 90% of the card's resale value, as determined via eBay and other platforms. The project said on X in late August that its gacha app has generated $70 million in sales.

There are currently more than 18,000 Pokémon cards listed on Collector Crypt’s website, but it is far from the only place that people can find digital representations of Pokémon cards.

On Wednesday, an NFT tied to a 2002 Snorlax card was among several that were listed for over $1,000 on marketplace Courtyard. And on Phygitals, someone pulled an NFT tied to a 1999 Raticate card from the marketplace’s "claw machine" game.

Courtyard debuted on the Ethereum scaling network Polygon in 2021, and more than 3 million trading cards have been "minted" as NFTs through its platform, according to a Dune dashboard. In addition to Pokémon, Courtyard supports tokenized collectibles from various sports.

In August, Courtyard generated $78 million worth of secondary sales volume on Pokémon NFTs, its best month on record, according to a separate Dune dashboard.

Tokenized Pokémon cards could theoretically be leveraged as collateral in decentralized finance, or DeFi, but the practice is not commonplace.

In the past, Collector Crypt has teased the ability for users to lend their NFTs. And on Wednesday, there were glimmers of other experimentation.

First it was football. Then it was football (for Americans). Now it appears that someone may be working on a project that blends crypto trading and Pokémon, in a similar way to Football.fun and Pigskin.fun, according to an image shared by Phygitals on X.

A screenshot of Phygitals' platform showed a "Pokécoin Market," where various Pokémon appeared to have their own corresponding cryptocurrencies—similar to how those sports games have tokenized top players. A Phygitals spokesperson confirmed to Decrypt that the image represents the mockup of a concept "at the moment."

Will tokenized Pokémon cards be a short-term blip? One analyst thinks the concept has real staying power, likening the boom of tokenized trading card games (or TCGs) to the rise of prediction markets.

"Pokémon and other TCGs are about to have their 'Polymarket moment,'" Danny Nelson, research analyst at crypto asset manager Bitwise, said on X on Wednesday. "[CARDS'] roaring success is putting eyeballs on Collector Crypt and the entire tokenized Pokémon cards market."