Grading, buying and selling guide

In 2022, a rare Topps 1952 Mickey Mantle baseball card — one of sports-card collectors’ holiest grails — sold for $12.6 million. Wow, you say, that’s a lot of dough for a thin piece of cardboard, slab of bubblegum not included. 

Well, what do you say about a 1998 Pikachu Illustrator Pokémon card going for $16.5 million earlier this year? If you’re pro wrestler and social media influencer Logan Paul, seller of the item, you say, Not a bad return on the $5.3 million (plus a trade) I paid for it in 2021. 

Those are extreme examples, but a vivid illustration of how TCGs — shorthand for competitive trading card games, led by Pokémon, Magic: The Gathering and Yu-Gi-Oh! — are encroaching on an over-saturated sports-card market as an enticing investment opportunity. Throw in vintage and modern-day non-sports trading cards, depicting historical events and fictional characters ranging from the Civil War to Luke Skywalker, and it’s a whole new ballgame.  

The record $16.5 million Pokémon card sale is drawing fresh attention to a collectibles market where grading, scarcity and authentication can determine whether a card is worth dollars or hundreds of thousands.

“It is one of our fastest-growing categories that we’ve seen and one of the largest contributors to [our] growth over the last number of quarters,” said Adam Ireland, vice president and general manager of collectibles at online marketplace eBay, which also provides authentication and price guides for TCGs and non-sports cards. “From an investment point of view, you start with Pokémon,” he said. “It was the most searchable term within the eBay collectibles environment through the first half of the year.” 

Heritage Auctions, which deals in art, jewelry, coins and many other collectibles, launched a dedicated TCG department six years ago. “Now it’s a $50-million category,” said executive vice president Joe Maddalena. “That’s just TCGs. I’m not talking about Star Wars and any of that stuff,” he said, though he added that non-sports stuff contributed around $10 million to Heritage’s overall sales in 2025, which topped $2.1 billion. 

While buyers can find myriad non-sports cards for less than $10 — almost like investing in penny stocks in hopes of eventually striking gold — Maddalena and Ireland cited some eye-popping sales on their respective platforms. A first-edition Pokémon Charizard card worth $20,000 pre-Covid is now valued by Heritage at $500,000. A Tyler the Great Warrior Yu-Gi-Oh! card shattered records when it was auctioned on eBay for $311,211, while Magic’s Black Lotus card has gone for $500,000 on the site. Heritage sold a 1977 Luke Skywalker card for $687,500 in May. 

Whereas collectability, value and investability of sports cards can rise and fall…