Pokemon fever: People watching the Pikachu parade which is a part of the 2023 Pokemon World Championships in Yokohama. — AFP
DRESSED up and ready for battle, around 10,000 Pokemon fans have descended on Yokohama in Japan this weekend, looking for fun but also collector’s item cards potentially worth serious money.
Since the launch of Pokemon cards in 1996 following the hit computer game of the same name – meaning “pocket monsters” – an astounding 53 billion cards have been printed.
Almost 30 years on, the card game remains hugely popular as contestants take each other on with cards representing the monsters and their different attributes.
The Pokemon World Championships, being held this weekend in Japan for the first time ever, will see the world’s best players of the video and the card game battle it out for cash prizes at an event attended by thousands.
“I have been playing since I was a kid,” Ajay Sridhar, 33, who travelled halfway around the world from New York to attend with his cards, told AFP as he explained why he was hooked.
“It’s just the competition, it’s the community... A lot of my oldest friends I’ve met through Pokemon,” he said.
“It’s kind of like chess, where if you didn’t play chess and you were watching a high-level chess match, you wouldn’t know what was going on,” said Gilbert McLaughlin, 27, from Scotland.
“But once you get to a certain skill level, there is a lot of depth and complexity to it.”
Ranging from Pikachu the mouse to Jigglypuff the balloon, there are now more than 1,000 different Pokemon characters, with new “generations” released every few years.
While they have always been swapped and collected, the cards’ value has exploded in recent years, not just among fans of the game but also among investors with little or no past interest.
The most expensive ever sold was in 2021 when US YouTuber Logan Paul paid – in a Dubai hotel room to a “mystery” seller – US$5.28mil (RM24.2mil) for a supposedly unique, mint-condition “PSA Grade 10 Pikachu”. — AFP
