Although I’ve sought out a handful of cards featuring my favorite monsters and characters, I generally only pay casual attention to the Pokémon Trading Card Game. I grew up with a giant cardboard box of old cards under my bed, but as an adult, I can’t imagine putting in half the time or money I did into it as a kid. It just seems like it would be too much hassle, and that’s not to mention everything that happens around the game. When I do hear stories about the TCG, they’re usually stories of controversy. Images of people nearly destroying the Van Gogh Museum in order to get exclusive cards and merchandise to sell online, as well as grown-ass men fighting and camping out for cards outside of GameStops, are seared into my brain. This toxic, predatory side of Pokémon collecting has pushed a lot of people out of the space, as memories of excitement at finding your favorite card have been replaced by stories of scams and robberies. That was how it was for me until fairly recently, when I saw a video from Pokémon vendor @beard_dad_cardz having an extremely sweet interaction with a girl named Sophia at a card show.
As a fan of his streams, Sophia is excited to be at beard_dad_cardz’s booth, and his viewers are so excited about her excitement that they donate so she can get a card she likes. She says she’s a fan of Umbreon and Espeon, and after she finds a card of the dark-type Eeveelution she likes, beard_dad_cardz gives it to her for free. The moment went viral on multiple social media apps and has accumulated over 17.8 million views on TikTok alone.
A lot of Pokémon card vendors have taken up content creation as an extension of their business, and that means several of them livestream from card shows and capture moments like this regularly. You wouldn’t know it from the news, but there’s a lot of kindness, charity, and community in Pokémon cards that often gets drowned out by the worst bad actors. And as the stigma around the space has grown, creators and vendors like Chris Daywalt, the owner of HLD Cards and Collectibles, are trying to combat these notions by putting these moments of kindness on the internet, where people can see them.
“The rise of videos where you’re seeing people scalping Costco for cards or doing things like that, that’s going to happen any time you really shine a spotlight on something, especially something as big as Pokémon,” Daywalt told Kotaku. “When people start hearing money around it, those people are going to come out of the woodwork. They did the same thing to sneakers and to Supreme clothes, video cards, and PSIs, anything else that they feel like they can make a quick dollar on, but I think what makes Pokémon different is the 30 years of community that’s been built around it.”
Daywalt started HLD as a way to connect with his son Henry, whom the shop and channel are named after. Henry returned from a summer camp trip with his first set of Pokémon cards, which led to the father and son bonding over their collections. Daywalt says this ignited a passion in his son to start collecting and gave them a common interest, as Daywalt has been a lifelong TCG player, and grew up playing and trading with others.
“I always used to say ‘I play Magic for the gathering,’ and so I really knew the community part of it before I knew the reselling part of it,” Daywalt said.
What started as an opportunity for Daywalt to pass on his values around taking care of something and finding community quickly became a family business after his brother started making content out of their card show appearances, and his wife started handling other aspects of the business. Daywalt says he’s comfortable sharing this with his son because in his experience, the Pokémon community sticks to the messages of kindness the franchise touts. There are still some bad actors that try to take advantage of others, though, which is why Daywalt doesn’t do “trade-ups,” or card exchanges in which the card the event attendee receives is of greater value than the one they part with, with adults, but will do them with kids.
Promoting those good moments is why a lot of vendors are branching out into content creation. Sure, it’s another extension of the business and also works as viral marketing, but the narrative of bad actors dominating the space has become so prevalent that long-time fans feel protective of Pokémon and the space they’ve cultivated, and want to push back. Aaron Lee, one of the co-founders of Duckbird, grew up watching the Pokémon anime and has memories of waiting for new episodes to premiere on WBTV back in the day. As such, he’s been in the space long enough to have encountered people engaged in shady practices at card shows time and time again. However, he says a lot of these are less common at in-person events than one might think, and he especially experiences them less in his small North Carolina town.
“You’ll see people who you can tell are, like, obviously there to make a quick buck,” Lee told Kotaku. “There will be even kids and adults who are obviously there trying to make money essentially; taking advantage of vendors and whatnot, and have their kids try to do a trade-up challenge to get them a better card. That’s a big one that I’ve seen a lot, and that has come from a lot of influencers or YouTube content creators being able to do that. But if it’s, you know, someone who knows what they’re doing and[is] just trying to take advantage of people, that’s something that’s not so fun.”
For Lee and his partner, “Duck,” trying to make people feel welcome at card shows is important. Lee says that the pair tries to give free stuff to kids who show up, especially if they seem to be in the early days of their own collection journey.
“We kind of do like a rock-paper-scissors game, but we use Poké Balls with different types [of Pokémon], and we give them free packs if they win,” Lee says. “Even if they lose, we still give them free packs. We’ll do coin flips with kids for free, and then even if they lose, we’ll keep flipping until they win. So it’s stuff like that to just make sure that anybody who we feel like is new to the hobby or is genuinely passionate about collecting is able to have a positive experience when they go to a show or if they stop by our stream. Anything to just let them know,
‘Hey, there are still people out there who really enjoy the space and just want to grow the community in the right direction.’”
Welcome to Exp. Share, Kotaku ’s Pokémon column in which we dive deep to explore notable characters, urban legends, communities, and just plain weird quirks from throughout the Pokémon franchise.
Stories of vendors going out of their way to help kids get cards they’re looking for are pretty common at these events. Which is why, despite all the talk of big money in Pokémon these days, a lot of the biggest transactions are completely free.
“I had people who were trying to find a card for a kid who’s looking for, like, a specific Pikachu card,” Lee said. “They’ll tell their buddies and their buddies will tell their buddies, and then the whole show will be searching for a card and bringing it to the kid. Half the time, they give it to the kid for free. It really just depends on where you are and who you talk with, but I would say like 80 to 90 percent of vendors that you see in real life are kind. They go out of their way to help the kid out or help somebody out when they’re looking for something specific. I see a lot of kindness with vendors when, sometimes, you might be trying to trade a card in that might not necessarily move as well. A lot of times, vendors will match the card 100 percent and just give the kid what they want, just to help the kid out. That’s where it starts, when you’re a kid and you don’t really wanna look at this in a monetary way. You just want to collect cards. You can really tell if a kid is just trying to collect cards, you know, versus trying to make some money. And that’s what I like to see.”
Even with all these positive stories, piercing through all the constant reports of crimes and the viral moments showing scalpers acting a fool at major events can feel impossible. When I asked Daywalt what advice he’d give to someone trying to enter the space, he said the average collector and vendor is not going to be making thousands of dollars off these cards, and if you go into the hobby expecting that, you’re likely going to be disappointed.
“If it’s about the money, go trade stocks or work in finance,” Daywalt says. “What I always say to people is that the reason I don’t necessarily worry if the Pokémon market crashes tomorrow is because I’ll look at it as an opportunity to go get all the cards I wanted. They have a value to me outside of what a TCG player says the market value is. Don’t put that pressure on something, you know, buy it because you like it and it’s something that brings you joy intrinsically, not extrinsically, because it could make you some money.”
Lee echoed the sentiment and said that some of the best cards are ones you won’t find selling for three or more figures, and if you aren’t interested in the art or community, there are easier ways to make money.
“We get tons of people coming up asking for particular Pokémon because they want to collect all of that Pokémon,” Lee says. “Then if it’s a less popular Pokémon like Dunsparce, then, you know, the cards aren’t gonna be as expensive, and it makes for a really fun time.”
Daywalt says that even after the time he’s put into buying, selling, and collecting, HLD isn’t paying his family’s bills, and that every dollar they make at these shows is going back into the business. While he admits he does get invested in predicting the market, he encourages people who are hoping to find the golden ticket in a Target booster pack to interrogate whether they’re in it for the right reasons.
“There’s a lot of knowledge and a lot of really sharp people that are already in the space, and you’re not going to catch up to them tomorrow,” Daywalt says. “I don’t care how many YouTube videos you watch or how many articles you read about it. If you want to get into this space, do it because it brings you joy. Do what you like, and make the money a secondary part of it if it’s important to you.”
After talking to vendors and seeing these kinds of wholesome interactions online, I still don’t know that Pokémon card collecting is for me. I have a collection of Raichu and Professor Turo cards on my shelf, and I think that’s probably enough. But after seeing the uptick in Pokémon card scams and content mills over the past few years, it was disheartening for a while to know a series that had brought me so much joy had become a symbol of predatory greed. At the very least, it’s comforting to know that some people are keeping the childlike wonder alive, and that they’re posting reminders of it online.
