Its Just a Phase
By: Andrew Ferguson
I recently saw a post on Instagram listing the top 10 least attractive hobbies for men. Naturally, I checked most of the boxes, so my wife clearly has incredible taste. Good thing I’m at least funny. But I know I’m not the only one. Here’s the list:
● Playing video games (check)
● Collecting cards/Pokémon (you’ll see why we’re here soon enough)
● Magic tricks (Thankfully I’m not that lame, but I do know one really good one, so come
find me at a party)
● Online trolling (Who doesn’t after a few on a Friday night?)
● Gambling (Yep. Moving on.)
● Drinking (-__-)
● Building model trains (Not sure how this made the list because I literally don’t know anyone who does this, and even I think it’s not attractive)
● Taxidermy (Relating to hunters and guys with deer antlers on their walls. I’m not a hunter, so there’s one point for me. Yay!)
● Comic book collecting (NERDS!)
● Bird watching (I mean, why not? Have you ever been mesmerized by a Colorado Kirtland's Warbler peacefully eating from the bird feeder in your backyard? It’s
exhilarating.)
Be honest, we all check at least a few of these boxes, so go give your old lady a big smooch and remind her how lucky you feel that she sticks around and puts up with you. But a whopping 90% of women apparently aren’t attracted to men who play video games, which was number one on the list. Wild that women aren’t impressed by me yelling at a 9-year-old in Tupelo, Mississippi because he keeps spawn-killing me. Oh, I remember you, Xx_Professor_Power825_xX. I know you were cheating and I can prove it.
But number two on the list is the reason I’m here in the first place: collecting Pokémon cards. We all did this as kids, right? How many times have you heard someone say, “Man, I need to see if my parents still have my collection in an old binder somewhere”? I’ve heard it dozens of times over the past six years. And the reason it keeps coming up in grown-men-in-our-30s conversations is because the hobby has never been crazier—or more valuable. The Pokémon brand generates about $4.5 billion annually in the United States. You could buy the New York Jets for that amount of money... buuuuut I think I’d rather have a first edition, holographic, shadowless Charizard (look it up) than own that trash organization and watch my defense forget how to defense and not force one interception over an entire season. Anyway, about $1.5 billion of that comes from the cards alone. Seems like a lot of money for kids to be spending, right? Well, you wouldn’t be entirely wrong because the hobby has evolved from a children’s collectible into grown men stomping through crowds on release dates. It honestly resembles the old days when Jordan shoes would drop at the mall and chaos would erupt. The only difference is these crowds smell more like Hot Pockets than grape Swishers.
So what’s so appealing about having a great card collection as an adult? Who are you showing this off to that actually gives a hoot? At least with shoes you can wear them and look fly. Well, it’s all about the value of the cards. And what if I told you some cards have delivered better and faster returns than major U.S. stocks? Interested yet? Ready to call Mom and have her search the attic for that long-lost binder? I recently found some of my old cards and got them properly cataloged. Now I’m hooked, and I’m basically trampling over groups of kids at Target trying to get mine. Obviously joking... mostly. But if you want to know how much my collection is worth, I’ll put it this way: one of my two nieces is going to college for free. Whichever one I decide is smarter—and honestly, I already think I know which one it is. So where do you even buy cards these days?
That’s the thing: they’re hard to find at retail price because scalpers have completely taken over the industry. The cards themselves aren’t very expensive—roughly $4.99 for a pack of 10 cards. But scalpers will wipe an entire shelf clean at Target and resell packs for $12 or more on the secondary market. Target tries to limit how many people can buy, but groups of adult scalpers and die-hard collectors roll in together and buy everything the second the shelves are stocked. Sorry, little Timmy, who genuinely just wanted to collect cards and play the game. Oh yeah, there’s technically an actual game behind the cards, but nobody really cares about that. And speaking of secondary markets, card shops have exploded around the country over the last five years. Seems like an easy solution to finding and buying them, right? Wrong. They usually set the tone for the market too, which means you’re still buying $5 packs for $12. You may be wondering why there’s suddenly so much money flooding into this hobby. Simple: it’s basically modern-day scratch-offs. That $4.99 pack could contain a $2,000 card. The difference is instead of throwing away a losing ticket, you’re left with boxes and boxes of “bulk,” as they call it. Every three months Pokémon releases a new set, constantly pumping out fresh material. Older sets eventually stop printing after a year or so, making them harder to find—and much more expensive. Now let’s go extreme with this hobby.
In 1999, Wizards of the Coast released Pokemon’s first edition Base Set shadowless packs. These are obviously no longer in production, but a single unopened ack can now be worth up to $35,000. Why would anyone spend that kind of money on one pack in 2026? Because the Charizard I mentioned earlier comes from that set. It’s incredibly rare, and if you somehow pull one in perfect condition, it can be worth around $550,000. “MOM, GET UP TO THE ATTIC RIGHT NOW!!!”
Now, it’s doubtful you have anything quite that valuable sitting up there being walked over by rats and collecting Hantavirus, but the numbers are real, and you genuinely could be sitting on a little goldmine from your childhood. So next time your girl says your hobby “isn’t attractive,” show her that collection value and she just might turn into Pokémon index number 007.
