Why Pokémon cards are growing faster than your retirement account

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• 00:02

  This is The Indicator from Planet Money.

• 00:13

  I'm Darian Woods.

• 00:14

  And Ricky Mulvey.

• 00:16

  Yep, I'm here to talk about Pokemon cards.

• 00:18

  It's one of the hottest speculative booms right now.

• 00:21

  Card Ladder tracks the sales data of cards,

• 00:23

  and it says that an index of thousands of rare Pokemon cards is up about 170%.

• 00:29

  That's over the last year alone.

• 00:31

  Pokemon cards have become sort of an asset class.

• 00:34

  In other words, something you can invest in, like a stock or a precious metal.

• 00:39

  Fans have always loved the characters and collected the cards, sometimes paying big bucks.

• 00:44

  But now, speculators aren't buying and selling because they love the characters.

• 00:48

  They're chasing rapid price appreciation and media hype.

• 00:52

  And the values of many rare Pokemon cards have held up, at least for now.

• 00:56

  At the same time, gold and the broader stock market have declined over the past couple months.

• 01:01

  Still, parts of this market are walking and cracking like a bubble.

• 01:06

  So we went to the Denver card show to meet the visitors and vendors, those selling into the boom.

• 01:12

  I'm trying to get around $4.75 for it right now.

• 01:16

  And those buying.

• 01:17

  I mean, it's going to hold its value later on.

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