May 13, 2026
Ebay might have rejected (1) GameStop's (NYSE: GME) takeover bid, but the meme stock retailer is still moving ahead with its somewhat unusual revenue-gathering strategies. The company is riding the wave of Pokémon hysteria, selling presorted packs of cards for as much as $5,000 each.
If you're doing the math at home, that is just under a 100,000% markup on a pack's suggested retail price. It's the sort of gamble that makes Vegas look like a sure thing. But that's not stopping some collectors from rolling the dice.
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There are actually several tiers of these GameStop Power Packs (2). The more you pay, the better the chances that your pack will contain a high-level card, the company says. (There are, however, no guarantees the pack will contain anything of value.) Prices start as low as $25 and, until recently, were capped at $2,500. But after announcing the Ebay bid, GameStop began offering a $5,000 option.
The rewards are significant. Among the cards GameStop says are hidden (3) in the packs are a 1999 Charizard-Holo, valued at more than $68,000; a Mewtwo-Holo from 2006, worth nearly $61,000; and a Vaporeon 2007 Holo card, worth over $60,000.
Buyers can instantly sell back any cards they want to GameStop at 90% of the card's fair market value, minus a 6% selling fee (4). (They can also choose to sell them via Ebay or other methods, likely earning more, but those will take longer for them to receive the funds.)
Hit-to-miss ratio
GameStop hasn't said a lot about the card packs publicly, but on May 9, it paid a YouTube streamer (5) to open packs in a broadcast to promote the collection. All totaled, 60 Power Packs were opened over several hours.
While there were a couple of cards pulled that were worth a notable amount (a $7,000 Rayquaza card being the biggest), the majority of the cards that were drawn were worth less than $100.
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Sustained demand
Pokemon cards have never seen their popularity dim, but they've become almost an analog equivalent of Bitcoin lately. Earlier this year, influencer Logan Paul sold his PSA 10-graded Pikachu Illustrator Pokémon trading card for nearly $16.5 million (6), a record amount. (Paul paid $5.27 million for the card in 2021.)
While the trading card industry, as a whole, has seen price run-ups in the past few years, Pokémon is far and away the industry leader. As of last July, the value of those cards has increased 3,261% (7) in the past 20 years, far surpassing the S&P 500 and most other investment vehicles.
In the 12 months prior to that, the average Pokemon card saw a 46% increase in value.
People are making some extreme trades for the cards too. One collector recently swapped his six-figure Audi R8 supercar for a collection of cards that he valued at over $130,000.
Article Sources
We rely only on vetted sources and credible third-party reporting. For details, see our ethics and guidelines.
The Wall Street Journal (1); GameStop (2),(3),(4); YouTube (5); CNN (6); Fortune (7)
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Chris Morris is a veteran journalist with more than 35 years of experience at many of the internet's biggest news outlets. In addition to his activities as a writer, reporter and editor, Chris is also a frequent panel moderator and speaker at major conferences, including CES and South by Southwest.
