By: Ming Sun

“Magic: The Gathering” is a tabletop card game that had always been obscure until recently. The game got the attention of Post Malone, a famous American pop star, and when he bought a game card from another fan for 2 million dollars, it marked the first time that a Magic card sold for more than a million. This sale has brought Magic up to the level of other card games like Pokémon. Magic is one of the more recent additions to the line of trading card games (TCGs) that are now threatening to overtake sports cards in the trading card industry. And with more new game card releases and celebrity purchases than ever, game cards might replace sports cards as the dominating force in the trading card market.

For some background information, collectibles are graded on a scale of 1 to 10 based on visual appearance and condition (10 being the highest score) before they can be put up for auction (NPR). Just last month, the number of TCG cards graded by Professional Sports Authenticator, which hosts a majority of the card grading market, nearly overtook sports cards with 514,000 TCG cards and 528,000 sports cards, according to data compiled by GemRate, a company that tracks grading activities (NPR).

One main reason for the growth in TCG cards is that its biggest buyers are all high-profile influencers and celebrities. Aside from the purchase made by Post Malone, Logan Paul, a WWE wrestler with a YouTube following of 23 million people, bought a rare Pikachu card for a whopping $5.275 million. That’s the second most expensive trading card of any category, the first being a mint-condition Mickey Mantle baseball card that was sold at $12.6 million (NPR). Paul flaunted his purchase by encasing the card in a diamond-encrusted necklace at his boxing match against Floyd Mayweather, drawing more attention to the card. According to Ryan Stuczynski, GemRate’s founder, these celebrities are turning game trading cards from a childish hobby to “something that’s a little bit culturally meaningful” (NPR).

All this growth in the TCG industry carries its risks, however. The rise in the game card’s popularity is akin to that of an economic bubble, like the one that blew and caused the Great Depression. The fast pace at which new collectible Magic cards are already interrupting the community that enjoyed playing the game rather than collecting them. “The quantity of new cards, the confusion of a billion different arts for each card, and the complexity creep on cards that do 17 different things have all made it hard for me to keep up with [Magic: The Gathering]” one Reddit user wrote (NPR).

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