By Chris Renshaw

I was finding stories for the next Boards & Swords podcast when one story made me stop. Yu-Gi-Oh topped Magic The Gathering in Google search data. Obviously the title is a bit clickbait-y, but it reminded me of back in this past October, when I saw an ICv2 story about the top 25 sealed product on TCGplayer.com. I was very surprised when I looked at the list, and it wasn't because Pokemon had taken the #1 spot. It was because you had to go down to #19 before you got to a Magic: The Gathering sealed product.

Is Magic Dying?

No, it's not. In fact, Hasbro announced that Magic had its best year ever in 2021, even bigger than 2020 which was the previous best selling year. My first thought upon reading these headlines and articles were that maybe most of Magic's sales had come from the popular Arena game, therefore less of its sales were coming from the tabletop game. Yet, drilling down into the specific financial statements from Hasbro, the company specifically calls out that Magic sales were driven primarily from the tabletop game, not digital sales. 

Gotta catch 'em all.

These recent shifts in the CCG market is not Magic "falling" off the charts. I would venture to say that the issue is that Pokemon has "rocketed" itself into the stratosphere. Remember, 2021 was the year that Target and Walmart stopped selling Pokemon cards for a while. There was a period of time where people were fighting each other to get colorful pieces of cardboard with Japanese monsters on them. Considering this was in the first half of 2021 when people were still getting vaccines and in-store events were rare, this was a very unique situation. While I imagine this craze affected Magic as well, we really didn't hear it mentioned as much compared to Pokemon. 

Why?

Why the craze? If we really wanted to trace back this surge, we have to start with 2017. That was the year Pokemon Go was launched, and everyone was playing this game. While most people stopped playing after a month or two, the game had a big impact on The Pokemon Company. Consider the following graph of net profit from 2014-2020, taken from a financial report:

It's hard to look at this graph and not see the impact that Pokemon Go had on the overall company. Whether or not the game is still as popular, it continues to help bring in money. Of course, you have to spend money to make money.

Fast Forward to Logan Paul

In 2020, famous YouTuber Logan Paul opened up a box of Pokemon cards from the first edition of the game. Apparently, he has been a fan of Pokemon cards for a while, spending over 200K on the booster box. Either he started a trend, or made his millions of subscribers aware of how much money these cards could be worth. Almost immediately afterwards, you could see stories of the thousands/millions people were spending on Pokemon cards. A few months later, we see people fighting in Target over packs of cards. It's entirely possible these events aren't as related as they appear, but to me it sounds like those people buying Pokemon boosters in stores were hoping that the newer boxes would be treasure troves as well. Which…it kinda did, because fans of the game couldn't get said new releases.

What's next?

Will this popularity last? I was worried that the Pokemon craze would be a short term fad that would recede as quickly as it happened. Yet, looking at the sales data for TCGPlayer for January 2022, we can see that while Magic is back at #4 on the Top 25, Pokemon holds the #1-3 spots, along with 6 of the Top 10 spots. My theory? All the exposure that Pokemon had in late 2020 moving into 2021 has exposed the card game to the public and brought in new players to the game. I would already argue that as a brand, Pokemon has much more broad appeal than Magic the Gathering, and now fans that might have only played the video/mobile games are checking out the card game. Families looking for new games to play with their children are probably giving the game a shot.

I'll be curious to see in the next few years where Pokemon ends up on the charts. For now, it seems it has become the very best…like no one ever was…

Note: I generally assume I know nothing. So if I've missed something, let me know in the comments. Or let me know on Twitter or Facebook. If you like these types of posts, consider subscribing to our patreon.