Dozens, then hundreds, of collectors lined up outside a shop in Yongsan, downtown Seoul, long before its 10:30 a.m. opening.
Ten minutes after registration began, 63 groups were already queued on the kiosk tablet, tapping their feet impatiently for the doors to open. Security guards kept the lines in order.
Most in line were young — men and women in roughly equal numbers — though a few were in their 40s, and a handful of foreigners were mixed in. They were all there for the same reason: to buy Pokémon cards at face value before resellers could get to them.
That's no longer a given. A box of VSTAR Universe, a ten-pack product released in January 2023, originally listed for 50,000 won. On Collectory, the price-comparison site most Korean collectors use, it now trades for about 130,000 won — a sign of just how little stock remains.
A manager at the Pokémon Korea shop declined to be interviewed but offered one observation: "It looks like it's only been one or two months that crowds this big have been lining up."
Ask collectors why they queue, and money is rarely the first answer.
"I grew up watching Pokémon, and now that I'm an adult with some financial room, I can finally spend on the memories and characters I loved," said Kim Jun-hyung, 29, who started collecting about three years ago, before the craze took off.
The randomness of a pack, he said, is its own sweet poison: "That dopamine is fun."
For others, the appeal is gentler. "I like cute things, and my girlfriend likes them too, so sitting down together and opening cards just became a habit," said Kim Eun-je, 26.
To see the economics up close, two boxes were bought from resale shops — official stores proved too crowded — opened, and the contents valued.
The cost: about 110,000 won, roughly twice the official retail price of 60,000 won.
Foil and paper cards featuring beloved Pokémon characters turned up, but the payoff was thin: even the rarest pulls, the cards with special illustrations, added up to less than 20,000 won in resale value.
The resale ecosystem runs on a few well-worn habits. Pricing starts with cross-checking sites like Collectory and the trading board of a major Naver café for recent sale prices.
Buying and selling happens across a handful of channels. On Karrot, a neighborhood marketplace app, buyers and sellers haggle and meet in person; on the resale platform Kream and various online malls, cards are shipped by courier.
The risk is the same everywhere. "The scary part of buying secondhand is that the card might be fake, or in bad shape," Kim Jun-hyung said.
Some collectors turn to unofficial card-trading shops for added safety, but the real prize is grading: assessing how well a card's image is centered, whether the edges are free of dings, and how flat and firm the card lies.
Grading costs money, though, so it's a gamble of its own — a poor result can mean an additional loss.
Kim Jun-hyung has sold cards too, though not for profit. "I sold duplicates on Karrot, but it wasn't about the money — I just keep one of each and sell the extras to buy new cards."
The spending adds up regardless: he estimates he's spent more than a million won, not counting smaller purchases he's lost track of.
The anniversary pattern appears to run on roughly a five-year clock.
For the 25th anniversary, Korea got a Golden Box packed with promotional cards and merchandise, originally priced at 200,000 won. Today it trades for about 1.32 million won on platforms like Kream and Karrot — more than six times its original price.
This year's 30th-anniversary product hasn't hit shelves yet; it's slated for a September release, with Amazon already taking preorders.
The mania didn't start in Korea. In the United States, the resale rush has long been a cultural punchline — satirized online, embodied in the archetype of the Pokémon card scalper.
Shoppers queue for Walmart restocks, thefts of card packs make headlines, and stores in Japan and Singapore have started slicing open booster boxes at checkout to deter flippers.
Korea got its own jolt on May 1, when roughly 40,000 people surged into the alleys of Seoul's Seongsu-dong neighborhood chasing a single free Magikarp promotional card, given away during the 30th-anniversary "Pokémon Mega Festa 2026."
The crush was severe enough that police were called before 11 a.m., mobile data in the area went down, and organizers scrapped the giveaway for safety reasons.
The card never officially changed hands that day — yet within hours, listings on the resale platform Bungaejangter ranged from about 100,000 won to nearly 380,000 won.
Why the Buzz?
So why is the wave cresting in Korea now — and is it about money, or about Pikachu?
Collectors point to a flood of newcomers.
"Pokémon turned 30, so there are all these events, and every internet broadcaster is doing Pokémon card content now," Kim Jun-hyung said. "There's been a huge influx of new people, from teens to thirty-somethings."
The generation that grew up on the original 1996 games is now in its 30s and 40s, with disposable income and a soft spot for nostalgia.
Researchers note that nostalgic experiences can genuinely ease anxiety and loneliness, which may explain why people return to childhood hobbies when the world feels unstable.
"Children who loved Pokémon have grown into adults, and it seems they're using these cards as a medium to throw themselves back into what they loved long ago," said Lee Eun-hee, professor emerita of consumer science at Inha University.
"People used to collect things like stamps, but back then there were almost no secondhand marketplaces or platforms to sell them on," she said.
"As the hobbyist base widens and matching buyers to sellers gets easier, this kind of buying and selling becomes more active and far smoother — and that, too, may be why demand has grown."
Analysts describe the appeal as a mix of nostalgia, the hunt for alternative assets, and the simple thrill of the chase — the same combination that drove the sneaker and watch booms of the easy-money years, and one that can reverse just as sharply when liquidity tightens.
Not everyone welcomes the speculators. "I don't think it's good," Kim Jun-hyung said of those flipping cards for profit.
"This was a culture for maniacs, for people who genuinely loved it, and now the people who jumped in for money are driving all the hoarding and the price spikes. It repeats every five years, and I never quite get used to it."
That fragility is the catch. Industry outlooks warn that card spending tracks discretionary income closely, and that a downturn or a bout of inflation could shrink the market fast. The same anxious mood that helps inflate the boom is the one that could eventually puncture it.
For now, Korea is firmly in the inflating phase. The official price of a Korean booster pack rose 50 percent in June, from 1,000 won to 1,500 won, with the company citing higher raw-material and logistics costs. Reprints, when they come, typically arrive three to six months after a shortage hits — small comfort to a buyer staring at an empty shelf peg.
Back in the Yongsan line, the math was simpler than any market chart. The crowds are new, the cards are scarce, and everyone wants them anyway.
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