So I was listening to PokeRadar interview Jarvis on his podcast.
At one point they mentioned how it’s possible that digital trading cards will become a thing, mixed with micro transactions and throw in opening packs in seconds, there might be a point where we see people dropping 5-10-20k easily on digital cards.
We already see it and hear stories of gamers dropping 70k in micro transactions on games in Japan or Korea.
How long until we see this in digital collectibles? Not nfts but actual collectibles released by Pokémon or sports cards or Yugioh.
It already happened in PTCGO before Live came out. There was a legitimate online market for Pokemon TCGO collectibles with some items in that game hitting $3000 as well as trading/selling singles for example a Secret Rare Quick Ball went for like $35 back then which was more than the irl Physical card during peak COVID. However I’m pretty sure Nintendo saw the issue and scrapped PTCGO for their new game client PTCGL. Plasma Packs went for like $4-5 each and random packs, random gamestop promo deckboxes went for $150 each it was wild times
What was interesting about PTCGO (and I’ve noted this before in other threads) is that while it was a digital collectible marketplace (nevertheless a poorly optimized one), it was never used that way by collectors.
Cards attained value due to their playability and usefulness in the actual TCG, not their collectible value. It was interesting to see Plasma Storm Shiny Charizard costing 2-3 packs on the trade market, when an uncommon Junk Arm would be triple that.
I personally think Pokemon is so ingrained in physical collecting that digital Pokemon collectibles would largely fail, or never reach anywhere near the levels of the physical cards.
If Pokemon developed a serious MMORPG (e.g., along the lines of the fan-created Pokemon Planet, but better) with a strong community, I could see digital Pokemon collectibles going to the moon.
In the meantime, though, I don’t see why digital trading cards would be highly desirable outside of playability in PTCGO/PTCGL if they are 1-for-1 replicas of the in-person cards. If PTCGL were to develop exclusive cards not available in person and a marketplace for transacting these exclusive cards, then maybe that would be the key.
Anything digital would have to be done this way (for me anyway). I’ll spend a little money on a new car in Rocket League or something like that. Digital collectibles could be worked into some future Pokémon game in the same manner. But if it’s just an asset that you look at like an NFT? No way.
There are already purely digital collectibles in the tens of thousands. Team fortress 2, csgo and roblox all have individual items that have sold in the tens of thousands so clearly its possible. What I feel is most important for it to work is is there an actual popular game people really enjoy. You need that first before you have a successful virtual item trading market.
The closest we have at the moment to valuable digital trading cards is hearthstone but other than that there would need to be a new popular online tcg for there to be valuable digital cards. Could be an online iteration of an established tcgs or an entirely new game like heartstone.
The difference is these digital items have a game attached to them that hundreds of thousands of people play, and will always have a base of ‘usefulness’ that is the foundation of their desirability and rarity.
This was already touched on earlier in the theard but PTCGO was essentially this. It capped out at what it was before being sunsetted, a vaguely popular online client where you could sell “hits” on ebay. There were entire ebay stores (10,000+ sales) dedicated to selling PTCGO cards that were Thanos snapped out of existence by the implementation of Live.
Personally, i think what PTCGO ended up being is about what I expect any “Digital Trading Card” to max out as. Popular among players but the definition of “Mehh” among collectors.
