TCGs Are Becoming Less About the Game

09/05/2026 •0•0

Constant premium products, exclusive cards, and new rarity systems point to a trend in Trading Card Games: leaning far more on the "Trading" than the "Game" to sustain sales.

Written byRomeu

Translated byEditorial

Revised byJoey | Let

Just like collective behavioral patterns, card games operate on a pendulum. We usually remember this when we discuss game balance: a sequence of overly powerful sets needs to be followed by a cycle of weaker or average releases so that the game doesn't turn into an uncontrolled arms race that ultimately destroys the natural balance of the meta.

This applies to the game's mechanics and power levels and also to the collector's market and how much each product is worth in money. "Premium" cards have existed since the earliest prerelease promos. They eventually became the new objects of desire for an audience that, having come from the iconic world of collectible sports cards, saw in card games the third word in the term "TCG" and focused on it: Trading.

The balance between the "Game" and the "Trading" in the middle of "Card" has existed since the Reserved List controversy, a promising note from Wizards of the Coast to never reprint certain cards in order to preserve their value as collectibles. At the time, this was their response to the controversy surrounding the Chronicles set, which reprinted staples like Blood Moon, made them a lot cheaper, and frustrated those who treated those pieces of colored cardboard as an investment. In 2010, WotC flirted with a loophole in the list and reprinted some cards in promo products. After the negative backlash, they learned never to tamper with that promise again.

MTG has always toyed with the concept of "exclusive" and "collectible." The From the Vault series, which reignited the Reserved List controversies in 2010, flirted with the idea of a collectible product, featuring special foil treatments and premium pricing. Today, Secret Lairs are its spiritual successors. Masterpieces, Expeditions, and Invocations (staples that rarely, and we mean rarely, showed up in boosters during the second half of the 2010s) are as fun as today's Collector Boosters: a way to flirt with the idea of bringing back something disruptive and highly profitable to encourage people to open more boosters and buy even more.

Trading Cards are much older than Card Games as a product. The concept became popular with Topps' collectible cards in the 1950s and was part of the propaganda surrounding the freedom of American consumerism during the Cold War. After all, you were supposedly free to buy whatever you wanted, even something as frivolous as a piece of collectible cardboard. Though card games have existed since the ninth century, the "Game" would only emerge as a large-scale tradable asset in 1993 with Magic: The Gathering, which also pioneered the idea that a card game could be profitable for players and collectors at the same time. MTG has kept that model for three decades now.

What we are seeing today is a bit different. As this niche recently exploded and was inserted into mainstream culture, Trading Card Games (not just MTG) are swinging the pendulum much further toward "Trading" than "Game." Companies are bringing out more premium products, promising major financial returns from opening hundreds of packs, and releasing more promo cards, even entire sets, to a targeted audience with more purchasing power that is willing to pay a premium for exclusivity.

The result is a growing number of products aimed at the "market sphere": the group willing to bet on the manufactured scarcity of these ordinary products. The barrier to entry for those who want to play is becoming bigger because, although this group spends a lot more money, that does not necessarily mean it will be willing to open or even resell the cards they do not want. In countries with devalued currencies, hoarding singles is often even more common, because only a very limited number of consumers can afford to buy dozens or hundreds of boxes to open. In Brazil, stores have to set up a very limited budget for how many boxes of a new set they can open in a quarter.

For instance, Wizards of the Coast recently announced the Mystery Booster Commander Edition. It is only available to MagicCon attendees, but it features new cards, which is a first for the company. They also announced the Zeta Set, the first set in the game that you have to purchase exclusively through Secret Lair's Chaos Vault, featuring 121 reprints with a playtest aesthetic.

Riftbound recently released the T1 Signature Edition bundle, a collaboration between Riot Games and T1, the Korean esports team, priced at US$ 360 and sold through a lottery system, with 10 thousand units available. Straight away there were problems with bots, even though Riot took some measures to avoid that exact problem as well as scalpers because of the disastrous Spiritforged pre-sale (Riftbound's second set).

The 30th-anniversary Pokémon set has also become controversial because of the high prices charged by resellers, who claim they are trying to "prevent mass purchases by scalpers." At the same time, The Pokémon Company is still creating anniversary products with supply below demand and, despite their efforts, have been unable to prevent these promo products from becoming the subject of controversy. Consider, for instance, Van Gogh Pikachu and the Japanese McDonald's promos. In the last case, piles of sandwiches ended up in the trash because buyers were only interested in getting as many cards as possible to keep as investments or resell.

One Piece, Lorcana, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and even Flesh and Blood have all fueled the TCG "market sphere" in one way or another. One Piece announced a collab with Yoshitaka Amano for a future set. Lorcana has featured chase cards since its first set, and the entire Flesh and Blood market was built around legendary equipment and collectible Fabled pieces that can sell for hundreds of dollars. Bandai's Naruto card game has not even been released yet, and special, highly sought-after variants have already been revealed.

This is a marketing strategy that takes advantage of the random element of TCGs to design product lines around speculation, turning the promise of financial gain into the main sales pitch rather than a side effect of the way the game has always worked. The "hype market" is a huge part of card games in 2026. A mechanism has been created and fueled by every unboxing video we post on short-form media, and it is growing while most people lose the ability to buy the game to play.

Scalping Is a Centuries-Old Practice

The term "scalper" emerged in the 1850s to describe people who exploited flaws in sales systems for profit by reselling train tickets at higher prices. The first instance of "scalping" in entertainment occurred around the same time, involving tickets to a performance by singer Jenny Lind in the United States. The tickets disappeared from the box office and reappeared in the hands of resellers who then charged up to four times their original price. In the 1860s, concert tickets sold by scalpers could reach ten times their initial value. By 1908, Paris already had laws in place to curb abusive resale prices.

The practice continues to this day, always in new cycles. In 1996, Tickle Me Elmo retailed for US$ 28.99 and was resold for over US$ 1,000 during the Christmas season. Companies encouraging buyers to engage in investment behavior in hobbies and purchase products in bulk to profit are not unique to TCGs, either. In the same decade, Ty Inc. retired Beanie Babies designs without warning to manufacture demand, and their market value collapsed by 96%. Sneakers are treated as established financial assets, with a market valued at around US$ 10 billion, and have been plagued by bots during presales for over a decade.

The recent market for Labubus, a collectible doll from Pop Mart, resulted in rare versions resold for up to 2,000% of their retail price between 2024 and 2025. Pop Mart took a decision that directly contradicts the logic of a scarcity-driven market and increased production, accepting lower resale prices and treating the outcome as healthy for the business in the long term. The market bubble it had created burst, and investors are concerned about the company's shares after they fell by around 35%. Searches for Labubus have practically fallen to one-tenth of what they were during their peak, while increased production has put a lot of pressure on the company over the inventory and an oversupply in retail stores.

In the long term, Pop Mart may have found the answer to dealing with scalpers and the "market sphere" that grew its sales ("just make more"), but the consequences of these decisions still need to be measured in the medium term. Given the initial controversy, it is natural for other manufacturers (specifically of products that are being treated as financial hedges) to be scared of going down this route and instead choose to further cater to audiences willing to spend hundreds of thousands on each release.

Why Trading Cards?

At this point, it is natural to wonder why people are interested in collectible cards as a way to profit and invest in their financial future rather than in real estate, stocks, or works of art. The answer varies depending on each profile and income, but they can be divided into two groups: the reseller seeking wealth and the investor who buys slabs and high-end cards to make their personal collection more valuable.

There are different levels to the instinct to buy an asset that should become more valuable. At the top is real estate. Today, the housing crisis is one of the most widely debated issues in Western politics. The millennial generation (now between 30 and 45 years old) is the first that is less wealthy than their parents at the same age. It has been marked by a crisis in basic costs such as rent, food, and healthcare, as well as growing debt. The likelihood of accumulating wealth under these conditions is almost nonexistent, and if renting an apartment already squeezes many people's cost of living, buying an apartment or house requires financial planning and a level of financial commitment that most people cannot achieve under regular living and working conditions.

Image: Bloomberg

The rise in housing costs also came from a wave of real estate investment aimed at short-term rentals. Institutional responses, such as Barcelona banning short-term rentals until 2028, put further pressure on anyone who could spend hundreds of thousands of dollars investing in a property. However, the more likely explanation is that a significant number of "scalpers" and "investors" do not have enough working capital to buy an apartment and hold it until they can get back what it cost through rent.

Many people imagine scalpers as someone with loads of money who is willing to make players' lives more miserable for the sake of profit. In reality, many are upper-middle-class people with slightly more working capital than the average consumer, looking at the TCG market through a business-minded lens.

The art world, on the other hand, is challenging even for a "high-end investor". Art costs far more than collectible cards. As if that were not enough, the art world has safeguards against speculative opportunities that card games cannot replicate, because these safeguards depend entirely on personal relationships and reputation within the field. Since each work is unique and every party involved has a career and reputation to protect, the art world chooses who to sell to and from whom to buy and can refuse buyers with a history of aggressive reselling. Like the real estate market, the capital required to enter the art market is extremely restrictive, and the scarcity in this market is far more solid and traceable than that of collectible cards.

With real estate too expensive to invest in and the art market too restrictive, they move on to the next avenue in search of profit: collectibles. This category includes figures, cards, vinyl records, tickets, sneakers, comic books, and more. It is the only tier without significant barriers in terms of capital, so it's an easy area for scalpers and bot farms using multiple accounts to buy as many products as possible. They face no institutional obstacles beyond the limits imposed by the manufacturer, distributor, or store itself. This makes large-scale purchasing easier.

But resellers are not the only ones who can exploit this system or who have been posting social media content promoting card games as investments. So-called high-end investors go for each game's "treasures" much as art collectors do: slabbed cards, serialized cards, rare editions, exclusive promos, and anything else with far less supply than demand. The difference is that this kind of investor is not necessarily thinking about short- or medium-term profits but about accumulating and preserving wealth through a financial hedge, that is, parking financial assets in undenominated shares in a currency that is losing value. Rare coins, stamps, and watches played this role during the 1970s' stagflation, while other products occupied that space during the 2008 crisis.

Logan Paul in a post shared on his personal X account, 2022

There is another reason as well, one more closely tied to what we all collectively perceive as value: card games have never been this mainstream. A luxury car, a mansion, or a Van Gogh painting, however valuable, does not have the same collectible appeal or public recognition as randomized products that occupy a shifting place in all our minds. Social media, particularly fast-consumption platforms such as Instagram and TikTok, are driven by performance and influence, where sharing high-value cards or the feeling of opening a booster with a chase card is rewarded with recognition in the public sphere.

After a person is recognized and reaches a wider audience for showing off valuable cards and opening boosters, they can sell products of their own: cards, workshops, or even their own apps and platforms. Card games are an excellent way to turn a tedious conversation about investing into something exciting, dynamic, and unpredictable.

Where Does This Shift in Behavior Come From?

A pretty well-known generational wealth gap is the fact that millennials have about 30% less wealth at age 35 than baby boomers did at the same age. The realization that they'll never own a home changes how young adults assess and take risks. When the major markers of status (a house, a car, a family) are no longer attainable, that same desire is redirected toward smaller goods. It is similar to Leonard Lauder's Lipstick Index: lipstick sales rise during recessions because they replace, on a smaller scale, a luxury that has become unaffordable.

Replace lipstick with video games, collectible cards, or Labubus, and the logic behind "non-investors" consuming more and more goods becomes clear. They're making up for something. But as we have noted, this consumer is becoming less relevant for publishers as they increasingly bet on exclusivity.

The recovery after the 2008 crisis came through a policy that rapidly inflated financial assets. Those who already held stocks recovered their losses quickly, but the middle class, with two-thirds of its wealth concentrated in real estate, recovered slowly and unevenly across regions. Their share of aggregate income in the United States fell from 62% in the 1970s to 43% in 2022, reversing a trend that had been in place since the 2000s: more people dropped out of the middle-income bracket than moved into it.

If the middle class in the United States has gotten smaller, the same cannot be said of the wealthiest 10% of American households. According to a Moody's Analytics survey from February 2025, they account for nearly half of all consumption in the country and are the only income segment that has spent more money since 2022. Experts have coined this moment a "K-shaped economy," and it has had clear effects even on how the middle class sees itself. These people feel closer to the poor and much farther from the rich.

Image: Cristina Spanò / The New York Times

Even McDonald's recorded an almost 10% decline in low-income customers at the beginning of 2025, while high-income customers continued to be, in their words, "consistent and robust." Every company tries to please its most financially resilient customers without abandoning other segments, and the corporate response to this moment has been to focus on what those customers want through premiumization, or "having an experience/owning a product that is better than everyone else's." Delta Airlines, for example, increased the number of premium seats on their aircrafts.

Hasbro, Riot, the Pokémon Company, and others are simply using this same strategy. Either by turning the Chrome Mox reprint into a collectible product sold through an exclusive channel, increasing the collectibility of their products to appeal to the "high-end" market, offering special bundles through partnerships that turn their product into a major investment opportunity, or creating treasures so that you can keep them on your shelves as social status symbols. They have shifted their commercial focus toward the people who are actually spending more, riding the wave of card games as cool, collectible, Instagrammable products with high commercial value.

And What Is Left for the Player?

So far, we have treated the typical card game buyer as someone who can't compete with scalper bots and investors with more capital looking for a financial hedge. But where does the player fit in? It is naive to believe that this player does not also want to invest, even when building a competitive deck to play. But when the game is the priority, the scarcity systems being proposed today hit players directly where it hurts most: their wallet.

Overpriced staples do not distinguish between players and collectors. A card that becomes too expensive because of its rarity to demand ratio (Badgermole Cub) or too exclusive (Utrom Monitor), is victim to speculation (which happens whenever a new commander with a new mechanic appears), or gains a lot of traction because of a popular IP (Sephiroth, Fabled SOLDIER) will affect every part of the market. In the end, however, it is the player who needs that card to compete in a tournament.

Reprints would be the solution, but they are being stifled by commercial decisions, such as shifting them to products with limited supply, like Mystery Boosters or the Zeta Set in MTG, or because companies haven't been able to meet the market demand on time with high-quality prints, as it happened with Riftbound's Origins set.

The total cost also weighs heavily on players who consistently use more expensive decks. A Standard MTG deck currently costs around US$ 250-300, but it was well above that before the Badgermole Cub ban. A Modern deck can cost anywhere from US$ 500 to US$ 1,500. Flesh and Blood faces a similar problem, as prices are directly determined by a tournament structure that concentrates rewards at the top and pushes even casual players at local stores to play the strongest option possible, paying high prices because staples go so long without reprints.

We presented the amounts above in US dollars, but at the time of writing, the conversion rate to the Brazilian real is R$ 5.16 to US$ 1. Brazil's minimum wage in 2026 is R$ 1,621. The math does not add up. The price tag of any card game represents a completely different income cut in countries with less valuable currencies on the global market than it does in the United States or Europe. A Standard deck can easily cost nearly as much as, or even more than, Brazil's minimum wage. Flesh and Blood lists can comfortably cost three minimum wages, as can Modern lists.

The growing focus on products aimed at the market sphere in recent years makes the situation worse for these regions: the more products are designed for the top tier of a dollar-based market, the harder it becomes for other countries to keep up with market prices. They are indirectly excluded from the target audience for card games when companies do not take steps to make their releases more affordable.

Pokémon does an excellent job on this front by adapting and regionalizing products, but Nintendo has plans to last an entire century, which means it needs to remain an intergenerational mainstream cultural product, something that requires accessibility. Other card games do not seem as inclined to care when they are benefiting this much at the end of the day, considering the amount of money being spent on them by those who can afford them today.

In Conclusion

Recent changes in the card game landscape are meant to gain as much money as possible from those who can afford scarcity and premiumization, at a time when TCGs are at their all-time peak. The middle class is consuming less because it has less money overall, and it is being replaced by people with enough disposable capital to live the dream of investing in collectible cards and even sell the illusion of wealth through colored cardboard to everyone else on social media. Today's TCG market is turning toward people who see it as a market.

The experience of sitting at a table, taking your deck out of your backpack, and shaking another player's hand may become the residue, the leftover part of a product that has already been optimized to sell the dream of investment to those who can afford to live it. This may be a one-way road. Or, when companies need to turn back, they'll find that not as many middle-class people are willing to spend their leisure budget on pieces of colored cardboard.

References cited

Organization

Wizards of the Coast

Wizards of the Coast is an American game publisher founded in 1990 by Peter Adkison. It created the collectible card game Magic: The Gathering, first released in 1993, and publishes Dungeons & Dragons after acquiring TSR in 1997. Based in Renton, Was

Organization

The Pokemon Company

The Pokémon Company is a Japanese company established in 1998 by Nintendo, Game Freak, and Creatures to manage the Pokémon brand. It oversees licensing, marketing, publishing, and production for Pokémon products, including video games, the Pokémon Tr

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Romeu

Journalist, Writer and translator for Cards Realm, and Um Gamer's editor-in-chief. Player of virtually all formats of Magic: The Gathering and is a lifetime fan of Final Fantasy and role-playing games.

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