São Paulo When he started collecting illustrated letters, still in his teens, Diogo Pires, 44, didn't expect that they would one day help him buy a house.
Part of his collection, kept for more than two decades, ended up being sold for US$20,000 (around R$73,000 at the average price at the time) to a collector in New Zealand, in 2018.
Co-founder of the Pokémon League, a marketplace specializing in the Japanese franchise's card game, Pires decided to get rid of the collection when he realized how much it had become worth.
"I started to think that having all this stuff at home is a risk, because it's worth a lot of money. It was more for safety," he says. Although the motivation for selling the collection was not the purchase of the house, it was Diogo's wife who suggested that the money be used to acquire the property.
Initially popular among children and teenagers, Pokémon cards now also attract a market made up of adults who grew up with the franchise and buyers interested in the potential appreciation of the pieces.
According to data from The Pokémon Company, more than 75 billion cards had been produced by March 2025. A year later, the accumulated total had increased by around 10 billion, to 85 billion. Before 2019, the annual average was 1.5 billion to 2 billion.
In Brazil, the cards are distributed by the deck manufacturer Copag.
Interest in the franchise as a whole, which includes trading cards, games, animations and other products, has also grown. Between September 2021 and September 2026, interest in the term Pokémon in Google searches in Brazil was 60% higher than that recorded in the previous five years, according to data from Google Trends.
This year, the term reached the highest level of interest in searches since 2016, when the launch of "Pokémon Go" caused a spike.
In the non-sports trading cards market, sales grew 350% in revenue between 2020 and 2025 in the United States, according to Circana. The survey covers a broader category than the Pokémon TCG (collectible card game).
The cards also gained space on social media outside the gaming and collector communities.
In August, Neymar opened packages of letters in a live on Instagram alongside his son, Davi Lucca, a broadcast that reached around 175 thousand simultaneous viewers. Influencer and businessman Thiago Nigro also published content about the card market and showed purchases of sealed products.
Expansions are launched every two or three months, with hundreds of new models per collection. They reach the public mainly through so-called "boosters", packs with a limited number of cards from an expansion.
The buyer does not know exactly which cards he will find in each pack. Most of the cards, however, have a low market value, with copies advertised for as little as R$0.25 on the Pokémon League platform.
Éric Fenalte, 35, discovered Pokémon when the franchise arrived in Brazil, in the late 1990s. As an adult, he went back to looking for complete sets of the first collections that were part of his childhood.
In 2016, Fenalte paid around US$600 (approximately R$2,100 at the average price of that year) for a sealed box in Portuguese, the first Pokémon TCG collection launched in Brazil, in 2000.
Today, similar copies are advertised for around R$9,000 to R$10,000 on e-commerce platforms and websites specializing in TCG.
With the increase in prices and demand, Fenalte decided to keep some boxes sealed. "I want to preserve the collection. These are items that, even if I have the money to buy, I won't find", he explains.
Fenalte also considers the possibility of appreciation when choosing what to buy. In current collections, he observes characteristics such as circulation and cards included to identify products that may gain value over time.
"There's a collection that launches and I know it will increase in value. In general, everything in Pokémon ends up increasing in value", he says. This, however, is not guaranteed and depends on factors such as the supply of copies and buyer interest.
Valdebrando Rafael Giovanini, 40, co-founder of the Pokémon League alongside Pires, cites the case of cards that cost pennies and became worth more after they were included in decks used in tournaments. The popularity of a Pokémon can also increase demand for a certain card.
Henrique Heylmann, founder of Manafix, a Brazilian card certification and evaluation company, points out other factors that influence prices, such as rarity, state of conservation and demand.
Manafix evaluates the authenticity and physical condition of the letters. In the process, which costs from R$75, the company assigns a grade to the condition of the cards, considering the surface, corners, edges and alignment of the print. Small defects can reduce the valuation and influence the market price.
In February this year, a Pikachu card – one of the best-known characters in the franchise – was sold for US$16.5 million (R$86 million at the time) at auction.
The copy had been acquired by American content creator Logan Paul for US$5 million (around R$27 million at the average price for the period) in 2021, in a negotiation held in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates. At that time, Paul delivered another letter valued at US$1 million and paid another US$4 million in cash.
Known as Pikachu Illustrator, the card was produced in 1998 and distributed as a prize in an illustration contest. Only 39 copies were originally distributed to winners.
Logan Paul's copy is the only one known to receive top marks from PSA, one of the main American companies for evaluating and certifying collectibles.
A sale like this does not, by itself, establish the price of other cards. In the collectibles market, negotiation depends on there being someone interested in buying the product.
For financial educator Cássia D’Aquino, buying illustrated cards hoping for appreciation is different from making a financial investment. Those who purchase these products with the expectation of reselling them for a higher price are betting on the future interest of other buyers.
Another factor, according to the expert, is liquidity, that is, the ease of transforming an asset into money. A letter advertised for R$10,000, for example, may not find a buyer willing to pay that amount. To turn the item into cash quickly, the owner may need to accept a lower price.
Diogo Pires, whose collection helped to buy a property, also makes a reservation about the appreciation of old letters. According to him, when these products were launched, buyers did not know that they would be in demand decades later.
"So, keeping a card does not necessarily mean that it will increase in price. I was lucky enough to collect something that increased in value", says Pires.
