The man throws himself to the ground and screams in despair in his office. This twenty-year-old who we see curled up in a ball has just opened a Pokémon “booster”, these packs containing ten cards, the last of which is rare and can have great value. However, before opening his booster, the Twitch streamer Wesbtw folded it in half for 50 dollars, sent by one of his spectators. Result: his rare card, a Pikachu Rainbow, valued at several hundred dollars, is damaged and therefore devalued.
This knee-jerk reaction to a piece of cardboard folded in half may be surprising. In reality, it perfectly illustrates the issues around a children's game which turns into Russian roulette for a myriad of fans of the franchise. In this universe, the refrain "Catch 'em all!" » from the 1990s cartoon sometimes turns into obsession. Behind its adorable creatures, Pokémon cards can lead to a form of dependence, even addiction. In the United States, structures close to Alcoholics Anonymous have emerged, like the Collectors MD organization dedicated to those who suffer from compulsive buying linked to cards.
A shot of dopamine in plastic
“A Pokémon booster is a few seconds of suspense wrapped in plastic. We are in the intermittent and unpredictable reward,” notes Laurent Karila, addictologist at Paul-Brousse hospital (AP-HP). However, the one who presents the conference “Sex, drugs and rock’n’roll – Are we all addicts? » explains that in the brain “anticipation of reward” turns out to be incredibly powerful. “The whole ritual amplifies this anticipation: buying the booster, holding it closed, opening it slowly, turning over the cards one by one… until the potentially rare card. »
If Pokémon boosters are not considered gambling, their mechanism remains quite similar. In his YouTube show “Financial Audit” whose guests are overwhelmed by their debts, Caleb Hammer met several people in debt from purchasing Pokémon cards. One of them, Jeffrey, spent more than $26,000 in one year. Although he denies having a gambling problem, he nevertheless plans to move and change jobs to be able to indulge in his obsession. “Do you even know the thrill of opening a booster?” », he insists in the show.
Debts and a collection hidden in the attic
Matthew* lives in Queensland, Australia. Contacted by 20 Minutes, he explains that he “certainly” exceeded the 10,000 US dollar mark in what had “become an obsession” with Pokémon. “Everything revolved around Pokémon: from my hobby to everyday objects which, in a subtle way, betrayed my taste for the franchise”, he admits, without having fallen into the “irrepressible need to open packages or buy products to the point that it disrupts everyday life”. Because some get into debt and fall into a spiral, sometimes going so far as to hide the extent of their addiction from those close to them.
“The booster mechanism is like loot boxes [surprise pockets in video games] or like a scratch game. We spend a fixed amount of money which varies depending on the possible jackpots and then we give up this money for probabilities. This mechanism is very similar to a gambling game,” analyzes the sociologist specializing in gambling, Thomas Amadieu. One of Caleb Hammer's guests reports having lied to his wife about his collection of Pokémon cards, hidden in the attic for two years.
The jackpot mirage on all your screens
By opening a booster and discovering a rare card, the buyer is overwhelmed with a positive emotion: it's the jackpot - and he always wants to come back. Conversely, “if the card doesn’t arrive, another mechanism appears: “I’ve already spent so much money that I can’t stop now.” It’s a classic cognitive bias linked to sunk costs,” explains Professor Laurent Karila. Some players also hope, through Pokémon cards, to “remake themselves”.
Thomas Amadieu explains that in the field of sports betting, “one of the diagnostic criteria is precisely this desire to continue playing to try to compensate for one's losses, the hope of a big jackpot which could solve all the problems. » With their amounts which can reach insane sums, Pokémon cards are sometimes presented as “investments”. The world's most expensive card was sold at auction for $16.49 million. Other cards are worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, like a 1st Edition Charizard.
The frenzy is also found on social networks where the unboxing of Pokémon cards (or “unboxing”) is becoming popular as a genre in its own right. “We find this staging in other forms of gambling, where we film ourselves playing and discovering a jackpot to capture strong emotions and imagine ourselves winning,” explains Thomas Amadieu, who compares it to the practice of tobacco bars which display big winnings while giving the false feeling that they are frequent. However, the big winners are as rare as a Mewtwo capture.
Team Rocket IRL
With its pharaonic sums, the Pokémon card business also attracts behaviors reminiscent of Team Rocket. Matthew is moved by these players who scam children, buying them very rare cards for a pittance. Even more serious, collectors sometimes fall into real ambushes. In 2021, a buyer, violently attacked in Wisconsin, drew his weapon to defend himself.
The brutality of the incident prompted the Target chain to temporarily suspend the sale of Pokémon cards in all of its physical stores in the United States. Matthew chose to resell his collection. “I decided that my daughter’s future was more important than chasing that Pikachu or getting my hands on a copy of Charizard,” he explains. And to conclude: “At the end of the day, we simply buy illustrated pieces of cardboard. »
