Tokenized Pokémon Card Sales Soar Over 10x in One Year, CARDS Market Cap Surpasses $580 Million

On June 15, data from GMGN shows that CARDS—the token for Collector Crypt, an entity card trading platform built on the Solana ecosystem—has seen a sharp value surge, jumping from $200 million in early May to over $580 million. The token also recorded a roughly $5.4 million trading volume in the past 24 hours. The on-chain, tokenized Pokémon card market has exploded in growth. In May, the top seven platforms in this segment generated $230 million in capsule toy sales, more than 10 times the $32 million they pulled in during the same period last year. The main catalyst behind this boom is the capsule toy machine model: users put in funds to get random NFT card backs, replicating the physical trading card pack-opening experience while offering instant liquidity. Collector Crypt founder Tuom Holmberg said capsule toy machine operations make up 90% to 95% of the company’s business. Since launching 18 months ago, the platform has racked up over $1 billion in total sales. To ease market worries about "exit scams," the firm maintains a 28,000-square-foot storage vault in Montana to hold its physical trading card inventory; some competitors also use this vault to access liquidity and build trust with customers. Holmberg calls the capsule toy machine a "gamified shopping experience" and claims it delivers positive expected value—meaning users get an average of $55 in value back for every $50 they spend. The global physical trading card market hit $15.8 billion in revenue last year, and is projected to grow to $23.5 billion by 2030. Even as the NFT craze fades in the crypto space, tokenization technology is emerging as a critical foundation for the speculative trading card market.