When card games became a business

1


At the D23 conference, which opened on September 9, Disney officially released the collectible card game “Disney Lorcana” in cooperation with Ravensburger, a century-old game publisher. The 7 cards in the first set “Disney Lorcana: The First Chapter” were announced at the press conference.

It is reported that this set will be officially launched in the fall of 2023, priced at $ 49.95. The first cards revealed this time include several well-known characters from Disney: Stitch, Elsa, Crulladwell, Maleficent, Robin Hood and Captain Hook.

Additionally, D23 attendees were presented with an exclusive card based on Mickey Mouse’s appearance in the 1938 short film “The Brave Little Tailor”.

Officially, Disney Lorcana will also give fans the collectible value that fans have come to expect from top-tier cards, including holographic cards, flash cards, and more. The first 7 cards this time around will also be specially marked to distinguish them from later prints. If Lorcana is successful, these cards will become extremely valuable collectibles.

Filip Francke, CEO of Ravensburger North America and head of global games, said: “This game is probably the project with the greatest potential for Ravensburger, so we’re probably putting in the biggest investment we’ve ever made in a project.”

What kind of magic power makes a small card become a sweet pastry that everyone wants to share.

2


In the adult world, it seems that anything can become a business. People who don’t understand TCG (collective card game) may find it difficult to understand why a small card can sell for thousands or even tens of thousands in the market.

In 2021, a “Blue-Eyes White Dragon Yu-Gi-Ohm Commemorative Card” with a starting price of 80 yuan was auctioned to 87.32 million 32 minutes after the auction started. The card’s out-of-the-circle also really makes people see the strong purchasing power of TCG players.

It is understood that this “Blue-Eyes White Dragon” card is a commemorative edition released at the 20th anniversary celebration of the “Yu-Gi-Oh” card series in 2018. It is made of pure gold and is limited to 500 sets worldwide. It needs to be purchased by lottery at the original price. About 12,410 yuan, the current market value is estimated at about 200,000 yuan.

Zhang Yujie, the owner of the card who was arrested for embezzling more than 70 million yuan, said in an interview with CCTV’s anti-corruption drama “Zero Tolerance” that he bought the pure gold blue-eyed white dragon just to satisfy “a childish thought”.

The “Pokémon” card, which is also one of the “children’s thoughts”, is not to be outdone. In February of this year, a holographic “Pikachu” and “Pokémon” rare card produced in 1998 was auctioned at a price of 900,000 US dollars (about 5.685 million yuan), making it the most expensive so far on the auction floor. of Pokémon cards.

Of course, among the many Pokémon cards, the rarest and most expensive is the “Pokémon Illustrator”:

In 1998, the Japanese manga magazine CoroCoro held a children’s illustration competition, and the “Pokémon Illustrator” (ie Illustrator version) was the winner’s gift, drawn by Pikachu designer Atsuko Nishida.

There are a total of 39 cards in the “Pokémon Illustrator” series, and very few of them have been handed down. In addition, they are not sold as commodities. Some experts estimate that there are no more than 10 cards of the same style on the market , which are considered to be “Pokémon Illustrators”. The most precious and rarest Pokémon card in the world”.

In 2021, the only “Pokémon Illustrator” in the world to be rated 10 points by the card rating agency PSA (Professional Sports Authenticator) will be picked up by the American Internet celebrity anchor Luo Luo, who has more than 20 million followers. Purchased by Root Paul. The move broke the Guinness World Record for the most expensive Pokémon card, making the card “the most expensive card in the world”.

According to Logan Paul’s introduction, he used a “Pokémon Illustrator” card with a PSA of 9 points and $4 million to replace the 10-point PSA artist from the original owner of the card. Pikachu card. Because the PSA 9-point painter Pikachu card purchased by Logan Paul previously cost $1.275 million, plus an additional $4 million, the value of this PSA10-point painter Pikachu reached $5.275 million (about 33.5 million yuan) .

There was Magic in the past, and Disney in the back. Today’s TCG has long been far more than just the competitiveness of the game. The underlying economic value behind it is the reason why many big-name game makers are attracted to the game.

3


Like the blind box, TCG has a “gold sucking” gene.

TCG is a game based on collecting cards. Players need to purchase randomly packaged booster packs, collect cards, and then use different cards flexibly to construct a set that conforms to the rules according to their own strategies. Play the game. The randomness of unpacking makes people look up, and it also makes card trading slowly evolve into a business. Someone once joked that “TCG players are per capita.”

Compared with blind boxes, the level distinction of cards is more obvious. Since the card was designed, it has been divided into R, UR, XR, ZR, SLR, SP, GP and other levels. You can intuitively know the quality of this card from these letters.

The randomness of rare cards has created a secondary market for players to buy and sell, and with social media publicity, people are starting to realize that a small card can make them rich overnight. As a result, many people who may not understand the rules of the game at all, or even name the characters on the card, began to throw themselves into the frenzy.

In October last year, it was still the Internet celebrity Logan Paul and Pokemon cards. In the live broadcast room, he opened a box of Pokemon cards worth 216,000 US dollars and produced in 1999, which attracted more than 300,000 people watched his live broadcast, which heated up the Pokémon card market in one fell swoop, causing the price of Pokémon cards to officially skyrocket.

The TCG market is like a sea of ​​hot water, with new “gold diggers” joining in every day, and there are even a lot of strong men rushing into the supermarket frantically to compete for the Pokémon cards that have just been put on the shelves.

And at the moment when everything is possible in the metaverse, the concept of TCG and the metaverse has also begun to marry. In the blockchain, all cards can be cast into NFT, and the characteristics of NFT are unique and traceable, which is equivalent to the card with its own “ID card”, allowing players to conduct transactions, while eliminating the traditional offline Piracy and black market phenomena in cards.

The popular NFT card game “Splinterlands” accounted for 98.97% of the transactions on the Hive chain in the past year.

This game, which was born in 2018, has 1.8 million registered users and 450,000 daily active users in just 4 years. Recently, the number of user battles has reached a historic 1 billion times.

While the new and old IPs are alternately exerting force, offline marketing activities and events are held regularly, so that the vitality of physical cards and electronic cards has been continuously extended.

4


The desire to obtain rare cards has become an erratic dream. Everyone knows that it is a game of probability, but everyone is placing their chips with blind optimism again and again.

Not long after the card drawing game “Onmyoji” was released, a shop selling card drawing metaphysics even appeared on Taobao. The seller claims that players only need to follow their given talisman and metaphysical steps, while playing “Good Luck”, burning incense, washing hands, bathing and changing clothes, they will be sincere and SSR will be fully opened.

Behind the carnival is a frenzy that is almost like a gambler. Under the savage growth, the card demolition circle is full of chaos, which seriously deviates from the original intention of the game, and some darkness is growing.

In January of this year, a football card club in a city in Hubei Province that was dismantling cards and live broadcasts was taken down by the police who suddenly appeared, and all the members were arrested. The size of the “gambling money” faces different criminal liabilities or public security penalties.

Dressed in the skin of cards and engaged in the gambling business, these businessmen wandering in the gray area are disrupting the TCG market.

At present, new players are constantly entering the pit because of the stimulation of opening the box and the attraction of high-priced cards, but it must be clear that TCG is first and foremost a game, and it is a slightly complicated game to get started, and some of the rules and strategies are not everyone can master. , as the saying that is often used to persuade investors to say “people can’t make money beyond their own knowledge”, if you don’t understand TCG games, you will enter the market in a hurry, and in the end you will lose everything.

A card trading platform wrote on his official website: “At present, most players in China rely too much on transactions to obtain money, while ignoring exchanges. In fact, exchanges can better reflect the fun nature of set and exchange cards. ”

A game anchor named Morris said: “Today’s Pokémon cards are very dangerous. Pokémon is a series that everyone loves, and it is a game that every child has been exposed to. And these days these days, with a lot of influence, I can’t accept the fact that children welcome graphic gambling behavior, but it is popular on live broadcast platforms.”

Players who really love TCG, how can they be willing to turn that beloved card into a tool for their own money? The fun of the card game itself is the infinite wealth.

This article is reproduced from: https://www.yystv.cn/p/9812
This site is for inclusion only, and the copyright belongs to the original author.