Financial Expert Says Pokemon Cards Would Be “Global Currency” After an Apocalypse — And the Numbers Actually Back It Up

Alright, we’ve seen some bold takes in the gaming and collecting world, but this one might be the boldest — and weirdly, the most defensible. Peter Levin, the founder and managing director of venture capital firm Griffin Gaming Partners, has gone on record saying that if the world ended tomorrow, Pokemon cards would be the global currency by the following morning. Not gold. Not bottlecaps. Not water jugs from a Costco survival kit. Pikachu. And when you actually look at the numbers behind Pokemon cards right now, it’s harder to laugh off than you’d expect.

Who Is Peter Levin and Why Does His Opinion Matter?

Before you write this off as some random collector going feral at a card convention, it’s worth knowing who’s actually making the claim. Levin is a former CEO of Nerdist Industries, which sold to Legendary Entertainment back in 2012. He’s also the co-founder of Griffin Gaming Partners, a Santa Monica-based venture capital firm that manages approximately $1.5 billion and invests exclusively in the gaming industry. This is a guy who has been at the intersection of entertainment, gaming, and money for decades, and he speaks to The Hollywood Reporter as someone who personally owns over 500,000 trading cards across multiple franchises. He’s not theorizing from the outside. He is deep in it.

And his argument isn’t just vibes-based. When Levin talks about Pokemon cards as a post-apocalyptic currency, he’s coming from a specific investment thesis: that Pokemon is the one IP in the trading card space with both the universal recognition and broad accessibility to function as a genuine store of value understood by people across cultures, ages, and economic backgrounds. That’s actually a meaningful distinction when you’re talking about something that could theoretically serve as medium of exchange on a global level.

Financial Expert Says Pokemon Cards Would Be Global Currency After an Apocalypse

The “Global Currency” Argument Broken Down

Here’s the core of what Levin is saying, and it’s more coherent than the headline makes it sound. For something to function as currency, it needs a few things: it has to be widely recognized, relatively portable, difficult to counterfeit or destroy, and it needs to carry perceived value that a broad group of people agree on. Pokemon cards — specifically the rare, graded ones — check more of those boxes than you might expect.

Pokemon originated in Japan in 1996 and became a global phenomenon by the late ’90s and early 2000s. It then went through a period of decline — what Levin calls the “nadir moment” — before entering what he describes as a parabolic growth curve that’s been running for years now. The franchise has now been translated into dozens of languages, is actively collected on every continent, and has a generational footprint that means people from ages 8 to 40 and beyond have some personal connection to the IP. That’s not true of virtually any other collectible market at this scale.

The accessibility angle is also key to Levin’s argument. Unlike, say, rare artwork or vintage wine — collectibles that require significant wealth to enter — Pokemon cards have always had a democratic entry point. A kid buying a pack from a gas station has the same theoretical shot at pulling a rare card as a wealthy collector buying sealed booster boxes. That broad participation base is part of what keeps the market liquid and the brand universally understood. In a post-apocalyptic scenario where trust in institutions has collapsed, you’d still need people to agree on the value of whatever you’re trading. Pokemon has three decades of global brand equity working in its favor.

The Numbers Are Actually Insane

Levin’s claim that Pokemon cards are beating the S&P 500 by 3,000 percent sounds like hyperbole, but Card Ladder data has actually clocked the cumulative appreciation of Pokemon card values at roughly 3,821 percent between 2004 and 2025 — compared to around 483 percent for the S&P 500 over the same period. That’s not a misprint. The average Pokemon card gained roughly 46 percent in value over the twelve months to mid-2025 alone.

And it’s not just vintage cards from the Base Set era carrying the market. The modern card market is also surging. eBay recorded $2.62 billion in Pokemon card sales in 2025. Walmart Marketplace reported Pokemon card sales growing tenfold year-over-year. Target saw a 70 percent increase in trading card category sales driven largely by Pokemon. StockX reported Pokemon resale up 367 percent year-over-year at one point in 2025. The Pokemon Company itself posted its best financial year ever for the fiscal year ending February 2026, pulling in roughly $3.3 billion in revenue with $752 million in net profit.

The global trading card market as a whole was estimated at somewhere between $8 billion and $21 billion in 2024-2025 depending on methodology — and projections point toward doubling or tripling that figure by 2034. Pokemon is the biggest single franchise driver in that market by unit volume, by a meaningful margin.

What About Logan Paul’s $16.4 Million Pikachu?

If you want a headline number that illustrates the upper end of this market, look no further than the PSA 10-graded Pikachu Illustrator that Logan Paul sold for $16.4 million — a world record sale for a single trading card. Paul has publicly said he’s spent over $10 million on Pokemon cards in total and has zero regrets about it, calling his collection “gangster.” Love him or hate him, the man is not wrong that the cards he holds are extraordinarily valuable assets.

That card, the Pikachu Illustrator, is a genuine piece of Pokemon history — one of a tiny number produced as prizes in a Japanese illustration contest in 1998. It’s the kind of card that functions less like a trading card and more like fine art, and its sale price reflects that. But the significance for Levin’s argument is that professional grading services like PSA — which certify, grade, and encapsulate cards in tamper-evident cases — have helped transform the market into something that more closely resembles a standardized, tradeable asset class. That infrastructure matters if you’re thinking about cards as a genuine store of value.

Pokemon’s 30th Anniversary Set Drops September 16 — and It’s Historic

The timing of this conversation is also pretty perfect, because Pokemon is right in the middle of its biggest moment in years. The franchise turns 30 years old this month, and The Pokemon Company is celebrating with the 30th Celebration expansion for the trading card game, which officially launches on September 16, 2026 — making this week as big as it gets for Pokemon collectors.

What makes 30th Celebration genuinely notable, beyond the obvious anniversary angle, is that it’s the first Pokemon TCG expansion ever to launch simultaneously worldwide. No more waiting for the Japanese set to drop first while the rest of the world watches secondhand pulls on YouTube — everyone gets it at the same time. The set is all-foil across every card including Basic Energy, features 30 unique Pikachu illustrations (one guaranteed per pack), a Classic Collection subset of 30 reprinted iconic cards from TCG history, and a brand-new rarity called the Futuristic Rare illustrated by legendary Japanese artist YOSHIROTTEN. There are 128 main set cards plus a substantial run of Secret Rares and promos. This is shaping up to be the biggest Pokemon TCG release of 2026 by a considerable margin, and the secondary market pricing on pre-release boxes has already reflected that expectation.

If Levin is right that this is the hobby that outlasts everything — and the numbers suggest he might not be that far off — then this particular set, tied to the franchise’s 30th birthday, has the kind of cultural moment energy that tends to drive long-term value in the collectibles market.

Fallout Had Bottle Caps. The Last of Us Had Food. Pokemon Has… Pokemon.

It’s worth taking a second to actually engage with the question Levin is answering, because it’s genuinely fun to think about. Post-apocalyptic fiction has a long history of imagining what replaces conventional currency when society breaks down. Fallout went with bottle caps — recognizable, uniform, difficult to fake, and in plentiful supply before the bombs dropped. The Last of Us used food and ration coupons — makes sense when survival is the immediate priority. Other franchises have used water, ammunition, or medicine.

The argument for Pokemon over all of those is specifically about the long-tail scenario — not day one of the apocalypse, when people are grabbing food and water, but the period after that when some stability has returned and humans are doing what they’ve always done: building trade networks and establishing shared stores of value. At that point, you need something portable, durable, globally recognized, and trusted. Gold has served that role historically. In a world where a 10-year-old in Tokyo and a 35-year-old in São Paulo and a collector in Berlin all have the same emotional and financial relationship with a holographic Charizard, Levin’s argument starts to make a weird kind of sense.

Is This the Time to Start Stocking Up?

Nobody here is a financial advisor, so make your own calls on this one — but if you’re already a collector or thinking about getting into the hobby, the market data gives you plenty of reasons to take the hobby seriously as more than just a childhood nostalgia trip. The 30th Celebration set dropping September 16 is a natural entry point for anyone who’s been on the fence. Whether or not the apocalypse is coming, Pokemon cards have shown the kind of sustained appreciation over two decades that most traditional investment vehicles would envy.

And hey, worst case scenario — you have a cool collection of extremely pretty cards. There are worse hedges against the end of days.

If you’re more interested in where the real financial action is in gaming right now, the Take-Two stock situation ahead of GTA 6’s November launch is another interesting thread to pull on. And while you’re thinking about the apocalypse, you might as well get into the post-apocalyptic game vibe with Metro 2039’s minimal HUD immersive FPS reveal — because nothing gets you in the survivalist headspace like a good metro crawler.

Quick Facts — The Pokemon Card Market Right Now

• Peter Levin’s collection: 500,000+ trading cards across multiple franchises
• Griffin Gaming Partners AUM: approximately $1.5 billion, gaming-exclusive investments
• Pokemon cards vs S&P 500: roughly 3,821% appreciation vs 483% for S&P 500 (2004–2025)
• eBay Pokemon card sales (2025): $2.62 billion
• Most expensive card ever sold: PSA 10 Pikachu Illustrator — $16.4 million (Logan Paul)
• Pokemon Company revenue (FY ended Feb 2026): $3.3 billion — best year ever
• 30th Celebration set release date: September 16, 2026 — first simultaneous worldwide TCG launch in history
• Global trading card market estimate: $8–21 billion depending on methodology, projected to double by 2034