Many people rummage through old drawers and attic boxes when they visit their parents’ homes over the Chuseok holiday. Cards collected in childhood turn up, along with stickers from snack packages and dust-covered figurines. These items leave the drawers for resale platforms, creating what the industry calls the collectibles economy — a market where items deemed worth collecting are priced and traded according to scarcity and condition.
Sellers listing items in the collectibles category surge around every major holiday, according to data released on the 25th by Bunjang, a South Korean secondhand trading platform. During last year’s Chuseok holiday, the daily average number of such sellers rose 46% from the two weeks before the break. During this year’s Lunar New Year holiday, the figure climbed 55%. Listings also increased, but the rise in the number of sellers was far steeper.
Listings peaked on the final day of each holiday. Both last year’s Chuseok, which fell on Oct. 8, and this year’s Lunar New Year, on Feb. 18, saw the highest volume of new listings on the last day of the break. The pattern suggests people put up items they found while cleaning house during the holiday just before returning to daily routines.
The industry expects collectibles trading to grow further during this year’s holiday. A 30th anniversary expansion set for the Pokemon Trading Card Game was released worldwide on the 16th of this month, leaving the market already heated heading into the break. Pokemon-related listings on Bunjang rose 289% from the 1st to the 22nd compared with a year earlier. The number of users searching for Pokemon rose 153%.
Prices also ran higher than expected. The highest-priced vintage Pokemon item traded on Bunjang over the past year was a Korean first-edition Zapdos card released in 2000, which fetched nearly 6 million won ($4,300). A 1998 Matisse Pikachu card graded PSA 10 sold for 5 million won, and a 1996 Japanese first edition went for 4 million won.
The first factor separating prices is whether an item is a first edition. Among vintage listings, those marked as first editions traded at an average price 4.3 times higher than those without the label. Grading by specialist firms such as PSA, CGC and BRG adds another price benchmark and pushes values higher still. Identical items can command different prices depending on release date and storage condition — a defining feature of the collectibles economy.
What people dig up varies by generation. Bunjang trading data from January through <a href="https://comicvibe.com/new-netflix-shows-and-movies-in-september-2026/” title=”New Netflix Shows and Movies in September 2026″>September this year shows Pokemon cards ranked among the top five most popular items only for buyers in their 30s and 40s. They did not crack the rankings among teenagers, people in their 20s, or those aged 50 and over. The generation that first encountered the Pokemon Trading Card Game in 1996 is now in its 30s and 40s. K-pop merchandise and photocards ranked in the top five across all age groups. Buying was also brisk among those aged 50 and over, which the company attributes to purchases made on behalf of children or grandchildren.
“New sellers noticeably increase after the holidays,” a Bunjang official said. “The collectibles economy is a market where items gain value the longer they are kept, so the flow of items found over the holiday finding new owners is likely to continue.”
#Collectibles#PokemonCards#Bunjang#Chuseok#VintageCards#KpopGoods
Original reporting by Kim Kyung-taek for Seoul Economic Daily.
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