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The market for collectibles traded on South Korea’s secondhand platforms is expanding rapidly. Trading in cards and other goods using Pokemon intellectual property has risen sharply, with buyers in their 20s and 30s emerging as the main force behind the growth.
Pokemon-related listings rose 282% from a year earlier between the 1st and 27th of last month Searches by users climbed 150% over the same period. Pokemon cards accounted for 47.1% of all trading cards on the platform, overtaking K-pop photocards, which had held the top spot
Karrot showed a similar trend. Pokemon-related posts jumped 488% from a year earlier between the 1st and 27th of last month, while searches rose 272%. Actual transactions increased 400% over the same period. The gains were attributed to the worldwide simultaneous release of a 30th-anniversary expansion pack for the Pokemon trading card game on the 16th of last month, along with the spread of a culture of buying and selling collectibles.
Growth in the collectibles market is being led by people in their 20s and 30s. Among users who bought collectibles on Bunjang from January through September this year, those in their 20s made up the largest share at 40.2%. By transaction value, buyers in their 30s accounted for the biggest share at 34.4%. An analysis of buyers of Pokemon-related goods on Karrot between the 10th and 27th of last month also showed those in their 30s were the most numerous, followed by people in their 20s and 40s. Teenagers ranked fourth and people in their 50s fifth.
As adults with spending power move into the collectibles market, a high-priced segment is also forming around scarce items. Bunjang has hosted sales across a wide range of prices, including a PSA-10 graded card listed at 27.6 million won ($19,400). The highest-priced vintage Pokemon item traded on Bunjang over the past year was a Korean first-edition Zapdos card released in 2000, which sold for 6 million won. A complete set of first-generation stickers from a 1999 first printing sold for 2.14 million won.
Industry officials say the collectibles market is growing quickly with Pokemon cards at its center. Bunjang said the collectibles category — which combines kidult goods, trading cards, memorabilia and celebrity merchandise — recorded monthly transactions of 18 billion won in August this year, double the 9 billion won logged in January last year. The generation that consumed these intellectual properties as children has now reached its 20s and 30s, expanding the market along with it, the company said.
“Collecting that begins as a personal interest is turning into trading, and collectibles are establishing themselves as a new pillar of the recommerce market,” an official at a secondhand trading platform said. “The trend is also expanding into global recommerce, with items from domestic collectors being sold to collectors overseas.”
#PokemonCards#Collectibles#Recommerce#TradingCards#Bunjang#Karrot
Original reporting by Lee Yong-sung for Seoul Economic Daily.
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