Selling Pokémon cards and other collectibles made this 25-year-old $345,000 in annual revenue. Here's how to start investing in trading cards.
Thomas Kovacs/ Getty Images / Yvonne Hemsey / Angela Weiss / acilo / Collage: Dominik Schmitt
- Thomas Kovacs runs Amazing Toys, an online store that sells Pokémon cards and other trading cards.
- He lives in Zürich and makes about 340,000 Swiss francs a year through the shop.
- He gave Insider his tips on investing in collectable cards.
This is an edited, translated version of an article that originally appeared on June 7, 2022.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the price of Pokémon cards increased by about 500%, spurred by celebrities like the YouTuber Logan Paul, the DJ Steve Aoki, and the rapper Logic buying the cards and opening packs on livestreams.
Last year, Paul bought a Pokémon card for about $5.2 million, which was the most expensive private sale of one, and Logic paid $220,000 for a first-edition Charizard in 2020.
Thomas Kovacs, 25, is the owner of the online store Amazing Toys. Kovacs lives in Zürich, and his store sells Pokémon cards, Yu-Gi-Oh cards, and comics.
He made about 340,000 Swiss francs, or about $345,000, in revenue in one year through his online store, documents showed. A brick-and-mortar shop that he also runs took his total annual revenue to 624,000 Swiss francs, he told Insider.
Kovacs told Insider his best tips for getting started in investing in trading cards.
"Most cards are worth between 1 to 50 euros," Kovacs said in an interview with Insider, adding that only a fraction of cards were high value.
It's important to have an interest in the cards if you want to invest in them, Kovacs said.
"It's the same principle as with collecting vintage cars, trading cards, comics, or art. I have to be interested in it," he said.
Without having a connection to it, you won't understand why a particular card is so popular, he said.
Trading cards are speculative investments, so returns and value growth are extremely difficult to predict, he added. That's why it's important that you enjoy trading cards and that you're familiar with the industry, he added.
Kovacs advised against considering trading cards as pure investments.
There's no fundamental data that's pricing the cards; it's all about how much individual investors think they're worth, he said.
"No matter what card you buy, it's a piece of paper that's printed," Kovacs said.
"When you're starting out, I definitely wouldn't invest in expensive cards because you don't know what you're doing and you can't assess the market."
It's also important to diversify, he added. When buying cards, you can choose to buy a "display" or a "booster," according to Kovacs. There are 10 cards in a booster pack, and a display contains several booster packs, he said.
Buying just one card makes "absolutely no sense," Kovacs said. "It's like starting to invest in the stock market and only buying one share for 1,000 euros.
"I would put the 1,000 euros into something less expensive, such as several displays."
It's important to buy cards that are current, ideally from the past one to two years, Kovacs said.
"The best cards are always the latest ones," he said.
Each set brings new cards, which means that "all of a sudden, a good card can become a bad one just two months later," he added.
That's because the price also depends on how playable a card is, he said, adding: "That playability changes with each new set."
At Kovacs' store, the price of a display ranges from 137 to 2,990 Swiss francs.
If you do decide to invest in Pokémon cards, storage is "super important," Kovacs said.
You need to keep an eye on humidity and temperature, he added, stressing that a normal room temperature was the ideal way to store the cards.
"Ideally, they should be stored in the same conditions as humans live in," he said.
That way, nothing happens to the paper or the plastic, he added. You should also avoid letting direct sunlight hit the cards, as that can cause the color to fade or the card to bend because of the heat, he said.
If you have expensive cards, Kovacs recommends storing them in a safe in a bank.
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