Gotta collect ‘em all: Pokemon, sports trading card boom spreads to Singapore
SINGAPORE: For Fariheen Faroukh, his beloved affair with trading cards began when he was a teenager.
"My school was pretty most Serene Centre, where there used to be comics shops and menu shops," recalled the 38-year-old.
"So ane of my favourite things to exercise afterwards schoolhouse was to go and caput over to the comic store to buy comics or read comics, and eventually this kind of grew into ownership cards," he said.
This included basketball cards too as those from trading card games such every bit Pokemon and Magic: The Gathering, said Mr Fariheen.
His interest in collectible cards waned over the years until almost 10 years ago when he discovered football cards from publisher Futera, which combined the collectibles with an online game experience.
He and so came beyond a card autographed by former Chelsea midfielder Frank Lampard, which he was able to sell on eBay for "a few hundred dollars".
"I kind of started really getting back into information technology," he said.
Despite that initial sale, Mr Fariheen - then a sales manager - remained largely a collector until 2019, when he decided to take a breather from work and turned to selling cards from his collection to make money.
This coincided with an increased involvement in the cards worldwide, which was further heightened by global lockdowns amidst the COVID-nineteen pandemic.
This spurred him into becoming more serious about selling cards, describing it as a "very heady" business organisation opportunity.
READ: Gotta catch 'em all: Pandemic sends prices soaring for Pokemon cards
"I merely went into information technology while looking for a new role after my sabbatical. But eventually, I found that I didn't really need to go into a new role and I thought I might besides do this total time."
Mr Fariheen now runs Heenja's Cards, selling cards online from his home in Hougang.
In between taking his three children to school and classes, likewise as supervising their homework, he checks his eBay store for sales, mailing out cards to customers as well as checking out new cards to buy which might have the potential to increase in value.
More than a m cards - ranging from football to Pokemon ones - are listed in the store, with prices ranging from U.s.$ix (Southward$12) for a card of English language footballer Ben Watson to more than U.s.a.$100,000 for an autographed card of basketball star Michael Jordan.
Nearly a third of Heenja'south Cards' listings are for iv-time NBA title winner Lebron James.
"I kind of like what Lebron represents, culturally and socially, and also how astonishing a histrion he is," said Mr Fariheen.
"It'southward non just near the money, you accept to be able to enjoy collecting a histrion."
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TRADING CARD Nail
The prices of collectible trading cards have skyrocketed globally over the past year, with an autographed rookie bill of fare for NBA star Luka Doncic selling for US$4.six one thousand thousand concluding month.
This made the carte du jour featuring the 22-year-old Dallas Mavericks point guard the most expensive basketball card, co-ordinate to a report by sports betting media outfit Action Network.
In January, a 1952 card for the belatedly baseball player Mickey Mantle set up the record for the most expensive sports carte du jour sold, at U.s.$5.2 million.
The worldwide hype is non limited to sports cards.
Tardily last yr, boxes of 1999 trading cards for video game franchise Pokemon were reported to have been auctioned off for around US$400,000 (Due south$528,000) each.
eBay sees an boilerplate of 119 trading cards listed each minute, with near 45 million trading cards sold on the site last year lone.
According to the online marketplace, sales for basketball game and Pokemon cards in the United States increased 373 per cent and 574 per cent respectively.
READ: Ebay earnings beat on pandemic-driven surge in online shopping; shares soar
The smash has been driven in part by the COVID-19 pandemic, as movement restrictions prompted people to look for ways to spend or brand money online, said Mr Fariheen.
He also pointed to the influence of well-known investors who have been bullish on trading cards, such equally billionaire Mark Cuban and entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk, who said in a 2022 blog post that sports cards would make a "great culling investment" over the side by side few years.
For Pokemon - which is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year - one factor driving the demand is babyhood nostalgia, said Mr Fariheen.
Children who played the Pokemon games or watched the cartoons are now adults with dispensable income to spend on their hobbies, he noted.
"People are happy to buy into their childhood, buy into the nostalgia about what they had when they were growing up," he said.
Options such as fractional buying - where collectors are able to buy a small ownership share in trading cards and other memorabilia - have also made investing in such collectibles more affordable and thus more attractive, he added.
Sports collectibles have also jumped on the non-fungible tokens (NFT) bandwagon. There are trackable digital collectibles such as those offered by Canadian firm Dapper Labs, which sells brusk video clips of basketball players under the NBA Top Shot brand.
Mr Fariheen said he expects the interest in digital memorabilia to abound, although he expects many will all the same want to hold on to physical cards.
"I think people do want something they can bear on, or have in their possession," he said.
The collectible card craze has been farther spurred by celebrities, noted entrepreneur Mark Tan. These personalities include athletes and influencers such every bit YouTuber Logan Paul, who started opening packs of collectible cards in online videos and is known for sharing his fondness for Pokemon.
Mr Tan, thirty, started selling cards as a polytechnic student to "make a couple of dollars here and there".
"And and then I realised, hey, I'm actually pretty skillful at this … so I converted it into a career," he told CNA.
"Mum didn't actually similar information technology, but after a while, she saw I was actually passionate about what I do."
Mr Tan started trading card retailer Greyness Ogre Games with friends in his early on 20s before moving to Federal republic of germany to deed every bit a heir-apparent for a store focusing on collectible card game Magic: The Gathering.
He travelled constantly, he said, getting cards appraised or transporting large orders from country to country, although the COVID-19 outbreak put a stop to this. Mr Tan said the business is at present trying to arrange to operating under pandemic conditions.
His work affords him a lot of downtime, he said, allowing him to run i of 1 Collectibles, a store in Geylang selling trading bill of fare games as well every bit selling football game cards online.
"We were losing money for like the first two years, first ii-and-a-one-half years of the business, but we were just doing it considering it's our passion," he said.
Mr Tan describes identifying up-and-coming footballers and ownership their cards as akin to being a talent lookout man, singling out Norwegian footballer Erling Haaland equally a viable "prospect" whose cards are probable to get up in value.
A limited-edition card of the twenty-twelvemonth-one-time striker for Bundesliga side Borussia Dortmund sold for United states$124,230 before this month.
Sales of football game cards on eBay jumped a whopping 1,586 per cent last year, according to figures provided by the online auction site.
Despite the sport'southward popularity in Singapore, collecting football cards has yet to take off hither, Mr Tan noted, estimating that the number of serious football menu collectors is in the low hundreds.
"People don't know the value of their soccer knowledge when it comes to collecting soccer cards," he said.
Mr Tan said there is a larger local marketplace for Pokemon cards, pointing to the queues at the franchise's store at Precious stone Changi Airport and estimating that at that place may be about 50,000 Pokemon collectors in Singapore.
He said that those who were children when the cards start came out take now passed on their honey of Pokemon to their children.
"I don't run into the Pokemon railroad train slowing down," he said.
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HARD WORK
Despite the current boom, Mr Fariheen admits he has had his doubts almost whether cards will go on to be pop.
"When you lot begin by collecting and not really selling, and then you go into it full fourth dimension, you always wonder - how sustainable is this every bit a full-time career?" he said.
All the same, he believes that the market for collectible cards has always been there, with buyers now seeing it as an investment on the aforementioned level as purchasing artworks.
"In that location will always be doubts, but I think I've seen plenty interest in the market, even during the economic downturn, to see potential for the long-term," he added.
Dr Ben Charoenwong, assistant professor of finance at the National University of Singapore Business School, described the high price of cards equally a "self-fulfilling prophecy". He noted that their prices are "just as expert as what people expect future prices to exist".
Prices may collapse should people'southward expectations reverse, he said, suggesting that this could happen should in that location be a negative annunciation about a trading card manufacturer, for instance.
"Simply typically, some discrete piece of news, perhaps even equally small as someone selling a rare carte at a loss, gets realised, then people of a sudden change their behaviour and valuations collapse," said Asst Prof Charoenwong.
Prospective investors should ask themselves if they would be willing to buy the cards even if they were unable to sell them, he said.
"The average person who does not adhere any personal happiness to owning the collectible itself should probably avoid participating in the market, for fearfulness that hereafter expected prices can suddenly collapse."
While in that location may exist people looking to cash in amid the current hype, making money off cards is hard piece of work, warned Mr Tan, adding he spends up to five hours a day researching what cards might become valuable.
"It takes inquiry. A lot of my customers come and inquire me for advice, like what practise I invest in?" he said.
"I always tell them, I have these things that I'm buying considering I think they are underpriced, but they're non all winners. Aye, there are winners in one case in a while, only they're not all winners," he noted, calculation buyers should have a 18-carat appreciation of the cards.
"Sometimes there are losers. Buy the things that yous relish."
Source: https://cnalifestyle.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/trading-card-boom-pokemon-sports-cards-collectibles-ebay-178811
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