A rare Pikachu card was traded for an estimated $900,000 worth of cards in December. But it’s not just high-end collectors benefiting from the boom, said Charlie Hurlocker, a Pokémon card expert and dealer. Getting cards graded — a necessary step in fetching the highest prices on markets like eBay — once made sense for mostly just the rarest of cards. After an avalanche of submissions in March, the company stopped accepting new ones so it could work through all of its back orders. “We have increased incentives to motivate and reward our employees as well as attract new talent,” the company wrote in March.

Source: New York Times May 14, 2021 14:26 UTC