Top 5 Collectibles Market Trends to Look for in 2025, 2026, & Beyond for Pokémon, Magic: The Gathering, Yu Gi Oh, & More
The past few years have seen unprecedented growth in the collectibles market.
Back in 2020, millions worldwide found themselves at home due to stay-at-home orders, so aspiring collectors started looking in their attics and basements for old Pokémon, Magic: The Gathering, Yu Gi Oh, and sports cards.
With their old collectibles re-discovered, people started flocking to online marketplaces like eBay, Whatnot, and even TikTok to buy, sell and trade cards and other collectibles.
Estimates show that the collectibles market was valued at $402 billion 2021 and is projected to more than double by 2032, reaching a valuation of $1 trillion.
But what does the future hold for this rapidly-expanding market?
Let’s take a deep dive into the top 5 trends in the collectibles market for 2025, 2026, and beyond!
1. Growth in Serialized (aka Numbered) Cards
Serialized cards refer to very limited printings of cards, comic books, or other collectables that have sequential numbers from 1 to the overall number of that specific collectible in existence. Serialized items have much greater value than their non-serialized counterparts as a result of their extremely low supply in the market.
After appearing in sports cards—especially baseball, football, and basketball cards for several decades—the Magic: The Gathering Brothers’ War set from late 2022 saw the first serialized cards, including 63 “retro frame“ artifacts, with only 500 copies of each printed, all of which were numbered from 001 to 500.
This trend has continued with more recent sets, including the Universes Beyond: Tales of Middle Earth (aka Lord of the Rings) set, which saw the iconic and exceedingly rare serialized one-of-a-kind 001 / 001 “The One Ring“ card bought by music artist Post Malone for $2+ million.
Even the most recent MTG Universes Beyond: Final Fantasy set includes serialized cards, but only one this time: the Golden Chocobo, which is numbered from 001 to 077, with some copies selling for $40,000 or more!
Yu Gi Oh has also launched a variant of serialized cards that don’t have the same numbering scheme, but instead say “Limited Edition“ on the bottom of the card. While writing this article, our team found an example of a Limited Edition Chaos Emperor, the Dragon of Armageddon Yu Gi Oh card listed for $49,999 on TCGPlayer.com.
Although The Pokémon Company has still not yet launched serialized cards, there are rumors that this move might be on the horizon in 2025 or 2026, which would likely introduce tremendous demand for these cards, driving up their value dramatically. These cards would likely feature popular characters such as Charizard, Pikachu, Mew, and Umbreon, making these serialized offerings even more valuable and sought after for collectors and players alike.
2. Opening of New Brick-and-Mortar Collectibles Stores
Despite the slow decline in brick-and-mortar stores across industries and the growth of online shopping, the collectibles market appears to have weathered in-person shopping declines.
Part of this growth is fueled by the physical and tangible nature of most collectibles (well…excluding NFTs), meaning that aspiring and seasoned collectors like to see, feel, and examine the actual collectible item itself.
While online shops can offer high-resolution photos of cards, comic books, or autographed memorabilia, nothing truly beats looking at the item yourself to make sure it’s real or ask questions about it from the seller.
The other reason for this growth in brick-and-mortar collectibles stores is players, who need a physical space to actually play games like Magic: The Gathering (e.g., Commander aka EDH, or Standard format), Pokémon, or Dungeons & Dragons.
Although online formats of these games exist, nothing really beats sitting around a table with other real humans, and playing with physical cards and game boards.
So, in 2025 and 2026, we foresee continued growth in brick-and-mortar collectibles stores and hope that you continue to support your local card or game store if you’re lucky to have one nearby your home!
3. Expansion of Trading Card Games Beyond Pokémon, Magic: The Gathering and Yu Gi Oh
Even though the “big three“ (aka Pokémon, Magic: The Gathering and Yu Gi Oh) have long dominated the trading card collectibles market, other more recent entries such as Lorcana and One Piece have been growing in popularity recently.
These newer entries in the collectibles market are based on highly-popular IP and franchises, with Lorcana featuring Disney characters, and One Piece focused on the popular Japanese manga and anime series, which first launched in 1997.
Looking ahead to later in 2025 and 2026, we think that these collectible card games will gain popularity for two reasons.
First, recent Pokémon sets—especially the Prismatic Evolutions and Destined Rivals sets—have sold out online in minutes and are rarely seen at brick-and-mortar retailer shelves. Instead of buying these sets, consumers are instead relegated to buying what’s left in stores, such as Lorcana, One Piece, Digimon, or sports cards.
Second, as younger generations seek novelty and want to differentiate themselves from older collectors, they might opt for newer TCGs like Lorcana and One Piece instead of more established brands like Pokémon or Yu Gi Oh.
These two trends combined will likely lead to more interest and value generation for these newer collectible card games, which we predict will continue into future years and beyond.
4. Innovative Card Types and Unique Materials
In an effort to keep their offerings fresh, exciting, and unique, collectibles manufacturers have started to offer innovations in card types and materials, especially with the use of metal in cards.
For example, there have only been 5 real metal Pokémon cards issued during the past few years, including: 1. Celebrations Ultra Premium Collection (UPC) Pikachu, 2. Celebrations UPC Charizard, 3. UPC Arceus V, 4. UPC Arceus VSTAR, and 5. 151 UPC Mew.
We love these metal Pokémon cards and have been lucky to acquire a few, which we’ve sold to some awesome buyers in our eBay store!
Magic: The Gathering has also sought to enhance their card offerings by creating unique foiling treatments on cards in recent sets, including “surge“ foils, “etched“ foils, “rainbow“ foils, and “step-and-compleat Phyrexian” foils, to name a few.
Sports cards have taken this trend one step further, by introducing cards with a wide variety of types of game-used memorabilia (e.g., pieces of jerseys, bats, hats, etc.) and autographs of players on the card itself, or on the game-used memorabilia encased in the card itself.
Looking ahead into 2025 and 2026, we predict that sports card manufacturers like Topps and Panini will continue to expand their offerings of unique memorabilia to include items like tickets, game-worn jewelry (e.g., a necklace or bracelet), or guitar picks or pieces of guitar straps for cards with musicians on them.
Similarly, trading card game companies will likely continue to use different card materials including metal or distinctive foil treatments (e.g., real gold plating) to help differentiate their products in an increasingly competitive market.
5. New Collectibles Grading Options and Companies
As a result of the growth in the collectibles market in 2020 and more recently, grading has seen a dramatic rise in popularity. Grading of collectibles refers to the process of securely sending a collectible card, comic book, stamp, coin, or other item to a company, where experts closely examine the item, verify that it is authentic, and assign a “grade“ (usually from 1 to 10) of the condition of the item.
For example, PSA (Professional Sports Authenticator; founded in 1991 and well-respected in the industry) describes a grade of 1 as “Poor“ and a grade of 10 as “Gem Mint“, with varying condition levels in between. As you might expect, collectibles with a grade of 10 are usually much more valuable than those with a grade of 9, 8, 7, and so on.
Companies such as PSA, BGS (Beckett Grading Services; founded in 1999), and CGC (Certified Guaranty Company; founded in 2000) have been around for many years, but other companies have entered the grading space more recently. For example, TAG (Technical Authentication & Grading) was founded in the year 2010, and other companies, such as AGS (Automated Grading Systems) were founded even more recently in 2021.
While these newer companies are legitimate in the sense that they will securely receive your collectibles and assign grades for a fee, collectibles graded by PGA, BGS and CGC, still command a substantial price premium on websites like eBay when selling.
Here are our top two tips about grading collectibles to keep in mind:
Make sure you do your due diligence and research into the history, headquarters location, and customer reviews before using a grading company.
If you want to be safe and are looking to sell your collectibles for the most money, going with PSA, BGS or CGC is almost always the way to go, even if you need to pay a bit more or wait longer for your graded submissions to be returned.
We’ll likely see more of these new grading companies pop up in 2025 and 2026, while also seeing existing companies expand their offerings of what they grade, such as PSA, who—as of 2025—has started grading comic books and magazines.
If you follow our advice here, you’ll hopefully avoid running into issues, while also maximizing the value of your collectibles investments for short-term selling or long-term preservation.
The Bottom Line
Overall, we see the collectibles market continuing to grow in 2025 and 2026.
This growth comes in response to increased demand from younger generations and those entering retirement, expanded supply of different types of collectibles, and steady upward trends in grading collectibles with established and newer companies in the grading marketplace.
As as we continue to see changes in the dynamic collectibles space, we’re interested to hear your thoughts!
Do you agree with our assessment of the collectibles market and these predictions for 2025, 2026 and beyond? Let us know in the comments on this article, on our Instagram, Facebook page, or via email or DM!