Menu
Sign In Search Podcasts Libraries Charts People & Topics Add Podcast API Blog Pricing
Podcast Image

Cheques and Balances

The $3,800% Return: Pokémon Cards vs S&P 500 | Episode 474

21 Apr 2026

Transcription

Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.

Chapter 1: What surprising asset has outperformed the S&P 500?

0.031 - 29.616 Host 1

We are back in your life, and today we are talking about the asset that has outperformed the share market that you must need to know. Michael, there's a lot of alternative investments out in the market, but my goodness, Pokemon cards are going crazy. Who is your favorite Pokemon? Good question. Did you watch Jigglypuff vibes? Oh, absolutely. Yeah.

0

29.636 - 48.019 Host 1

I remember it was very big when I was in primary school and they got to the point where people were trading cards and you weren't allowed to trade with the people in year one anymore because- Well, you just wrote them off. You just wrote them off. Yeah. There was a band. Stand over these juniors with their Pokemon cards. How about you give me that, Charizard?

0

48.039 - 59.543 Host 2

Man, this is the mean streets of Remu era. Yeah. Do I have a favorite Pokemon? Actually, to be honest, I can't even remember them anymore. Definitely into it when I was a kid. Had the Game Boy with the game.

0

59.964 - 61.086 Host 1

That was legit. That was good times.

0

61.106 - 62.028 Host 2

Good times. Jigglypuff.

62.048 - 62.91 Host 1

You a Jigglypuff guy?

62.89 - 64.332 Host 2

No.

64.592 - 82.415 Host 1

No. You're like, I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do with that. I will make sure to pop in the comments what your favorite Pokemon was. So the background of this story, and then we're going to talk about some other alternative assets, is myself and Ash, one of our financial advisors, was meeting with a client the other day, and we were reviewing his financial position.

82.435 - 112.658 Host 1

And there was $45,000 worth of Pokemon cards in his asset table. I've been doing this for a long time. Never seen that. And I was like, this is a first for me. So I did a little Google and I was like, how have Pokemon cards been performing? And so the S&P 500, just as a reference point, is up 483% since 2004, which is a pretty good return. You'd be pretty happy with that.

Chapter 2: How have Pokémon cards achieved a 3,800% return?

239.234 - 243.761 Host 2

Yeah. And, you know, they were going for like millions of dollars and now they're all worth like nothing.

0

244.042 - 244.162 Host 1

Right.

0

244.563 - 252.596 Host 2

And that's the thing is like if you get caught up in the hype and the hysteria and you pour your money into it, you could be left holding the bag and that bag could be worth nothing.

0

252.656 - 275.198 Host 1

Yeah. And you touched on it before around what is the underlying value if you buy a property? There is somebody who needs to live somewhere. There is rent being exchanged. If you look at the share market, somebody is going around, hustling, selling a product, selling a good, a service, whatever it might be. There is something happening. But if you are just holding something going like, oh, yeah.

0

275.178 - 285.714 Host 1

Makes sense. This goes up over time, but you can't give me a reason why, which is probably why we, you know, in terms of the discussions with Bitcoin, et cetera, you kind of go around in circles a little bit. Uh, there's just risk.

285.934 - 304.442 Host 2

Yeah. The other thing is like, um, a lot of these assets don't provide you with kind of the traditional things you would get from another to asset class, dividends, cashflow, rent, something like that. Um, so you're basically spending the money, hanging onto it and just hoping that, I don't know, maybe for nostalgia's sake, this Pikachu gold edition is going to go up 5,000%. Yeah.

304.422 - 305.844 Host 2

And how do you value it?

306.244 - 307.205 Host 1

That's the thing.

307.346 - 309.729 Host 2

You've got to ask another nerd what they think about it.

Chapter 3: What are the risks of investing in alternative assets?

434.114 - 435.275 Host 1

On alternative assets.

0

435.856 - 441.543 Host 2

And people can bring up their Pikachu cards. No, no, I'm not going to Armageddon. Okay.

0

441.563 - 464.48 Host 1

Yeah. Right. Armageddon in the comments. If you want us. James and Emily can go to Armageddon. Yeah. Yeah. And what do you want Mike to dress up as? Wrong answers. The other thing though, coming back to the value of Pokemon cards I've heard is it also depends like movies that are dropping and TV shows or magazines or whatever. Any sort of Pokemon-related stuff.

0

464.941 - 488.835 Host 1

If a new character or an old character features in this thing, the value of the card goes up because they've been featured recently. So, like, hypothetically, it could be like some of the US politicians, where if some people are holding undervalued Pokemon cards, they feature them in a new movie, you get a spike in the asset price. So, you know...

0

488.815 - 509.601 Host 1

Anything can happen, Mike, when it comes to Pokemon cards. I guess the other point, Mike, is this important point to touch on. This is not personalized financial advice where we're saying to start to invest into Pokemon cards. Easy to look back at the 3,800% return and say, we should have invested. Should people sell everything?

509.962 - 518.232 Host 1

I know you've had people sell houses before to go all in on certain assets. Should these people sell everything? Yeah, sell everything and go into Pokemon.

518.212 - 534.908 Host 2

Yeah, look, you know what? It's important for people to have hobbies, right? Should you sell your house to go in on Pokemon cards? Absolutely not. It's the same as every alternative investment though, right? Highly speculative, highly risky, could be worth something, could be worth nothing. It's probably rife with scams as well. That's the other thing.

535.008 - 553.668 Host 2

Like when we're talking about how hard is it to value something, how hard is it to verify something's authenticity? You know, like Providence is huge with art, right? You've got to prove where the painting came from and how it got where it is. Like, Mate, like you can't prove that any of this stuff is weird. A lot of wines get faked as well, right? Like the ultra high value wines.

554.389 - 556.351 Host 2

So yeah, look, it's a hobby.

Chapter 4: How do other collectibles compare to Pokémon cards?

620.879 - 641.588 Host 1

Have some money left over, pay down debt, buy property, invest into shares, be consistent. If you want to have like a couple of percent in some of these alternative assets, go for gold. But if you can't articulate why they're worth anything, then you shouldn't be investing in them to start with. Absolutely. Cool. All right. Make sure to like, review, subscribe. We'll catch you next time. Cheers.

0
Comments

There are no comments yet.

Please log in to write the first comment.