Every new TCG set release follows the same emotional arc, and we have watched it play out enough times now that it is almost predictable to the week. Week one: excitement, hype, “this is the best set they have ever printed,” pull rates declared criminal, chase cards listed at astronomical prices. Week four: the hype […]
Ask ten different people in this hobby why a card is valuable and you will get ten different answers. Some will point to the pull rate. Others will talk about tournament results. Some will mention how the card looks, how much it reminds them of childhood, or how the character on it is their all-time
The Four Pillars of Card Value Every Investor and Collector Needs to Know Read More »
A booster box that retailed for approximately $100 USD when it launched in December 2022 now trades between $2,700 and $4,344 USD. Let that number land for a second, that’s a big price jump. That is the story of One Piece TCG’s OP-01 Romance Dawn, the birth set of the game, and it is the
Is One Piece TCG Really the Next Big Thing for Investors Or Is It Just a Phase? Read More »
We talk a lot here at The TCG Times about what works. The blue chips, the safe holds, the patterns that repeat in our favour. But there is just as much to learn from the other side the “dark side” if you will. So let us take a walk through five years of genuinely bad
Ranking the Worst TCG Investments of the Last 5 Years Read More »
You bought a card for $200. It was a solid pickup at the time (well done homie), good fundamentals, trending upward, the kind of card you felt good about. Then the market shifted… oh no. A reprint was announced, the hype faded, or a newer chase card pulled all the attention away. Now it is
The Sunk Cost Trap: Why Collectors Hold Too Long and How to Avoid It Read More »
The fourth and final instalment of our H1 2026, Cards vs Capital series, and appropriately the most layered. Magic: The Gathering is the oldest major TCG in the hobby, we are talking a game that has been running since 1993, (yes, before Pokémon Younglings), and its investment market reflects that complexity. Unlike Pokémon’s broadly shared
We are going to get straight to the number that matters in this one, because it deserves to lead. The NASDAQ 100 returned +17.92% in H1 2026 (the first half of the year, January through June). The Card Ladder index for One Piece TCG returned +119% in the same six months. Yes, you read that
One Piece TCG vs The NASDAQ: How Did Cardboard Stack Up in the First Half of 2026? Read More »
Welcome to the second instalment in our H1 2026 (the first half of the year for the new peeps) TCG franchisee vs the NASDAQ 100 series, this one’s for the Yu-Gi-Oh gang, where we put each major TCG head-to-head against the NASDAQ 100 for the first six months of the year. This one is the
Yu-Gi-Oh TCG vs The NASDAQ: How Did Cardboard Stack Up in the First Half of 2026? Read More »
Every six months here at The TCG Times, we are going to do something that most card publications do not bother with: put our hobby’s investment performance directly next to the traditional financial benchmark that most of our readers money is sitting in when it is not buying cardboard, as we have said before, we
Pokémon TCG vs The NASDAQ: How Did Cardboard Stack Up in the First Half of 2026? Read More »
Two sets, two very different launches, two very different relationships but both have a sh*t ton of nostalgia. Like we have said before, nostalgia in TCG usual mean money. Celebrations arrived in October 2021 as Pokémon’s official 25th anniversary released a limited, special-distribution set built specifically to mark the occasion. On paper, Celebrations should have
Pokémon 151 vs Celebrations: Which Anniversary-Style Set Actually Held Its Value Better Read More »
