I had a Pokémon card addiction back in 1999.I used to get £10 a month pocket money from my grandmother and, more often than not, that crisp note would be immediately exchanged for four crinkly blue and silver booster packs that I'd rip straight open. I paid £10 once for a shiny Charizard card to complete the Base set. It's still sat in the binder I placed it in a quarter of a century ago. Pokémon has been in and out of my life ever since. It made a major comeback in 2016 when Pokémon Go launched, and then again more recently when my young son discovered the TV show. I often watch it with him. I don't recognise all the Pokémon, but I'm pleased to see Ash hasn't aged a day.Then, a few weeks back, my son came home with some Pokémon cards. They were in a small pack that came free with a magazine. I recognised a couple of the newer ones, Rowlet and Dedenne, along with a Seel I remembered from back in the day. The nostalgia hit me hard, so I decided to buy some boosters that we could open together.
I fired up Amazon, thinking that would be the quickest way to find some — only to be slightly confused when I saw the site's yellow "Buy" button had been replaced with a button reading "Request an Invite". I clicked it, dug into exactly what it meant, and soon discovered Pokémon card collecting in 2026 is a very, very different hobby to what it was in the late nineties.
