Market Opportunity
The Pokémon trading card market has evolved from a collector niche into one of the most valuable alternative asset classes globally. Recent market data shows an estimated $9.5–15 billion in cumulative market capitalization, with billions in annual trading volume across auction houses, marketplaces, and private vaults.
In December 2023, a 1998 PSA 9 Pikachu Illustrator card sold for $2 million USD on Goldin Auctions — setting a new benchmark for grail-tier slabs.
PWCC Marketplace and Heritage Auctions consistently handle tens of millions in Pokémon card sales each year.
TCGPlayer (owned by eBay) reports over $1 billion in annual GMV from trading cards — the majority of which are Pokémon-related.
These figures confirm that Pokémon cards have transcended hobby status and they are now institutional-grade collectibles rivaling fine art, watches, and even gold in both value and liquidity.
Yet, despite the surge, no financial instrument exists to aggregate this market. There is no ETF, no index, and no fungible asset representing exposure to Pokémon grails. Capital flows daily between auction houses and vaults but none of it accrues to a tokenized, onchain economy until now.
Our Edge in Market Validation
While peers in Web3 such as $CARDS and Phygital Marketplaces have proven crypto’s appetite for collectible-based assets, they remain limited in scope:
They focus on sales platforms, not index models.
Their exposure is transactional, not fractionalized.
They rely on speculative momentum, not real asset backing.
Grail Index fills the missing link becoming the first on-chain Pokémon index that captures the continuous trading volume of high-end slabs and converts it into Vault-backed, fractional exposure for holders.
Market Share Potential
Unlike auction houses that extract value from collectors, Grail Index captures and compounds it, turning collector capital into protocol-owned growth.
$GRAIL tokenizes the market of high-end slabs itself, becoming first scalable index built to absorb real-world collectible demand and translate it into a liquid asset class.
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