The true wealth landscape of on-chain trading card games: From the $8 billion market to the next wave for TCG

Recently, on-chain TCG (Trading Card Game) has suddenly become popular, but many people don’t realize—this track is not a new trend, but a asset class that has been accumulated for over 50 years and is severely underestimated.

What the numbers tell us

The global TCG market has expanded to a scale of 8-10 billion USD, comparable to the sneaker market, with an annual compound growth rate of about 8%. This is not an illusion but a real economy built on decades of cultural accumulation from Pokémon, Magic: The Gathering, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and others.

But there is a critical breaking point:

Offline TCG’s gray supply chain accounts for over 50%. The path from official channels → distributors → retail stores → consumers has already collapsed. True collectors can hardly buy popular products at suggested retail prices and are instead forced into unofficial channels, where second-hand vendors extract a 20%-50% premium. As a result, price discovery in the entire market is controlled by the gray market.

This is why card grading has become a business averaging $720 million annually—about 1.5 million cards are graded each month by companies like PSA, CGC, etc., with PSA holding 77.5% of the market share. This process transforms paper collectibles into tradable financial assets, which is the core of the entire value chain.

The online TCG ecosystem has already begun to take shape

In the on-chain world, TCG has differentiated into four clear tracks:

Gacha Card Platforms (annual transaction volume $75-82 million)

Courtyard, Collector Crypt, and Phygitals have formed the market landscape. Their gameplay involves: purchasing graded cards from unofficial channels at low prices, then recombining them into “virtual card packs,” where users randomly draw cards at fixed prices.

Data is quite wild:

• Courtyard: annual transaction volume $536.5 million, 250,000 users, gross profit $53.6 million
• Collector Crypt: annual transaction volume $150 million, 10,000 users, gross profit $21 million
• Phygitals: annual transaction volume $61 million, 20,000 users, gross profit $6.1 million

The combined transaction volume of these three platforms already exceeds that of the traditional graded card market. The key is that their profit margins are stable around 10%—they buy cards in the secondary market at about 90% of market price, then price Gacha card packs based on probability weighting and rarity distribution, encouraging users to chase that “ultimate card.”

Sealed Card Packs + Live Opening Platforms

This is a completely different story. If Gacha is designed for gamblers, sealed card packs are for hardcore fans.

Official licensed packs, limited editions, specific production batches—these are what true collectors want. The platform’s role is to purchase these official products, host live openings, assist with grading, and ship out. Operating costs are much higher than Gacha, but user stickiness is also much stronger.

Beezie and Collector Crypt have explicitly stated they have no intention of entering this field, for straightforward reasons: difficult procurement channels, heavy operational burdens, and the need for warehouse infrastructure. But this precisely means—whoever can enter this track will have a moat.

Currency Market (Lending Track)

Once cards are tokenized and vaultized, lending becomes the natural next layer. The logic is simple: collectors and shop owners no longer rush to sell cards for cash flow but use tokenized cards as collateral to borrow USDC. This requires robust price oracles, conservative LTV (Loan-to-Value), and sufficient secondary market liquidity.

Products like PocketDex are inherently suitable for this entry—they are originally tools for portfolio management for collectors. Connecting them to lending protocols turns them into risk management frontends. Users can see real-time valuations and borrowing limits of their tokenized collections, with one-click access to borrowing. For collectors, this is “collateralized collectibles,” and for shops, “inventory-backed storage capacity.”

Perpetual Contracts (Derivatives Track)

Trove is leading the way, offering Pokémon card index perps and CS2 skins perps, with leverage up to 5x. Users don’t need to actually hold a box of “Evolving Skies” or build a Charizard portfolio—just trade synthetic indices.

This unlocks three new scenarios:

• Collectors can hedge against physical inventory declines (go long on cards while shorting on Trove)
• Traders can purely trade price exposure without dealing with grading, shipping, or storage
• Arbitrage cycles form between spot, tokenized spot, and derivatives

Real comparison of market sizes

Sealed card packs >> Gacha platforms

Just looking at Pokémon TCG:

• 2024: 10 billion cards printed
• About 50 million players/buyers
• 10.2 billion packs per year (10 cards per pack)
• Average $15 per pack (blended retail and gray market pricing)
• Annual sealed card pack sales roughly $15 billion

In comparison, the three Gacha giants only have an annual transaction volume of $820 million—sealed products are 18 times larger than on-chain Gacha.

But the most interesting part is how much users are willing to pay:

Pokémon Pocket (official digital version, with zero monetary value for cards):

• First-year revenue: $1.3 billion
• 18 million packs opened

Whatnot live opening platform:

• 2024 GMV: $3 billion
• 2025 projected GMV: $6 billion

Even with trust issues on Whatnot—sellers stealing cards, cheating pack weights, swapping cards—the core fans still keep pouring money. What does this tell us? Superfans’ purchasing power and stickiness far surpass gamblers—they not only accept digitalization but are willing to pay premiums for it.

Offline pain points = online opportunities

What is the biggest pain point of offline TCG? Supply collapse.

Distributors give most of their stock to big stores and favored shops, pushing true collectors into gray channels, where they are forced to accept 2-3 times the price premium. Retailers struggle to get products at MSRP.

On-chain infrastructure can directly address this pain point:

Fair Distribution Track

• On-chain real-time card opening platform, collectors buy and open cards online directly, paying minimal fees, with optional physical redemption
• Fragmented ownership of card packs allows retail users to buy a 1/36 sealed stock at a reasonable price instead of being forced to buy entire boxes
• On-chain queuing/raffle/whitelist for sealed products, with each wallet having a allocation cap and transparent odds

Liquidity Track

• Physical custody + tokenization enables cards to be traded and transferred 24/7 without physical movement
• Platforms act as market makers on different markets, standing on both sides of popular SKUs, narrowing the gap with eBay and enabling instant transactions
• Accelerate store and collector business cycles, enabling global price discovery rather than dispersed local pricing

Derivatives + Credit Track

• Perpetual contracts allow trading of TCG indices and specific card synthetic exposures
• Top-rated card indices, specific sealed product perps, options strategies
• Using cards as collateral in money markets, with oracles and liquidators for risk management
• Markets around reprint risks and PSA grading volume growth forecasts

These are not competitors to Gacha and live card opening but layers stacked on top of them. Gacha handles buying/selling and inventory, derivatives handle risk, leverage, and hedging. Their shared goal is to transform TCG from a niche collectible ecosystem into a multi-layered on-chain financial market.

Why this is not just a trend

TCG has existed for over 50 years. Pokémon, Magic: The Gathering, Yu-Gi-Oh!—these IPs have over 25 years of cultural depth, not just a fleeting hype.

The market size is there, the demand is there, the pain points are there. Offline TCG price discovery is hijacked by gray markets, and on-chain infrastructure can just fix this. Most importantly—this is not about creating new demand but unleashing suppressed demand.

The real opportunity is not to build another “casino,” but to: whoever can build infrastructure, connect fair distribution + liquidity + derivatives, will turn a fragmented, high-friction collectible market into a programmable, multi-layered financial ecosystem.

This is the inevitable path for TCG to go mainstream.