eBay Publishes Pokemon TCG Stats for 2023!

To capitalize on Pokemon Day, eBay held a “Catch 151” campaign on Tuesday where they partnered with certain sellers to start Pokemon card auctions at $1.51. (Don’t feel bad if you missed out, most of the auctions sold above market price.)

To promote the campaign, eBay released several stats regarding Pokemon TCG sales on their platform. Their stats give us some insight into how well the Pokemon TCG is performing.

• In 2023, eBay users searched for Pokemon items more than 400 times a minute globally, on average.
• In 2023, the most-searched Pokémon character on eBay globally was Charizard, followed by Pikachu and Mew.
• The top three most expensive Pokémon items sold on eBay in 2023 were:
  • PSA 10 GEM MINT Charizard Base Set 1st Edition Shadowless Pokémon Card 4/102 ZM1 (November 2023, $217,500)
  • 1999 Pokémon CGC 8 NM-MT Charizard Disco Holo Test Print Shadowless Base Set 4 (August 2023, $125,000)
  • 1999 Pokémon CGC 5 EX Charizard Disco Holo Test Partial Print Shadowless Base (August 2023, $100,000)
• In October 2023 – the month after Pokémon announced a partnership with the Van Gogh Museum – global eBay users searched for ‘Pikachu Van Gogh’ nearly 40,000 times per day, on average.
• Searches for ‘Pokémon 151’ increased nearly 11,000% in January 2024 compared to January 2023.

The last stat is rather amusing because eBay doesn’t seem to know that a Pokemon 151 set released in October 2023. Either that or they thought using that “stat” would be a good way to advertise their campaign.