Inside the speculative world of trading cards, and why we need a new rulebook

In this particular live stream, the star is not the live streamer – in fact, she never shows her face – but the colourful, foil-wrapped packs of Pokemon trading cards in her hands. 

She cuts into the wrappers with a penknife, before ripping the packs open one at a time to reveal the stacks of trading cards within.

These sealed booster packs, often priced at around $10 to $20 each, are a blind gamble for buyers. They have no idea what’s inside, but the allure of getting a “banger”, or rare card which could be worth hundreds or even thousands of dollars on the secondary market, keeps the orders flowing.

Some buy multiple packs at once – spending hundreds of dollars to increase their chances – for the live streamer to rip open for the grand reveal. 

In the comments, buyers wish one another good luck and celebrate together when a rare card is pulled, while others tell the streamer to send them only the “hits”, or rare cards, that they’ve pulled, and discard the rest of the cards. 

It is a whole community out there, where viewers are often familiar with the host or with one another. They stay on the live streams not simply because they want to buy cards, but because they want to share the thrill of the reveal with others. 

This is known as a “rip and ship” live stream, of which there are a dime a dozen on TikTok. They come amid a global resurgence of interest after the Covid-19 pandemic in collecting Pokemon cards. And it is a lucrative business. 

The social commerce industry is booming. A 2024 report on researchandmarkets.com noted that the social commerce industry in Singapore is poised to grow significantly over the next few years. It estimated that the gross merchandise value from social commerce will increase from US$1.2 billion (S$1.55 billion) in 2023 to reach US$8.47 billion by 2029.

And according to TikTok Singapore’s 2025 year in review report, the platform saw an increase of 1.8 times in daily shoppers, 1.4 times in local sellers, and almost double the number of affiliate creators from January to November 2025. Live streams on TikTok Shop also saw a 110 per cent increase in gross merchandise value. 

For millennials and Gen Zs who grew up playing these trading card games, it’s a very different world from the $5 booster packs sold at our neighbourhood provision shop, and the battles fought on the school quadrangle with the cards we brought (or smuggled secretly) to school. 

The Government recently announced plans to regulate trading cards. Given the stakes involved and the risk that the new trading card universe can lure children into a gambling addiction, the move comes not a moment too soon.

From children’s game to investment asset

When Mr Chew Zhan Lun was growing up, his parents did not want to buy him trading cards unless he did well in school. “It was something that was missing in my childhood.” he told me on a recent episode of the podcast In Your Opinion. “As adults with more spending power, we want to buy back these childhood memories.”

This drove him to pick up the hobby again as an adult. But along the way, some of the cards he bought went up in value, and he saw trading cards as – in his words – an “alternative asset class”.

Today, he is the proud owner of a Pikachu Illustrator Pokemon card – of which only 39 copies are believed to have been officially distributed worldwide. And, he recently rejected a $1.3 million offer for it. 

Along the way, many others have done the same, with the result that what is essentially a children’s card game has become a tradeable commodity, complete with secondary markets and professional grading. 

On the card marketplace Mr Chew co-founded, CTRL Collectibles, people buy and sell trading cards, encased in tamper-proof plastic slabs. The cards – which could have been drawn from a live stream or bought from other sellers – are sent overseas for professional grading by third-party companies like Professional Sports Authenticator (PSA). This grading affects their value, and depends on things like the condition of the card, and whether there are scratches or flaws.

Mr Chew’s Pikachu Illustrator received a grade of 9. YouTuber and wrestler Logan Paul, who owns the same card but with a perfect grade of 10, recently sold it at a record US$16.5 million. 

Single cards are listed for five- or six-figure sums on the marketplace. Cards with similar listing prices can also be found on Carousell. 

It is an entire ecosystem out there, and points to the fact that today, people simply aren’t playing with trading cards the way they used to. As Mr Chew told me, in the past, people would buy a booster pack because the cards inside could help them improve their gameplay strategy. Now, they want to land a rare card – such as one with alternative or more intricate artwork – hoping to resell it at a huge profit. 

Of course, there are collectors who may form an emotional attachment to their cards, and refuse to sell them at any price. But the rise of this ecosystem is catalysing the growth of speculators, resulting in higher prices – and card game hobbyists being crowded out.

“From what I’m seeing within the community, people are a bit sad, because in a way, they’re priced out,” said Mr Chew.

Social media hype and gamification

This entire ecosystem has been amplified by social media and the live streamers ripping open foil packs for viewers. 

There are the high-profile sales, like Mr Paul’s, that go viral. Other videos show the “reveal” of rare cards from booster packs, encouraging viewers to buy into the hype.

“Kids may see these videos, with lots of engagement, and they may think it’s easy,” said Mr Chew. 

In the bid to draw more eyeballs and drive more sales, some live streamers have also veered into questionable territory. Games can be played, such as one Mr Chew described as a “pack battle”. 

In this game, there are six participants, each of whom would purchase a set number of booster packs. The streamer opens each pack according to the name and order of participants, and once everything is open, participants are ranked in order of the rarity of the cards they have drawn. The losers – the two whose cards have the lowest value in terms of rarity – would then have to pay for everyone else’s cards.

There is also the practice of buying and selling “Oripas” (original packs), or seller-made blind packs that are available not only on live streams, but also at physical stores. They are marketed as a low-cost chance at getting high-value cards. 

Third-party sellers repack trading cards of varying values into blind packs that may be sold at a premium. But claims of high-value cards can be difficult to verify, and often, as The Straits Times previously reported, buyers often end up with cards worth far less than what they paid for. 

Crossing a line

Just as we wouldn’t grant minors constant exposure to fruit slot machines or online poker games, it behoves us to effect guard rails against new forms of gambling that may be dressed up as investment or gaming.

Oripas, for instance, have been singled out by the Ministry of Home Affairs as potentially constituting cheating or illegal gambling, and may be illegal in Singapore. But even games like the “pack battle” can cross the line into gambling, according to psychiatrist Lim Boon Leng. 

Even the simple act of peeling open a foil wrapper can trigger a rush of dopamine to the brain, said Dr Lim, a psychiatrist in private practice at Gleneagles Medical Centre who also spoke to me on the podcast. And as the brain gets desensitised, you end up buying even more cards to get the same kick. 

“You can see an escalation in behaviour – you start off spending a few dollars on a booster pack, but in order to strike something that could potentially be worth a few thousand dollars, you see them spending more and more,” he said. 

One may also fall into the trap of chasing losses. “Let’s say you’ve already invested tens of thousands of dollars, and you feel that I cannot give up my investment now – so maybe in the next pack, I’ll make the loss back,” he added. 

Furthermore, children and teenagers, whose brains are not fully developed and may exhibit more impulsive behaviour, are more likely to be taken in by games of chance like “pack battles”. In fact, it was recently reported that a child as young as 10 years old was found buying booster packs from live streams.

While the thrill that comes with buying blind packs is not as stimulating as, say, games like jackpots or blackjack, it can still be addictive, said Dr Lim. And if a child were to get addicted to this thrill, it could also become a gateway to more severe gambling behaviour in adulthood. 

 Are regulations an overreach?

The Government recently announced that trading card packs will be regulated in Singapore to manage gambling risks, with details on the new regulations to be released by the middle of the year.

The news initially came across as a bit paternalistic and an overreach. After all, when we think of regulations, it’s easy to associate them with things that are typically vices, like smoking, drinking or even – in a more extreme case – social media. Why would a children’s card game need to be regulated? 

But it is clear that the trading card ecosystem is very different from what it was two decades ago. And given the complexity of the scene, with the commodification of cards and social media fuelling the frenzy, we need to consider how potential regulations can address the situation and weed out bad actors. 

The Government has said that in drafting the regulations, it would consider suggestions such as mandatory and standardised disclosure of odds and probability ranges for blind box or “gacha” products sold in Singapore. Similar measures are already used in Japan and China. 

Another option is age-based regulations – such as the ones in China, where businesses are banned from selling blind boxes to children under eight. 

But regardless of what is adopted, both Mr Chew and Dr Lim said the regulations would make parents more aware – and literate – about what their children are buying and their odds of success. 

In the 2000s and 2010s, online gambling and video game loot boxes arose as new challenges that regulators had to deal with. Now, it’s the world of speculative trading cards that is shaping up to be quite the wicked challenge that the regulators of today will have to face.