A rare Pokémon card sold for approximately $16 million has prompted Japan's ruling party to take action. On July 23, a cross-party parliamentary alliance called the "Card Club" was officially launched in Congress, with its chair, Seiji Kihara, highlighting three key issues: counterfeiting, hoarding and reselling, and money laundering.
(Prior context: Pokémon Card Breaks World Record at $16.5 Million! Logan Paul Makes $8 Million, NFT Fractional Investors Lose Everything)
(Context: Bankless: Overview of Pokémon Card Tokenization Platforms)
One Pokémon card sold in February this year for approximately $16 million (about NT$517 million), with the seller being influencer Logan Paul. This figure prompted Japan’s ruling party, the Liberal Democratic Party, to take action: On July 23, a cross-party parliamentary group called the “Trading Card Promotion Parliamentary Alliance” (hereinafter referred to as the Card Card Alliance), specifically focused on the trading card market, held its founding general meeting in parliament. Chairman Makihara Seiji explicitly stated that trading cards are “an industry capable of competing globally,” but issues such as hoarding, reselling, counterfeiting, and money laundering have now come to light.
The parliamentary group has listed the挂牌, and Mihara Seiji has identified three major issues.
The founding general meeting of the Card Game Caucus was chaired by Seiji Kihara, with Member of the House of Representatives Masayoshi Ishihara reporting on the caucus’s operational direction, and Junichi Kanda discussing regulatory approaches. Seiji Kihara summarized three key risks in the card market during the meeting:
First, counterfeit items circulate, and currently, almost all oversight relies on private authentication institutions.
Second, bulk hoarding for the purpose of resale
Third, money laundering is abused because the cards lack individual identification codes, making them untraceable from printing to transfer of ownership.
The numbers speak more directly. According to Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, this market was only ¥177.6 billion in fiscal year 2021, but surged to ¥338.4 billion by fiscal year 2025—nearly doubling in four years, equivalent to about $2.1 billion. As the money grew, the nature of these cards changed: internal assessments within the Liberal Democratic Party state plainly that these cards have long crossed the line from consumer goods; their buying and selling behavior is increasingly resembling the trading of a financial asset.
Pricing power lies in the hands of the United States
An even more awkward layer follows: while Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh! were both born in Japan, the final price a card can reach depends on the grade given by PSA, a grading company on the other side of the Pacific in the United States: the grade determines the market value, the market value determines liquidity, and in turn, determines whether the card can be used as collateral, split, or settled.
After consulting with the industry, the parliamentary group identified this exact issue: the IP is rooted domestically, but the authority over certification and valuation lies elsewhere, leaving Japan with almost no leverage to negotiate the value of assets born from its own content industry.
The financialization of collectibles is not unfamiliar to the crypto community.
When a physical collectible is used for money laundering due to its high unit price, portability, cross-border liquidity, and lack of individual identification, regulatory authorities respond in much the same way as they do with cryptocurrencies: initially allowing the market to grow unchecked, then only later implementing licensing requirements, disclosure obligations, and transaction tracking mechanisms once the scale and number of cases become too large to ignore.
Japan chose to get an early start on this, partly to secure its position before counterfeiting and money laundering issues spiral out of control, and partly to avoid repeating the mistake of losing crypto talent.
It’s worth noting the section on “loss of pricing power”: Japan owns the IP, yet its valuation is entrusted to America’s PSA—somewhat mirroring the most commonly cited pain point in real-world asset tokenization: the content or asset is local, but the authority to determine the truth rests in someone else’s hands.
The card alliance will continue to gather feedback from manufacturers and appraisers; it remains to be seen whether the final policy draft will serve as a reference model for other countries handling the financialization of collectibles.
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