What is Trading Card Games? The Booming of Trading Card Game

Trading Card Game is booming thanks to their astonishing features, such as the excitement with NFTs and the many business strategies that attract user attention. Let’s take a look at the overall trading card game market and on-chain trading card games in crypto.

Traditional Trading Card Game Market

The global TCG market was valued at ~$12 billion, with an expected CAGR of 7–8% through 2030. The market for traditional trading card games has a few clear traits. There are two key traits that help us define the value of the card. The first one is so similar to NFT, which is how rare it is. The second one is how much are the collectors or the players willing to afford it.

In the history of card trading, we see there are some rare cards that sold for extremely high prices. Some packs have prices that seem unimaginable. The Pikachu Illustrator PSA 10 card, which reached $5.275 million in 2021, and the Magic: The Gathering Black Lotus card, which sold for more than $500,000.

But this market also has its limitations. In traditional platforms such as eBay or big auction houses, sellers usually pay high fees, often 10–15%. They also bear the risks of fake cards, which is why grading companies such as PSA, Beckett, and CGC are so important. But the most important factor to consider depends on third parties and long payment processes, which makes liquidity a challenge.

What is Trading Card Game?

A Trading Card Game (TCG) is a game that is very famous on the traditional market. It can be found on eBay and other major auction platforms that cater to traditional market users. The players can collect specially designed cards with the “gacha” effect, similar to the feeling of opening the “secret box.” They can use the cards to build personalized decks and compete against each other. Each card has its own rules for interacting with others.

Pokémon TCG Emergence

In crypto, we have seen Pokémon TCG emerging recently. This is one of the most famous trading card games, in which players use Pokémon cards to battle.

Trading Card Games Features

What excites the users? Trading card games are exciting, competitive, and strategic. When somebody has a chance to open a random package, it gives them the feeling of a “secret box”, like playing the lottery, giving players a rush of surprise and anticipation. We also take the community into another aspect. There are a lot of activities that their fans love to share, some content types such as sharing pack openings on livestreams or at offline events, turning it into a social experience.

They are also adding some gamified elements like leaderboards, tournaments, and special achievements to keep people coming back. This unique mix of chance, community, and play makes TCG a natural match for new trends such as livestreaming, social platforms, and blockchain.

On-chain Trading Card Game Booming 5.5x From 2024

In August 2025, the tokenized Pokémon TCG NFT volumes have gone exponential. The total volumes reached $124.5 million. In comparison with January 2024, there is an increase of 5.5x, showing significant growth.

In which the Courtyard contributed the largest with $78.4 million, and the second one following is Collector Crypt with $44 million. But it is worth noting that Phygitals also got a 245% MoM in August, marking its growth at 2 million. These numbers show that moving TCG onto the blockchain is no longer just an experiment. It’s becoming a real market with scale and liquidity.

Breakout Signals in Aug–Sep 2025: Data & Milestones

There are numerous emerging models to consider. Some highlights are gacha buyback models, livestream commerce, arcade claw machines, and character tokenization. With its diversification, the on-chain TCG market is in a phase of creative explosion. Each project is testing different niches that they want to attract users to the most and get their engagement. Over the next 6–12 months, we’ll likely see clear separation: platforms that solve IP, liquidity, and UX challenges will hold market share, while others may fade quickly.

For more: NFT Trading Cards 2025: The Ultimate Collector’s Guide

Highlight Projects in Trading Card Game Sector

Collector Crypt (Solana) – CARDS

The first and foremost name that highlights the TCG sector is Collector Crypt. It stands out in the on-chain TCG market thanks to its strong gacha with a buyback model on the Solana network.

The CARDS token launched in late August 2025 and within one week reached an FDV of about $450M, with some reports even saying it touched $3B. In its first week alone, gacha revenue hit $16.6M, while monthly trading volume reached $44M, up 124% from the previous month.

Dashboards from Dune also display that the whole RWA TCG sector has been jumped to $87.2M in market cap, a 32% rise in just 24 hours. When compared with the NFT trading volume, the TCG volume on Solana is getting a bigger number, according to Solanafloor data.

The big advantage of Collector Crypt is its 85–90% buyback based on eBay/ALT prices and its plan to reinvest platform fees into buying more real Pokémon cards for the vault. This brings instant liquidity and lowers the risk for collectors when they open packs.

Collector Crypt leads the gacha spins with $10.7 million, which accounts for more than 47% of the total market share. The key aspect of Collector Crypt is the draw it has in the Web3 community with the “Pokémon on-chain” story, turning traditional collecting into fast and transparent on-chain trading. The main drawback is that the token price swings a lot, since only about 10% of the supply is circulating, making it very volatile in the early stage.

Courtyard (Polygon)

Courtyard is seen as the big player in today’s on-chain TCG ecosystem because of its steady volume and Web2-friendly UX. In August 2025, it reached about $62M in trading volume, the highest so far. The platform has minted over 3M NFTs, and its collections often rank among the top NFT sales worldwide, even above BAYC and CryptoPunks, as per data shown by CryptoSlam.

Its strength is the clear bridge between Web2 and Web3: users can pay with credit cards and trade gas-free, while the physical Pokémon cards are safely stored at Brink’s. This makes Courtyard an ideal choice for traditional collectors who want to try blockchain. But its weakness is the lack of a strong buyback system, meaning users rely only on the secondary market if they want to resell cards.

For more: Gods Unchained: The Biggest Trading Card Blockchain Game

Dripshop Live (Ronin Network)

Dripshop Live also works with livestreaming and auctions, but its style leans more toward entertainment commerce, turning pack openings into a live show. Its key product is Jin’s Fortune Spin, a capsule-style gacha where users can open packs live, receive NFTs or slabs, and resell them instantly. The experience feels like a mix of Twitch and eBay, aimed directly at Web3 gamers and streamers.

With streaming activities, streamers need to show strong activity on the channel with expanding content types that can interact with watchers. Some activities could be opening packs live in front of viewers, and the cards are auctioned immediately. This kind of activity turns collecting into a community event. In this livestream, the streamer and the audience both share the excitement of pulling a rare card.

The strength of Drip is the ability to create a strong dopamine loop. In their platform, viewers are entertained and can also trade in real time, creating a tight community feel. But the weakness is heavy dependence on streamers. Without popular creators, the trading volume can drop quickly.

Drip has just come to Ronin—a Layer 2 network. They are at their beginning phase of development and worth taking an eye at.

Welcome to Ronin, Drip!

Pokémon cards are LIVE on Ronin Market ⚔️

Traditional and Web3 markets are merging faster than ever.

Robinhood tokenized stocks, and Circle brought stablecoins to Wall Street.

On Ronin, collecting is in our DNA.

That’s why @dripshop_live is bringing… pic.twitter.com/SsJS4hqWVv

— Ronin (@Ronin_Network) July 4, 2025

Phygitals (Solana)

Phygitals goes for an arcade-style experience. It first got attention with its Pokémon 1999 Raticate claw machine, where users “grabbed” rare cards in a game-like setup. The team also introduced the Pokécoin Market, tokenizing each Pokémon as its own coin — a kind of financialized collecting, similar to niche projects like football.fun or pigskin.fun.

The strength of Phygitals is its clear difference: strong gamification and physical-style fun on blockchain. But the limitation is that it’s still very niche, so it may not attract traditional collectors who care about stable pricing and liquidity.

In the map of distribution of gacha players on platforms, Phygitals ranked first with more than 14.3k active wallets accumulated from the beginning. Collector Crypt leads the meta but has a lower number of active wallets.

rip.fun (Base)

rip.fun focuses on the livestream opening + XP farming experience. The platform runs with the slogan “rip – trade – redeem.” Users can watch livestream pack openings, trade the cards they just saw pulled, and farm XP to level up. This makes the process into a closed, gamified loop that keeps users coming back.

The advantage is strong engagement thanks to the XP rewards system, which motivates users to participate more. But the limitation is that no clear trading volume data has been shared yet, meaning rip.fun may still be in the testing stage, not at the same scale as Collector Crypt or Courtyard.

Market Value & the “Polymarket Moment” Warning

From Bitwise’s Danny Nelson’s perspective, he supposed that “Pokémon and other TCGs are about to have a ‘Polymarket moment’. In which he means that is a breakout where real-world assets explode on-chain at scale, thereby creating a brand new market. This suggests that we should take the story of tokenization seriously. It is not just a short-term trend but the start of a new growth cycle for collectibles.

Pokémon and other TCGs are about to have their “Polymarket moment.” Here’s why you should be paying attention:

Most of crypto’s teal world asset (RWA) plays cater to well-established TradFi markets, like treasuries, real estate, gold and stocks. Sure, tokenization brings these…

— Danny Nelson (@realDannyNelson) September 3, 2025