Are Vintage Pokémon Cards an Asset Class? A New Index Says +197% Since 2021, Ahead of Gold, Bitcoin and the S&P 500
The CardTrack 100, a chain-linked index of the 100 most valuable Pokémon cards, has returned 152% since September 2021 with lower volatility than the S&P 500, but it fell 27% on the way and cannot be bought.
The 100 most valuable Pokémon cards have risen 152% since September 2021, ahead of gold, Bitcoin, the Nasdaq and the S&P 500 over the same days, according to the CardTrack 100, a published index of the Pokémon card market. The vintage half of the index, cards from sets printed between 1999 and 2010, is up 197%.
The index is the first attempt to measure Pokémon cards the way a market measures any asset: a value-weighted basket of the 100 most valuable raw near-mint cards, re-ranked every month and chain-linked so the line follows the actual top 100 at each point in time rather than today's basket projected backwards. It has a base of 100 on 1 September 2021 and stood at 252 on 20 October 2026, with the basket worth about $254,000.
CardTrack ran the "asset class" question through the five tests an investor would apply.
1. Return. Since 1 September 2021 the CardTrack 100 is up 152.1%, against gold +139.4%, Bitcoin +91.6%, the Nasdaq Composite +89.4% and the S&P 500 +81.3%, all measured to October 2026. That is 19.7% a year, against 18.7% for gold and 12.4% for the S&P 500.
2. Volatility. The index's annualised volatility is 14.6%, lower than the S&P 500 (15.5%), gold (16.0%) and Bitcoin (54.3%).
3. Drawdown. The index fell 27% from September 2021 to January 2024 and did not regain its 2021 level until March 2025: a collector who bought at the 2021 peak was underwater for 42 months. Calendar years read 2022 -17%, 2023 -4%, 2024 +29%, 2025 +81%, and +49% so far in 2026. The entire gain since 2021 came after January 2024.
4. Concentration. Twenty-seven Gold Star cards printed between 2004 and 2007 are 47% of the basket's value. One card, the Rayquaza Gold Star from the 2005 Deoxys set at $20,000, is 7.9% of it; the top twenty cards are 55%. The Base Set Charizard most readers picture is not in the top 100 at all in raw near-mint condition.
5. Liquidity and cost. The index cannot be bought. Single cards carry dealer spreads, grading fees and shipping that no benchmark has, and the stock comparisons exclude dividends. Entry to the top 100 is a card worth $841.
"An asset class needs a benchmark before anyone can argue about it, and until now Pokémon cards only had auction records," said Josh Lingenfelter, founder of CardTrack. "On return and volatility the top 100 cards have behaved like one since 2021. On liquidity and concentration they have not. Half the value is in twenty-seven cards from three years of print runs, and the index shows a 27% fall that the headlines about record sales never mention."
The gap between vintage and modern cards is the clearest trend in the data. Vintage sets from 1999 to 2010 are up 197% since 2021; modern sets from 2011 onward are up 111%. Seventy-seven of today's 100 cards are vintage and they hold 87% of the basket's value.
About the data: the CardTrack 100 is built from CardTrack's own daily near-mint market pricing since July 2026 and monthly PriceCharting sales history back to the base date, joined without a jump. Benchmark series come from Yahoo Finance and the Federal Reserve's FRED database; gold is the front-month futures contract and stock indices exclude dividends. Historical baskets are not stored, so only today's constituents can be downloaded. The index, its methodology, a monthly history CSV and the current constituents are free to cite under CC-BY 4.0 at https://cardtrack.com/ct100.
CardTrack (cardtrack.com) publishes Pokémon card prices built from completed sales and market data, with price histories for more than 20,000 cards, graded and raw, plus the CardTrack 100 index and regular market reports. CardTrack is a market measure, not investment advice.
