Often abbreviated as PTCG, the Pokemon Trading Card Game was first released in October 1996, just eight months after the Red and Blue games were published. Now, 27 years on, with over 52.9B cards produced in 14 different languages, it’s still one of the most popular – if not the most popular trading card game ever.
Key Pokémon TCG Stats
- Over 52.9 billion cards produced since 1996 (Pokémon, as of March 2023)
- Between March 2022 and 2023, 9.3 billion Pokémon cards had been sold, meaning 17.5% of PTCG lifetime sales were driven in the last year alone. (Pokéguardian)
- More than a quarter of all Pokémon cards were printed between 2020 and 2022, a remedy to the shortage spurred by the TCG’s popularity during the pandemic. (Polygon)
Our favourite, yet the most unlikely statistics about the TCG
Between Normal cards, Holofoils, and Ultrarares, the average weight of a Pokémon card is 1.86 grams, so the total mass of Pokémon cards on the planet is (1.86 x 52.9 billion) = 98.394 billion grams. This is approximately the same mass as The Eiffel Tower.
The surface area of a Pokemon card is 54.44cm2 (6.3cm x 8.8cm). So, the surface area of every Pokémon card on the planet is 293.2 km2 – which could almost cover the entirety of the Maldives.
The cards produced in the 2022-2023 fiscal year amass enough length to cover the average distance between the Earth and the Moon twice, according to an EliteFourum user.
These stats all depend on the impossibility that every card ever produced is fully intact, devoid of bite marks from your dog, and perfectly uncrumpled. Though, they are not.