The Transformation of the Baseball Card Market
Baseball cards were long a children's hobby, with the joy of collecting favorite player cards. However, from the late 2010s, the market transformed dramatically. MLB rookie cards of Shohei Ohtani and Mike Trout began trading for tens of millions of yen, giving cards the character of 'investment products.' NPB cards also see high-value trading for autographed and serial-numbered limited cards. The card market has shifted from children's hobby to adult speculation, with pure collection culture retreating.
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Pack Opening Videos and Gambling-Like Excitement
Card pack opening videos have gained massive popularity on YouTube and social media. Videos showing real-time purchases of expensive boxes to see if rare cards appear provide viewers with gambling-like excitement. The joy of 'hitting' and disappointment of 'missing' mirror the psychological structure of slot machines and gacha. The problem is that many viewers of these videos are children. Regular exposure to content fueling gambling instincts risks children developing gambling-like thinking patterns.
Impact on Children - A Structure That Drains Allowances
Card packs range from several hundred to several thousand yen, affordable with children's allowances. However, rare card insertion rates are extremely low, requiring massive pack purchases to pull desired cards. The psychology of 'one more pack might be the winner' mirrors gambling addiction mechanisms. Card manufacturers often don't disclose insertion rates, preventing consumers (especially children) from accurately understanding expected value. Cases of children spending entire allowances and New Year's money on cards without parents' knowledge are raising concerns in educational settings.
The Need for Regulation and Self-Regulation
Virtually no regulation exists for baseball cards' gambling aspects. While the Consumer Affairs Agency has established some regulations for social game gacha, physical card packs are exempt. Self-regulation by card manufacturers including disclosure of insertion rates, sales restrictions to minors, and restraint on gambling-inducing advertising is needed. Since teams and NPB are involved in the card business, they bear responsibility for minimizing negative impacts on children. For baseball cards to remain a healthy hobby for children, efforts to curb speculative market overheating and restore the genuine joy of collecting are necessary.
The Rise of Authentication and Grading Services
As card values escalated, authentication and grading services experienced explosive growth. North American firms such as PSA and BGS assign grades on a 10-point scale and seal cards in tamper-proof slabs. Graded cards routinely sell for several times to dozens of times the price of their raw counterparts, with a single PSA 10 designation creating price differentials of millions of yen. Demand for grading NPB cards also surged, with domestic submissions reportedly quintupling between 2019 and 2022. Grading fees range from several thousand to tens of thousands of yen per card, making authentication an extraordinarily profitable business. However, concerns persist over opaque grading standards, inconsistent re-grade results, and the lack of consumer-protection oversight governing these services.
The Resale Market and Price Manipulation Risks
The secondary market for baseball cards operates primarily through platforms such as Mercari, Yahoo Auctions, and eBay, with peer-to-peer transactions forming the bulk of trades. The absence of intermediaries means prices reflect supply and demand directly, but it also means deliberate price manipulation is structurally easy. Tactics resembling stock market pump-and-dump schemes appear on social media, where coordinated posts hype specific cards before holders sell at inflated prices. In 2021, a large-scale card fraud case in the United States revealed hundreds of counterfeit slabs in circulation. The NPB secondary market, being smaller in transaction volume, is even more susceptible to control by a few large holders, especially for low-liquidity issues. For individual investors entering this opaque market, the risk of losses due to information asymmetry arguably exceeds that of regulated securities markets.
NPB Teams' Card Strategies and Revenue Structure
For NPB teams, the trading card business has become a key pillar of merchandise revenue. License agreements with card manufacturers provide teams with likeness fees, and the presence of popular players drives up contract values. Companies such as Epoch and BBM hold official NPB licenses and release team-specific sets and commemorative cards annually. By lowering the insertion rate of limited-edition and autographed cards, manufacturers create scarcity, selling premium boxes priced at tens of thousands of yen each. Teams seek to balance fan engagement with merchandise revenue, yet face reputational risk when product designs are perceived as exploiting gambling impulses. Steering this balance between protecting brand value and maximizing income remains a core management challenge in the evolving card business.