Trading cards just had their first billion-dollar month. Card Ladder's October numbers came out this week at $1.07 billion, and the month closed with a Kobe Bryant 1/1 that a dealer says it bought for $1.7 million last year and just sold for $4.2 million.

The same week, Pokémon cards turned up as prizes in a Texas gambling bust a day before entering the National Toy Hall of Fame, Star Trek Magic boxes climbed after Patrick Stewart's death, and Collectibles.com traced 70 years of ripping wax.

What we're covering:

💵 Cards just had their first $1 billion month
🎰 Pokémon's week, from a gambling bust to the Hall of Fame
📦 Collectibles.com on 70 years of ripping wax
🖖 Star Trek Magic boxes jump after Patrick Stewart's death
🔥 Heatseekers: Top upcoming releases

Let's get into it

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Card Ladder's October data came out Monday, and for the first time the market tracker recorded more than $1 billion in card sales in a single month.

The total was $1.07 billion, and 30 of the 42 market segments Card Ladder follows finished the month higher.

Pokémon held three of October's five biggest sales, led by the $4.88 million Art Academy Mudkip we covered last week. The top sports card came at the very end of the month. Secure Collectibles says it sold a 2017 Panini Flawless Kobe Bryant Logoman autograph 1/1, graded PSA 9 with a 10 autograph, for $4.2 million in a private deal on October 28.

The dealer told Card Ladder it bought the card out of China for $1.7 million in August 2025, which works out to a 147% gain in about 15 months, and that the Kobe is now headed back to China. Card Ladder hasn't verified the sale yet, so for now the price is reported rather than confirmed.

Sunday's Gemmed card was a 1st Edition Lugia from 2000 Pokemon Neo Genesis (#9), graded CGC 9, and it sold for $6,000 in a Fanatics Collect weekly auction on October 11. The typical first guess was $14,500, more than twice the real price, and half of players never got within 5%. How close would your guess have been?

Gemmed is a free daily game where you look at a graded card and guess what it actually sold for, across Pokémon, basketball, baseball, football, soccer, and Magic. You get six guesses, every miss tells you whether to go higher or lower, and landing within 5% wins.

The Pokémon TCG turned 30 this year, and it may never have had a stranger week.

Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar said the San Antonio game rooms handed out cards instead of cash to get around Texas prize limits, and at one location the business next door would buy them back for a couple hundred dollars.

Deputies detained 23 people, seized roughly 600 machines, and expect 13 to face charges.

A day later, Pokémon entered the Hall alongside Care Bears, the playground slide, and bingo, which is itself a game of chance. It had been a finalist before and finally beat out Tickle Me Elmo and mahjong.

Collectibles.com traced the hobby's favorite moment, the second before you see what's in the pack, from a five-cent 1952 Topps wrapper to today's digital rips.

Its argument is that the best sealed wax is now too valuable to open and too easy to fake.

Its two named chases, AJ Dybantsa and Cameron Boozer, also headline Topps Flagship Basketball, out Thursday.

The full story is at Collectibles.com.

Patrick Stewart died October 28 at 86, and within a day collectors turned to a Magic: The Gathering set that isn't even out yet. The Star Trek set includes seven headliner cards signed by the actors, among them a Captain Picard signed by Stewart, with fewer than 250 copies of each.

Wizards of the Coast hasn't published pull rates beyond saying the signed cards sit in an extremely low number of packs.

On TCGplayer, the box's market price rose from $495.34 on October 28 to $576.02 the next day, and boxes are still selling $50 to $100 above where they were before the news. The other signed cards come from William Shatner, Ethan Peck, Brent Spiner, Kate Mulgrew, Jeri Ryan, and LeVar Burton. Prerelease events start today, and the set reaches stores November 13.

The world of collectibles is wide and deep, and there's a constant stream of new releases. Here are some of the big ones that are coming up:

October's billion dollars came from more than nine million sales, and most of them were everyday cards rather than seven-figure grails. What keeps that volume moving is what Collectibles.com wrote about this week, the gap between buying a pack and knowing what's inside.

This week the hobby sold that gap in a lot of forms. Wizards is selling it with Picard autographs numbered under 250, and Topps with a 1/1 for whoever finds ten matching inserts first. In San Antonio, according to the sheriff, it was sold as a way around gambling law. A day later Pokémon cards and bingo entered the Toy Hall of Fame together, which says something about why both have lasted.

See you next week!