Absol on the Ridge
Kim Kardashian, Logan Paul, and the Pokémon TCG's good kind of disaster
Absol on the ridge.
Pokémon has fans of all kinds around the world, but none are quite like Kim Kardashian and her son Saint. It’s not just because they can show up to a card show, as they did earlier this month, and hand over about $1,300 in cash for a single card — a BGS 10 Hidden Fates Shiny Charizard GX, which is far from a common experience — but because when they did it, their celebrity came with them, filling the room, warping the temperature, turning every onlooking vendor, collector, and player into a witness.
To witness, however, doesn’t necessarily mean to have a shared understanding. Reactions to the Kardashian sighting inspired just about every response imaginable. The vendor who posted the clip, PokeHoops, framed it simply: “Showing @kimkardashian a $100,000 Pokémon card… and she actually bought something too.” One widely followed alerts account put the anxiety in four words: “we are so cooked.” Collectors on Instagram and in forum threads called it a “top signal” — if Kim’s here, the peak is in, and the only way is down. Others saw the summit getting even more out of reach: if the Kardashians are here, getting anything at MSRP just got harder. thereelzero on Instagram offered a more existential take: “congrats… but hobby is dying.” Within about a day, the clip was ricocheting across Dexerto, LADbible, Just Jared, and Reddit, and a single Facebook repost was already pushing toward half a million views.
All of these reactions make sense. In Pokémon, the same creature can mean something completely different depending on which version you’re holding — the Pokédex ships different entries across games, and the same Pokémon is described differently each time. Kim Kardashian at a card show is no different: same sighting, same celebrity, and yet the hobby is holding at least two completely opposite reads on what it means. For players of the TCG and collectors not driven by grades, her appearance might mean something else entirely — not a warning, not a peak, but a sign that the wildest part of the boom is already behind us. If that’s the case, there’s a Pokémon for that. Meet Absol.
Absol, No. 359, the Disaster Pokémon — as seen in Pokémon Ruby.
No. 359 in the Pokédex, Absol is known as the Disaster Pokémon. Pokémon Ruby’s entry reads: “Every time ABSOL appears before people, it is followed by a disaster such as an earthquake or a tidal wave.” Pokédex entries vary across titles — that’s always been part of the lore — and FireRed, one of the Game Boy Advance classics that just got re-released on Nintendo Switch for the franchise’s 30th anniversary, gets closer to the truth: Absol was “mistaken as a doom-bringer.” It isn’t causing anything. It’s just the first sign. Absol lives in the mountains, rarely coming down — and when it does, people tend to notice. Absol doesn’t cause the avalanche. It just shows up on the mountain.
The avalanche, in this case, had already started before Kim arrived. Logan Paul didn’t give the Pokémon market its value, but his attention had a ripple effect. There’s a reason he’s been called an influencer. Famous for his online antics, acting, and wrestling, Paul sold his diamond-encrusted necklace — with a PSA 10 Pikachu Illustrator at its center — for about $16.5 million through Goldin Auctions, with the sale tied to Ken Goldin’s Netflix show King of Collectibles: The Goldin Touch. He’d worn the necklace to WrestleMania 38 and spent the next few years treating the card as a prized possession, performing for an audience. When someone with that platform stops paying attention, people notice that too — and at the auction livestream, before the hammer had barely come down, he was already announcing RipIt, a new card-breaking venture. This is, after all, the same guy who was sued over CryptoZoo, an NFT project that investors and critics have described as a rug-pull that left them holding worthless tokens — a lawsuit that was ultimately dismissed, even if the filings and exposés painted a pretty clear picture of how Paul tends to operate. Pokémon was just the next thing.
So is the disaster actually happening? The numbers suggest something is already in motion. Speculative markets have a recognizable late-cycle rhythm — what economists call a Minsky moment, when prolonged optimism shifts the buyer pool from people who understand an asset to people who just know that other people are excited about it. The pricing around Perfect Order, the set that officially released last Friday, might be indicating that we’re in the midst of a Minsky moment right now. Most current standard Elite Trainer Boxes, like the new Perfect Order ones, have an MSRP of 49.99 USD. On the secondary market, it peaked around $145.92 on TCGplayer in mid-January — nearly three times retail on a product nobody had cracked open yet. It’s sitting around $78 now, a nearly 47% correction before a single pack has been opened. The same cooling is showing up in Japan, where the secondary market tends to move first. Modern sealed is drifting meaningfully off its post-pandemic highs. It’s starting to look less like a new era and more like an exhale.
Perfect Order Elite Trainer Box market price history via TCGplayer. Peak: $145.92. Current market price: $77.86. Low sale: $62.00.
The hype-driven corners of the hobby delivered a swift verdict on Perfect Order: no Charizard, no Pikachu, no grail to anchor a case break or a thumbnail. “Tell me what’s good about this set?” went one post from @web3ie on X — a thread that made its rounds on Reddit too. A player, @pray4goodpulls, answered: “Meowth is extremely playable. Zygarde is one of the best-looking Mega SAR/SIRs released.” The response: “Wtf is a Zygarde?” That exchange, in three posts, is the whole argument.
“Wtf is a Zygarde?”
Meowth ex’s ability, Last-Ditch Catch, lets you search your deck for a Supporter the moment you play it to your Bench — a tutor effect that makes it a high-value staple that fits in just about every deck. It’s not the first non-headliner playable to price that way: Fezandipiti ex, whose Flip The Script ability lets you draw three cards after a knockout on your own team, held between $13 and $20 for much of 2025 before being reprinted in the annual Trainer’s Toolkit. Meowth ex is already sitting around $10 at minimum rarity — and if Fezandipiti is any guide, it likely won’t drop much before climbing higher than it is now. And then there’s Poké Pad. A utility card for those who actually play the TCG — not just collect — it should cost under a dollar in a healthy market. It was trading in the high single digits because Ascended Heroes, the set it debuted in, has been nearly impossible to find. Perfect Order prints it, and the market price has already dropped to $0.64 as of this writing. The speculators and the players are staring at the same set and seeing two entirely different things — an investment (at best), or a hobby.
“Wtf is a Zygarde?”
Chaos Rising, the next set after Perfect Order, arrives May 22 with everything a late-boom set is supposed to have: Mega Greninja ex on the box, one of the most popular Pokémon in the entire franchise — Greninja ranked first in the official Pokémon of the Year 2020 vote, ahead of every Kanto and Johto classic — and arguably the strongest fan favorite to emerge after the original 151. Greninja already has a proven track record as a chase: the Special Illustration Rare (SIR) from Twilight Masquerade for Greninja ex has regularly sold for $700–$1,000 in PSA 10. Still, whether or not that’s enough to keep the hype all hot remains to be seen. Preorders on TCGplayer are sitting around $150 for the Elite Trainer Box — still well above MSRP, but Perfect Order was at $145.92 before anyone had opened a pack, and look where that ended up. GameStop is already taking in-store preorders at $90.
Greninja ex SIR, Twilight Masquerade. Still $300 raw. Still holding.
If a set called Chaos Rising, fronted by the franchise’s most popular non-Kanto Pokémon at full Mega power, can’t sustain the frenzy — and the early signals suggest it won’t — then the boom doesn’t end with a crash. It ends with a Greninja on a shelf at $49.99. For speculators, that’s the wreckage. For everyone else who likes to build a deck and fill a binder, show up to locals on Pokémon night — it’s the good kind of disaster: the kind that clears the mountain and leaves the game intact.
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