‘It’s crazy’: Dad turns £200 into £1.5million business selling Pokemon cards and says one card recently sold for £27,500

A father who has turned £200 into a £1.5 million business selling Pokemon cards has said the growth has been “absolutely crazy”, with one card recently selling for £27,500.

Thomas Lake, 35, who lives in London and works as a graphic designer alongside running his Pokemon trading card business on eBay, has had a “passion” for Pokemon since his childhood.

He collected Pokemon cards, Game Boy games, figurines, N64 Games and other merchandise, and although this “fizzled out” as the years went on, he decided to buy some Pokemon cards on eBay around a decade ago.

He said he bought 20 cards for £200 to resell some of them for a profit, but after making more than double what he paid for them, he started selling as a sole trader and later launched his business, Lake Card Store.

So far this year, Thomas said he has sold £450,000 worth of cards and, looking at his annual turnover from last year, he has generated around £1.5 million in sales, including £250,000 to £300,000 from Instagram.

Thomas told PA Real Life: “It’s crazy at the moment, I honestly can’t explain what’s happening.

“I thought I was at my peak when I was doing it as a sole trader, with around £84,000 in sales in a year… but I did that sale in three days last week, so that just blows my mind.

“I’ve put in a lot of work to be in this position, building the store and the brand and trying to provide a great service to people… but I never thought I would get to this stage.”

Thomas has been a life-long Pokemon fan and said he was in primary school when “the first wave of Game Boy games and cards came out”.

Pokemon Red and Green for the Game Boy were first launched in Japan in 1996, along with the Pokemon Trading Card Game later that same year, and it has expanded globally ever since.

“Every single person was into it – it was huge. Everyone collected it, we all played the games on the Nintendo and we all went to see the movies”, he explained.

“So, I’ve had a love for it since then.”

Growing up in London, Thomas said he and his sister would buy a pack of Pokemon cards from the local corner shop each week with their pocket money.

His favourite Pokemon are Pikachu, Charizard and Gengar, and he said thinking of Charizard brings back one memory from his childhood, as he had a “temper tantrum”.

“I remember one Christmas, we each got three or four packs, and my sister pulled the Charizard out of the Base Set pack, and it was one of those things that ruined my Christmas,” he said.

“I was so upset that it wasn’t me and she still reminds me about that to this day.”

While Thomas stopped collecting as the years went on, he said Pokemon has “always been on (his) mind” and, around a decade ago, he spotted some cards on eBay that he wanted to buy.

Working in graphic design, Thomas said he has always been able to appreciate the illustrations on the cards and he bought 20 for £200, with the aim to re-sell some of them for a profit.

He said he purely wanted to “fund a personal collection of cards while making some extra money”, but after selling a portion of the cards for more than double the original price, he knew he was onto something.

Speaking about why he decided to buy the cards, he said: “I guess it’s nostalgia, isn’t it?

“When you see stuff from your childhood, you just have a special feeling towards it.

“I just saw a load of cards for sale (on eBay) and I thought, ‘Well, if I buy these cards, I can sell off certain ones and then keep other ones’, and that’s what happened.

“The cards ended up selling within a day when I put them up on eBay and it has just gone from there.”

Thomas started buying and selling more Pokemon cards as a sole trader and his earnings increased. He followed the various trends and said new releases, such as the Pokemon GO mobile game in 2016, along with the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic, pushed the prices up.

“When Pokemon GO came out on the phone, that’s when the sales started flying,” he said.

“At this point, I’d already been selling for around a year and I’d built a good presence on eBay… but I only started taking it seriously as a business nearly two years ago when we became a limited company.

“To be honest, the growth has just been absolutely crazy. The sales we’re doing at the moment, I’m doing what I would do in a whole year in a week.”

Looking at his annual turnover from this time last year, Thomas said he has generated £1.5 million in sales, including £250,000 to £300,000 from Instagram.

He said the launch of livestreams on eBay has boosted his sales and he now refers to his business as “one of the founding fathers of the eBay Live UK”.

While he operates almost exclusively on eBay, he additionally sells cards and other merchandise at trade shows and has started a consignment service, where he sells people’s cards on their behalf for a fee.

His most significant recent sales at the time of writing include a PSA 10 1st Edition Shining Charizard card from the Neo Destiny Set for £27,500; a PSA 8 1st Edition Charizard from the original Base Set for £24,000; and a PSA 10 Mario Pikachu Full Art card for £20,000, which he said could have been “bought in a box for 30 US dollars about eight years ago”.

“I can understand the argument of, ‘it’s just a card’, because the prices are crazy to me as well,” Thomas said.

“We’re going through a big boom at the moment, and I think it must be because of the 30th anniversary of Pokemon this year.”

Thomas now has a team to support him, including an office assistant, who completes all the postage and packaging, and streamers who run the eBay Live sessions every week.

He said he can achieve sales of up to £20,000 in a single hour during a live stream and the total viewers across a session can reach up to 8,000 people.

“The beauty with my live sessions is it’s an auction format, so people only pay what they want to pay,” he said.

“But it’s a good way of helping people build their collections and get niche items that they might not have had before.”

Thomas owns a PSA 10 Crystal Charizard from Skyridge and a PSA 10 Reverse Holo Charizard card from the Legendary Collection, which he said are worth around £60,000 each, and he is “very proud” to have these.

Looking ahead, he wants to help others build their dream Pokemon collection and, ultimately, achieve an annual turnover of £10 million – although he appreciates the markets can change.

From next year, he said he will most likely quit his job in graphic design to focus on the business full-time, especially now that he is a father to a five-month-old daughter.

Reflecting on his journey, he said: “Every single earning is all from that original £200 investment. I’ve never put any more money into it, I’ve just let it grow organically.

“For me to be doing something that I’ve had a passion for since my childhood, it’s just like the cherry on the cake.”