Pokémon at 30: Multimillion-dollar cards and spiking demand. Here’s why you’ve still gotta catch ‘em all

In a blur of tiny hands, the deadlock of an illicit deal brokered over a nail-biting one-hour lunch period is finally broken. As one party hurriedly caches his acquisition underneath the sandwich in his lunchbox, the other broker tucks away his loot in his shorts. For the remainder of the school day, he dips repeatedly into his pocket to make sure it’s still there. Because while for his teachers it is merely a distracting piece of sparkly cardboard, for this eight-year-old boy, it’s the fire-spitting monster that he’s been chasing since the start of term. More than two decades on, my beloved Charizard, the Pokémon trading card I swapped for a Blastoise in my junior school playground, rests against my laptop as I clack away at the keyboard. Imagine my shock upon finding out that, had I taken better care of the now-battered card, it could be worth almost $25,000 and rising.