It might be time to dust off those old tins and start searching for some treasure within the confines of your childhood collections!

Pokémon cards may have seemed like a fun way to spend your time and interact with your friends as a kid with all the battles and trading. If you partook in collecting, you cannot deny how awesome it felt to have the best or rarest card on the playground, and if someone else had it, you envied that person greatly. Now a days, however, on Pokémon’s 20^th anniversary, you can reclaim that joyous feeling by praying to whatever higher power you believe in that you didn’t get rid of your cards at a yard sale when they no longer seemed cool or your parents said they were taking up too much room and hoping you kept your good cards in good condition. The market for trading cards, and especially Pokémon cards, is a lot more profitable than you would think.

Every Pokémon fan knows Charizard, that lovable fire lizard that should be a dragon and was the powerhouse of everyone’s team. Well, the First Edition Holographic version of that card, if kept in mint condition, can go for hundreds, even thousands of dollars even in today’s economy. On eBay, if you type in “First Edition Charizard card,” the first option that comes up is a Mint, first edition of the base set, shadowless, graded version of the original card and the user is selling it for $2,499.95! On Amazon, there is a first edition, holo, near mint to mint, shadowless Charizard card going for $1,404.95! These are just buy it now sales, however. For bids, a few months ago, I watched a card just like these start off at $10 and it was at $500 by the end of the day! I didn’t watch it for the remaining five days of bidding, but I can imagine it only went up from there.

This sounds great and all, but I can bet a bunch of you are trying to figure out what I meant by holo, shadowless, or base set. Pokémon card collecting has a lot of factors to it, and the more knowledge you have on them, the better you can sell them for. So while you’re dusting off your old cards, keep on the lookout for these next few things. For each card, there is a box within it that has the image of the Pokémon inside of it. The very first set of cards was just the box; however, the next edition had a shadow along the right side of the box to give the cards more depth and detail. You can see this shadow along the outline of the Charizard card in the picture above. Shadowless cards come from the original set of cards. Regardless of whether it is a Charizard or a Pidgey, shadowless cards are rare, and if you check around the market, I’m sure you can even get in the double digits for a Shadowless Pidgey (which says a lot for a Pidgey card). Holographic cards are the cards that shine a bit. You can move them around in the light and you can see the shiny stars or sparkles that give the card a little extra flare. These types of cards are still made today, but the older they are, the more money you can sell them for.

However, probably one of the most important aspects of selling a card is the condition in which it is in. Mint, Near Mint, Lightly Played, Played, Bad, etc. are some of the conditions in which people label cards. I personally have a First edition Holo Charizard card, but it is damaged with a few scratches. If I tried to sell it, I’d probably, at most, get $150 if I was lucky, which is still pretty good. However, this shows the importance of having your cards in good condition. Condition is key to a good card sale.

Some of you may be excited now, thinking you can probably get some good money off of your old cards, and this is true. However, there is one extra thing you might want to consider: the older the card is, the rarer it is and the more you can sell it for. If you find you have some rare cards lying around, you have the choice to sell them now or hold on to them and keep them in good condition. Another ten years, and the $2500 could go up even higher. I’m sure my damaged card could even go up in price given a few more years under its belt.

A lot of people believe card collecting is a stupid hobby and there is no gain to it. That’s where they are so wrong. Even cards today that you get in the current series of cards can be worth decent money. A pack today costs about $4.19, not including tax. If you get a rare card from the current series like an EX or a Mega, you can be looking at $10-25 per card. The current Pokémon series, “Fates Collide,” has a Mega Alakazam-EX card that someone is selling on eBay for $17.99. That’s just two months after the series was released. Give that a few years and see what it would be selling for.

In the trading card business, rarity and condition are key, but patience also plays a big factor in how much a seller can get for one. It’s time to check your closets and storage spaces, for you may just have a thousand dollar card sitting around, waiting to be sold (or stored).