YouTuber Logan Paul has been accused of a lot of things: ruining the Pokémon trading card hobby, clickbait, greed, thoughtlessness. Maybe some of these condemnations are true. A recent revelation by the blonde provocateur has started to convince me that he may not, in fact, be a larper.
Actually, I'm starting to believe the boisterous influencer might legitimately like Pokémon. No, not in the way everyone loves Pokémon — a now utterly mainstream media franchise. Logan Paul's professed love of Charizard is basic, to be sure, but many millennial men feel the same way.
And there's no denying that Logan Paul has used every opportunity to profit off the hype behind the hobby. Most will point to Paul's recent record-breaking $16.4 million sale of the ultra-rare Illustrator Pikachu card as exhibit A. Yet Paul himself might use the card to argue his love of the hobby is genuine.
In a recent video, Paul described an ongoing internal dilemma that will sound familiar to any seasoned TCG collector. "I say I'm going to be responsible with it," Paul said while discussing the profits from the card sale. He mused over the possibility of investing in a stock like Tesla, or other ways he could be smart with the money.
He admits that he could have thought of his family, or payments for a new house. "I just end buying more fucking Pokémon cards." "The collecting thing in me, I saw something that I had to have," Logan explained. "Every collector knows this journey.
I got obsessed, and I had to have this thing. And I went on this quest for a year, to collect this thing that I had to have." Paul is likely referring in part to an ongoing attempt to source a pristine copy of some early Pokémon cards. The cards, which came packaged in a magazine's sticker sheet, are notoriously difficult to find in perfect condition.
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