China’s biggest investment banks spent millions figuring out why card collecting is the best hobby. Spoiler: they landed exactly where you did.
You already know the feeling. The weight of a fresh pack. That half-second between sliding out the cards and actually seeing what you got. The moment you pull something great and your first instinct — before you even register what it is — is to show someone.
You’ve been trying to explain that feeling to people your whole collecting life. Now you don’t have to. Because in 2024 and 2025, some of the most rigorous financial analysts in the world — Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan, CICC — sat down and built the case for you. Why? Because Kayou, China’s #1 card company, was filing for a massive Hong Kong IPO, and investors needed to understand what made this hobby tick.
What they found is exactly what you already know. They just put numbers on it.
The Four Things That Make This Hobby Stick
The analysts called it a “quadruple attribute.” You’d probably just call it why you’re still here.
Cards give you something to collect — with rarity tiers and pull rates and that specific card you’ve been chasing for three sets. Something to do — whether that’s cracking packs, playing competitively, or building your binder into something you’re genuinely proud of. Somewhere to belong — because two strangers with binders can be best friends in about four minutes, and that doesn’t happen with most hobbies. And something worth holding onto — because the secondary market rewards people who pay attention, and a card you pull today might be worth multiples of its pack price down the road.
No other hobby does all four. Sports gets you community and entertainment, but you’re watching, not collecting. Video games have community and fun, but nothing you own is scarce. Stamps and coins cover collecting and investment, but the social side is basically nonexistent.
Cards hit all four. Every time. That’s why you’re still in it, and it’s why the analysts kept coming back to the same conclusion: this hobby doesn’t plateau.
The Number That Put It All in Perspective
Here’s the stat that made investors lean forward.
In 2024, the average American spent $9 on trading cards. Japan — birthplace of Pokémon, thirty years of card culture baked into everyday life — spent $16.80 per person. China? $2.63.
And yet China had the world’s largest card market in 2024. $3.7 billion, ahead of the US at $3.1 billion. That’s not a paradox — it’s just 1.4 billion people doing the math. But the analysts weren’t excited about $2.63. They were excited about the gap. Because the average active Chinese collector wasn’t spending $2.63. They were spending $409 a year — about what you’d spend on streaming services and a few nights out, except this builds community and has a secondary market.
The $2.63 average exists because most of China simply hasn’t discovered the hobby yet. That gap is the whole story.
How Kayou Built a $3.7 Billion Market in Seven Years
Japan took thirty years to get where it is in card culture. Kayou did the equivalent in seven. That’s worth understanding, because the way they did it is a big part of why collecting feels the way it does today.
They moved fast — like, genuinely fast. Their production cycle from design to shelf runs 20 to 30 days. When Nezha 2 became the highest-grossing animated film in history in early 2025, Kayou had cards on shelves the same day the movie opened. Not a week later. Day one. They built a live-streaming ecosystem around pack openings on Douyin — not organically, but as a formal program — so an entire generation of collectors had their first pull in front of a live audience reacting in real time. And they expanded from 30 licensed IPs in 2022 to 70 by end of 2024, making sure that whatever you loved, there was a card set for it.
The result is a hobby infrastructure — 351 community retail locations, a competitive tournament circuit, a secondary market trading platform — that didn’t exist a decade ago and now supports millions of collectors.
None of that happens without one company deciding to build the culture alongside the product, not after it.
The Hobby Was Always This Good.
The analysts didn’t discover anything. They just confirmed what you felt the first time you pulled something great and immediately wanted to tell someone about it.
Trading cards work because they’re the only hobby that gives you all four things at once — the collection, the experience, the community, and the investment. That’s not tied to any particular IP or any particular era. It’s the format. And now there are billions of dollars of research that say the same thing.
You already knew. Now you’ve got the receipts to prove it.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are Kayou cards?
Kayou cards are officially licensed Chinese trading cards featuring popular anime and manga franchises, produced by China’s largest trading card company. They include rarity tiers like SP, SSR, and ZR cards, similar to Japanese and Western trading card games, and have become the foundation of China’s domestic collectible card market since their launch.
Why do people collect trading cards as a hobby?
Trading cards combine four unique attributes that create lasting engagement: collectibility through rarity tiers, competitive gameplay mechanics, social interaction through trading and battling, and intellectual property connections to beloved franchises. Major investment banks like Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan have documented these factors as reasons cards sustain loyalty among hundreds of millions of collectors worldwide.
Is Kayou the biggest card company in China?
Yes, Kayou is China’s number one trading card company and is credited as the reason China’s domestic card market exists at all. The company’s influence and market dominance were significant enough that it filed for a Hong Kong IPO in 2024-2025, attracting research coverage from major financial institutions including Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan.
What did investment banks say about card collecting?
Investment banks including Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan, CICC, and Great Wall Securities concluded that trading cards possess a unique quadruple attribute of collectibility, gameplay, social interaction, and IP licensing that creates sustained engagement. Their 2024-2025 research reports, produced for Kayou’s IPO analysis, validated what collectors instinctively know: cards command exceptional loyalty and spending compared to other hobbies.