The Real Reason Everyone Is Rallying Behind Charizard
Many Pokemon cards have only grown in value over the years, with some of them reaching astronomical prices. The most expensive card ever, the base set Charizard, has always been pretty popular — in fact, it just got reprinted. According to research by Dot Esports, the iconic flaming lizard is also one of the most popular Pokemon of all time, which naturally raises the value of all Charizard cards by association. It makes sense, then, that fans would come out in support of the original trading card's artist after a major figure in the collecting community insulted them.
As reported by Kotaku, infamous collector Gary "King Pokemon" Haase has come under fire after a YouTube interview from 2020 resurfaced. Pokemon TCG content creator Frosted Caribou put King Pokemon on blast over Twitter after learning that King Pokemon called TCG artist Mitsuhiro Arita's signature "nothing."
In the clip shared by Frosted Caribou, King Pokemon explained that the base set Charizard is extremely expensive, showing off his mint condition copy off the card. The card in question is seen in a sleeve bearing Mitsuhiro Arita's signature, which King Pokemon slammed as adding zero value to the card. He went so far as to say that he had thought about removing the signature from the sleeve.
The Pokemon community was extremely offended by King Pokemon's remarks, calling them blatantly disrespectful to Mitsuhiro Arita's work. For her own part, Frosted Caribou tweeted, "This is the last straw. I've never seen someone be so blatantly disrespectful."
King Pokemon's problematic fame
In a thread following the clip, Frosted Caribou shared pictures of King Pokemon selling his own fan-made trading card, which he signed for fans while sitting in a throne at a convention. Frosted Caribou pointed out the hypocrisy in this behavior and argued that King Pokemon has "falsely [inflated]" the Pokemon TCG collector's market on more than one occasion.
While the original tweets from Frosted Caribou saw tens of thousands of likes, there were still plenty of people who disagreed with the creator. For instance, user @metamahan8 pointed out that the offending clip came from a finance podcast. They also argued that King Pokemon was technically correct in what he was saying, at least in terms of "financial value."
All in all, there was a lot of debate about King Pokemon's character and how he has impacted the Pokemon community at large. Pokemon collecting has exploded again in the last year, partly due to scalpers, so it's likely that the debate will continue as more and more people get into collecting for the money.