Customers gather to play trading card games at The Dragon’s Lair in Fort Myers. The store, opened by Joseph Trattner in 2020, sells Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh! trading cards.
Joseph Trattner
Pokémon Red and Blue launched in September 1998 in the United States, a little more than two years after the animated trading card craze originated in Japan.
Millennials born between 1986 and 1993 were between 5 and 12 years old during that milestone moment. Fast forward a generation, and those children are now between 33 and 40 and have children of their own. Those children often fall into that same age group, between 5 and 12 — an age group clamoring for cards.
The end result: New Pokémon businesses are popping up across Southwest Florida. New brick-and-mortar shops have opened or are opening this year in Fort Myers and Cape Coral, while Collier County sports card shops have converted some of their space to selling Pokémon.
This weekend, Steven Palmer of Cape Coral is hosting his biggest trading card show yet. The three-day exposition will have about 400 vendors and combine sports trading cards with Pokémon Sept. 11-13 at Mike Greenwell Regional Park, formerly known as the Lee Civic Center, at 11831 Bayshore Road in North Fort Myers. Admission is $10 and free for children 13 and under.
“It’s really a generational reboot, if you will, of everything,” said Palmer, founder of Southwest Florida Sports Card Show. “They have kids who are 8, 9, 10 years old. Now they’re showing their kids what they did when they were younger.”
Pokémon cards are displayed for sale at Team R’s Hideout in Cape Coral. Owner A.J. Plazewski opened the shop at 3108 Del Prado Blvd. in July as interest in Pokémon collecting continues to grow.
A.J. Plazewski
Palmer, 40, never got into Pokémon as a child. His grandmother brought sports trading card shows to the Edison Mall’s indoor concourse in the late 1980s and early ’90s. A generation later, Palmer relaunched the concept. Most of his shows take place monthly inside a bingo hall in North Fort Myers. The shows that were 95% sports cards and 5% Pokémon five years ago are now about 50/50.
A.J. Plazewski, 37, will be one of the many Pokémon vendors this weekend. Five years ago, he was the only Pokémon vendor at Palmer’s shows.
“Now, we’re older and adults now,” Plazewski said. “We find that nostalgia in Pokémon. It brings us back to when we were a kid and the memories. This era, these people who are adults now, they’re going back to collecting what they did as a kid. And they have kids now, too.
“You can’t even find Pokémon on shelves at Target or Walmart anymore.”
That scarcity of cards prompted Plazewski to start his own store. He started by co-leasing space in August 2025 inside Nature’s Organic, a dispensary in Cape Coral.
In late July of this year, Plazewski moved into a space of his own in the same shopping center at 3108 Del Prado Blvd. It’s called Team R’s Hideout, a nod to Pokémon’s Team Rocket.
“Back in 2012, I started collecting sports cards and Pokémon cards again,” Plazewski said. “I’ve always had this vision that Pokémon was always very underrated. It’s taken until 2025 to start blowing up. There’s a public eye finally on Pokémon. It’s just bigger than ever.”
Mike Greenwell Regional Park in North Fort Myers hosts the Southwest Florida Sports Card Show Sept. 11-13. Organizer Steven Palmer expects about 400 vendors at the three-day event featuring sports and Pokémon trading cards.
Steven Palmer
Matt Zygmunt bought into the same hobby. He is getting ready to launch South Florida Card Group’s store at 2924 Del Prado Blvd., Unit 6, in a shopping center called The America Plaza. He hopes to open his store in October.
“I kind of want to have a place for my son to hang out and maybe take over it,” said Zygmunt, who left his job as a truck driver specializing in cross-country deliveries of high-end antiques, artwork and collectibles.
“I was doing cross-country deliveries all the time,” Zygmunt said. “So, this is for me to get off the road and spend more time at home. Plus, I’ve been collecting for 12 years now.
“The hobby is definitely booming. It’s very hot right now.”
Zygmunt has a hybrid approach to selling Pokémon cards. The store will supplement his online auctions held on Whatnot. He does a weekly auction on Sunday evenings between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m., and others throughout the week.
“We sell 250 items on average on a Sunday night,” Zygmunt said. “It’s similar to eBay, but instead of you sitting and waiting, it’s live. It’s a little bit of a gamble sometimes. But with Whatnot, you have to build a bit of a following. If you have over 100 viewers, you’re going to be doing really well. We have somewhere between 30 and 60 viewers. They’re from all over the place.”
Team R’s Hideout at 3108 Del Prado Blvd. in Cape Coral sells Pokémon cards and provides space for collectors and players. Owner A.J. Plazewski moved the business into its own storefront in July.
A.J. Plazewski
Plazewski and Zygmunt aren’t the only locals capitalizing on the Pokémon trend.
Dynamo Collectibles opened at 4150 Cleveland Ave. in Fort Myers earlier this year. The Dragon’s Lair, which has Yu-Gi-Oh! trading cards in addition to Pokémon, is at 10676 Colonial Blvd., Suite 110.
And in Collier County, East West Sports Cards & Collectibles has grown its inventory of Pokémon cards.
Zygmunt said most of his cards cost between $2 and $50.
The record-setting sale of a card — one that didn’t involve Zygmunt — happened in February. Professional wrestler and collector Logan Paul, through Goldin Auctions, sold a one-of-a-kind Pikachu card to A.J. Scaramucci, co-chair and president of SALT, a global investment platform. The price: $16.492 million.