{"id":397363,"date":"2026-09-11T23:16:17","date_gmt":"2026-09-11T23:16:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/397363\/"},"modified":"2026-09-11T23:16:17","modified_gmt":"2026-09-11T23:16:17","slug":"new-pokemon-card-stores-open-in-fort-myers-and-cape-coral-retail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/397363\/","title":{"rendered":"New Pok\u00e9mon card stores open in Fort Myers and Cape Coral | Retail"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Pokémon<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Customers gather to play trading card games at The Dragon\u2019s Lair in Fort Myers. The store, opened by Joseph Trattner in 2020, sells Pok\u00e9mon and Yu-Gi-Oh! trading cards.<\/p>\n

Joseph Trattner<\/p>\n

Pok\u00e9mon 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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 \u2014 an age group clamoring for cards.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The end result: New Pok\u00e9mon 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 Pok\u00e9mon.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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 Pok\u00e9mon 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really a generational reboot, if you will, of everything,\u201d said Palmer, founder of Southwest Florida Sports Card Show. \u201cThey have kids who are 8, 9, 10 years old. Now they\u2019re showing their kids what they did when they were younger.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Pokémon<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Pok\u00e9mon cards are displayed for sale at Team R\u2019s Hideout in Cape Coral. Owner A.J. Plazewski opened the shop at 3108 Del Prado Blvd. in July as interest in Pok\u00e9mon collecting continues to grow.<\/p>\n

A.J. Plazewski<\/p>\n

Palmer, 40, never got into Pok\u00e9mon as a child. His grandmother brought sports trading card shows to the Edison Mall\u2019s indoor concourse in the late 1980s and early \u201990s. 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% Pok\u00e9mon five years ago are now about 50\/50.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A.J. Plazewski, 37, will be one of the many Pok\u00e9mon vendors this weekend. Five years ago, he was the only Pok\u00e9mon vendor at Palmer\u2019s shows.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cNow, we\u2019re older and adults now,\u201d Plazewski said. \u201cWe find that nostalgia in Pok\u00e9mon. It brings us back to when we were a kid and the memories. This era, these people who are adults now, they\u2019re going back to collecting what they did as a kid. And they have kids now, too.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t even find Pok\u00e9mon on shelves at Target or Walmart anymore.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

That scarcity of cards prompted Plazewski to start his own store. He started by co-leasing space in August 2025 inside Nature\u2019s Organic, a dispensary in Cape Coral.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\u2019s called Team R\u2019s Hideout, a nod to Pok\u00e9mon\u2019s Team Rocket.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cBack in 2012, I started collecting sports cards and Pok\u00e9mon cards again,\u201d Plazewski said. \u201cI\u2019ve always had this vision that Pok\u00e9mon was always very underrated. It\u2019s taken until 2025 to start blowing up. There\u2019s a public eye finally on Pok\u00e9mon. It\u2019s just bigger than ever.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"North<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

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 Pok\u00e9mon trading cards.<\/p>\n

Steven Palmer<\/p>\n

Matt Zygmunt bought into the same hobby. He is getting ready to launch South Florida Card Group\u2019s store at 2924 Del Prado Blvd., Unit 6, in a shopping center called The America Plaza. He hopes to open his store in October.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI kind of want to have a place for my son to hang out and maybe take over it,\u201d said Zygmunt, who left his job as a truck driver specializing in cross-country deliveries of high-end antiques, artwork and collectibles.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI was doing cross-country deliveries all the time,\u201d Zygmunt said. \u201cSo, this is for me to get off the road and spend more time at home. Plus, I\u2019ve been collecting for 12 years now.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe hobby is definitely booming. It\u2019s very hot right now.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Zygmunt has a hybrid approach to selling Pok\u00e9mon 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe sell 250 items on average on a Sunday night,\u201d Zygmunt said. \u201cIt\u2019s similar to eBay, but instead of you sitting and waiting, it\u2019s live. It\u2019s 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\u2019re going to be doing really well. We have somewhere between 30 and 60 viewers. They\u2019re from all over the place.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Team<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Team R\u2019s Hideout at 3108 Del Prado Blvd. in Cape Coral sells Pok\u00e9mon cards and provides space for collectors and players. Owner A.J. Plazewski moved the business into its own storefront in July.<\/p>\n

A.J. Plazewski<\/p>\n

Plazewski and Zygmunt aren\u2019t the only locals capitalizing on the Pok\u00e9mon trend.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Dynamo Collectibles opened at 4150 Cleveland Ave. in Fort Myers earlier this year. The Dragon\u2019s Lair, which has Yu-Gi-Oh! trading cards in addition to Pok\u00e9mon, is at 10676 Colonial Blvd., Suite 110.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And in Collier County, East West Sports Cards & Collectibles has grown its inventory of Pok\u00e9mon cards.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Zygmunt said most of his cards cost between $2 and $50.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The record-setting sale of a card \u2014 one that didn\u2019t involve Zygmunt \u2014 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Customers gather to play trading card games at The Dragon\u2019s Lair in Fort Myers. The store, opened by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":397364,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[209,211,210,13303,29175,44871,3047,24003],"class_list":["post-397363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral-headlines","tag-cape-coral-news","tag-collectibles","tag-nostalgia","tag-pokemon","tag-retail","tag-trading-cards"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=397363"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397363\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/397364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=397363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=397363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=397363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}