But Pokémon cards are also highly engineered commodities, tailored precisely to render themselves resources for children’s negotiation of value, esteem, affinity and agency (Brougère 2004, 192–193). The cards offer themselves not as an entirely prescriptive and rigid plaything but as an extremely versatile and mutable social medium, one whose cunning simplicity and relative abundance makes them almost ubiquitous within many children’s social circles. As Brougère (2004, 188) notes, neither Nintendo nor children have absolute authority over the cards’ value or the brand’s meanings – it is a market-mediated negotiation between meaning and creative play.

Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, loc. 375