The value of Pokémon cards is clearly imaginary. Even in their initial, commodified form, a slip of mass-produced, coloured cardboard is by no stretch of the imagination "worth" the money children wish to pay for them. Within most economistic analyzes, and many Marxist ones, it would simply be assumed that the "use-value" of the cards is worth the extra price, and that this "use" is basically enjoyment or distraction (whether interpreted positively or negatively). But the "use-value" of the cards is really the way they serve as a medium for the negotiation of value, which is highly imaginative, remarkably collaborative (if sometimes coercive) and largely autonomous.

Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, loc. 379