>Very few people actually "play".

I don't think I've ever met anyone who collects but doesn't actively play these games. However I've met tons of people who play casually and don't really collect.

I'm with you that there are definitely a lot of players. But recently, speculation on/collection of Pokemon cards in particular has become kind of a big thing.

[1]https://kotaku.com/twitch-streamers-are-opening-90s-pokemon-...

Even there, the reason those cards are considered valuable is ultimately because people played the game. Not necessarily the same people who are collecting the cards now, but that's where it started. There are hundreds of other CCGs from the 90s whose cards are basically worthless today because the game was a commercial failure.

Well, you wouldn't buy Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, Magic: The Gathering cards if you hadn't at least spent some time playing. Those are games which have had, at least at some point in their lifespan, large communities of players. I kinda doubt rich people are randomly buying mint alpha Black Lotus cards with no knowledge of the game?

Side note: you can still fail with this type of monetization even if the game is huge (see: Diablo 3 auction house). Once you screw up the economy or drive away the player base, it's hard to recover.

At least with pokemon, my friends and I all collected cards growing up, and none of us ever played the game (mainly because we were children who didn't understand the rules).

>I kinda doubt rich people are randomly buying mint alpha Black Lotus cards with no knowledge of the game?

They absolutely are.

https://www.cnbc.com/2016/07/07/accused-pharmaceutical-fraud...