With the Pokémon card market being so grossly lucrative these days, most people aren’t willing to trade rare and graded cards for anything less than a stack of cash. However, Jonas Brothers fans are finding a different use for them: creating a funny viral moment with one of their favorite artists.
Joe Jonas, the middle son in the pop band’s trio group, is a noted Pokémon fan. The group even threw him a Pokémon-themed birthday party in August, complete with a gross-ass oversized, AI-generated card of him with Pikachu and Charizard. I guess when you’re part of a huge pop group you…can’t hire an artist to draw you something instead?
Anyway, Jonas’ Pokémon fandom has caught the attention of fans who are now offering up their own cards at concerts in the Jonas Brothers’ current tour in exchange for the singer’s tambourine, and the dude has been obliging.
Videos have started circulating online of Jonas exchanging the instrument for cards like a Zekrom slab (that was at the SNHU Arena in Manchester on September 26), and for a 1999 Mew card (at the September 30 show at Capital One Arena in D.C.).
The stunt has other fans hoping to make similar trades at upcoming shows, and while they’re getting a nice memento, I gotta hope fans are also looking into the value of their cards before trading them for a tambourine that probably costs, at most, like $15 out of the Jonas Brothers’ tour budget. Guess you can’t put a price on memories, though. Maybe that’s just capitalism-brain talking, because I would rather Pokémon cards lead to fun moments like this than the destruction, violence, and depravity it typically does thanks to scalpers ruining the hobby for everyone. If this keeps up, hopefully Jonas will post his full tambourine haul at the end of the tour in December, and Republic Records won’t ask any questions about why the group has to keep submitting expenses for new tambourines.