America’s Most Pokémon-Obsessed States, Ranked (and the Cards Worth More Than Your House)

Pokémon turns 30 this year, and if the collective American search history is any indication, nobody has moved on. Not even a little.

According to new research from EsportsGG, the US collectively searches Pokémon more than 30.6 million times per year, which works out to about 58 times a minute. The franchise that started as a Game Boy cartridge in 1996 has survived long enough to become a legitimate cultural institution, a nostalgia economy, and, for some collectors, a retirement plan. EsportsGG crunched search volume data by state to find out where the obsession runs deepest.

Nevada came out on top with 11,774 searches per 100,000 people annually. That’s not entirely surprising for a state that hosts the Las Vegas Pokémon Regional Championships and other major gaming events. What is surprising is that Henderson, Nevada, has entire residential streets named after the franchise, including Charmander Lane, Charizard Lane, Snorlax Lane, Jigglypuff Place, and Squirtle Lane. Someone planned a subdivision around this, and a zoning board approved it.

California ranked second with 11,717 searches per 100,000 people and a staggering 4.6 million total searches per year. EsportsGG points out that California’s median age sits at 37.9, making it a predominantly millennial state, and millennials are the generation that grew up during the original 1996 Game Boy craze. The state also hosts the Pokémon World Championships and a major franchise presence at San Diego Comic-Con. Texas rounded out the top three with 11,113 searches per 100,000 people and 3.5 million total annual searches, powered in part by the National Videogame Museum in Frisco, which has its own dedicated Pokémon exhibit marking three decades of the franchise.

The 10 most Pokémon-obsessed states in AMerica:

1. Nevada: 11,774 searches per 100k people
2. California: 11,717
3. Texas: 11,113
4. Utah: 10,939
5. Washington: 10,856
6. Hawaii: 10,545
7. Arizona: 9,916
8. Virginia: 9,835
9. Oregon: 9,751
10. New York: 9,751

At the other end, Mississippi ranked last with just 4,538 searches per 100,000 people.

The nostalgia angle accounts for much of the search volume, but the card market tells its own story. Pokémon cards have become one of the more serious collectible markets in the world, with Walmart Marketplace reporting a 200% surge in trading card sales between February 2024 and June 2025, and Target pulling in roughly $1 billion annually from the category. Some individual cards have sold for numbers that genuinely don’t make sense.

The 10 most valuable Pokémon cards ever sold:

1. Trophy Pikachu No. 1 Trainer: $3,000,000
2. Prerelease Raichu: $550,000
3. Topsun Blue Back Charizard: $493,230
4. Trophy Pikachu No. 2 Trainer: $444,000
5. First Edition Base Set Holo Charizard: $420,000
6. Presentation Blastoise: $360,000
7. Signed Japanese First Edition Holo Charizard: $324,000
8. Trophy Pikachu No. 3 Trainer: $324,000
9. Pokémon Snap Contest Pikachu: $270,000
10. Ishihara GX Promo: $247,230

The Trophy Pikachu No. 1 Trainer card sold for $3 million and has fewer than 10 known copies in existence. With over 43 billion Pokémon cards ever produced, EsportsGG puts the odds of owning one at roughly 1 in 4.3 billion. The Prerelease Raichu, worth $550,000, technically shouldn’t exist at all. The “Prerelease” stamp was meant for other cards; a small handful were produced in error, and The Pokémon Company has never officially acknowledged them. It wasn’t until 2023 that a copy was professionally graded, with only three graded since.

Thirty years in, the franchise has 650 million Pokémon Go downloads, a 30th anniversary TCG expansion on the way, and a country that is still, clearly, not over it.

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