Coinbase has teased plans to let users open Pokémon trading card packs directly from their phones, with every pull backed by a physical card that can either stay in a vault or be shipped to its owner, the company’s latest step in pushing its app beyond conventional crypto trading.
The exchange previewed the feature on Sept. 28, telling users they would be able to “rip packs” through their phones and decide what happens to the physical cards they receive. Beyond saying the product was coming “soon,” Coinbase gave no launch date.
“Rip packs on your phone. Every pull backed by a real, physical card. Vault it or ship it,” Coinbase said.
Pokémon appears to be part of the planned offering. Responding to a user who described the feature as “pokemon packs on the chain,” Coinbase replied, “you get it.”
Details remain limited. Coinbase has not said which Pokémon sets will be offered, how packs will be priced, where the physical cards will be stored or which markets will initially have access. The teaser did not identify a blockchain or explain whether ownership of individual cards would be represented through tokens.
## Physical cards already have an onchain market
Physical Pokémon cards have already found a market onchain, giving Coinbase an existing model to build on. Tokenized Pokémon cards have been traded through Collector Crypt, a platform that stores physical cards and creates digital tokens representing ownership. Users can buy tokenized cards without taking immediate possession, and the withdrawal system connects the digital asset to the physical card: users pay shipping costs and burn the corresponding NFT when they want the collectible delivered.
The platform had facilitated more than 70 million USD in Pokémon pack sales by September 2025, including 5 million USD during a single transaction cycle, according to figures cited at the time.
Collector Crypt was not alone in targeting the market. Courtyard had recorded more than 100 million USD in Pokémon-related volume, while platforms including Phygitals and Beezie were developing similar products around physical collectibles. A newer project, Renaiss, raised 1.5 million USD in June to build trustless infrastructure for bringing trading cards and other collectibles onchain through verified custody.
Coinbase’s teaser points to a similar link between a digital trading interface and a physical item, though the company has yet to disclose the technical setup behind its product.
## The Everything Exchange strategy
The Pokémon card feature fits into Coinbase’s attempt to put more types of tradable assets inside its products. When another user reacted to the announcement, Coinbase responded simply: “well, we are the Everything Exchange.”
The company formally laid out that strategy in June, describing plans to combine crypto, equities, derivatives, prediction markets and other financial products within the same ecosystem. It has moved quickly on several parts of the plan since.
Four tokenized U.S. stocks went live on Base in August, giving eligible non-U.S. investors access to tokens tied to Apple, Nvidia, Meta and Alphabet shares. Each token represents a beneficial interest in a real share held through segregated regulated custody, tradable onchain and usable with supported decentralized finance applications, while access remains restricted for U.S. persons.
Coinbase added six more stocks in early September after the first group generated 227.7 million USD in decentralized exchange volume during its first month. Amazon, Microsoft, Strategy, SanDisk, SpaceX and Tesla were included in the second batch. By Sept. 12, Base-based tokenized stocks had reached 100 million USD in daily decentralized exchange trading volume, with 30-day volume at 730.9 million USD.
The company has also been expanding the range of assets available through its self-custody product. In September, Coinbase restored the Coinbase Wallet name and positioned the app around multichain trading, perpetual futures, prediction markets and tokenized stocks, including more than 290 perpetual markets supplied through Hyperliquid for eligible users.
## Real cards, not digital collectibles
The brief teaser leaves one distinction clear: the product is tied to real cards rather than purely digital collectibles. Users who open a pack through Coinbase would receive a pull backed by a physical card, with the option to leave it in storage or request delivery.
Such a structure allows a collectible to remain stored while ownership changes digitally, a model already proven by platforms dealing in tokenized cards. It also sidesteps some of the volatility associated with purely digital NFT collections, since every token maps to a graded or raw physical asset with its own market.
Plenty of questions remain unanswered. Coinbase has not disclosed who will custody the Pokémon cards or whether an outside company will handle authentication, grading, storage and shipping. It has not said whether users will be able to trade individual pulls with one another after opening packs. And it remains unclear whether the digital representation of each card will be recorded on Base, another blockchain or within Coinbase’s own systems.
## Why it matters
For collectors, the appeal is obvious: the gamified experience of opening packs without losing the security of owning a real card, plus the liquidity of digital trading. For Coinbase, the move extends a pattern of importing proven crypto infrastructure, in this case the vault-and-ship tokenization model, into mainstream consumer products with far larger audiences than most Web3 collectibles ever reached.
The backdrop is a crypto market trading with BTC around 83,608 USD, ETH near 2,676 USD and SOL at about 118 USD. Exchanges are competing less on spot crypto fees and more on the breadth of assets they can offer, and a Pokémon partnership would put Coinbase in front of a fandom whose secondary market routinely outperforms entire NFT sectors. No firm release date has been given beyond “soon,” but the teaser signals where the Everything Exchange is heading next.
vault it or ship it is actually a clean answer to the custody question. rip packs from your phone, physical card sits in a vault, no brainer
vaulting solves custody but somebody still has to handle grading disputes on shipped cards. thats where this gets messy
collector crypt already proved people will pay for tokenized pokemon, coinbase showing up late but with way more users
shipping a graded charizard to argentina is gonna be the support nightmare of 2027 and i cannot wait to read those threads
no pricing, no sets announced, no markets listed. classic Coinbase teaser, could be 6 months out easy
base already has vault infra from their nft days, this is a ui job on top of existing rails not a ground up build
rip packs on your phone, vault it or ship it. coinbase really said pokemon is the everything-app strategy now lmao
physical backing is the whole point tbh, we already did NFT cards with nothing behind them
No launch date, no word on which sets, no pricing. Very convenient tease when the app needs a headline.
wait til someone ships a graded card to indonesia and customs holds it for 3 months lmao