I love Peter Levin’s thought experiment because it makes an old question feel new again: if official money stopped working, what would people trust next? In a September 2026 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the Griffin Gaming Partners founder and managing director said that if the world suffered an apocalypse, “the following day the global currency would be Pokémon cards.” The line is playful. The question beneath it is serious.
The direct answer
- Could trading cards function as money? Locally and temporarily, yes—if enough people agree which cards count, what they are worth and how authenticity will be judged.
- Could they become a global currency? Very unlikely. Cards are hard to divide, unequal in value, condition-sensitive and useful only where a shared collector language already exists.
- What does the thought experiment reveal? Money is not merely paper, metal, plastic or code. It is a network of trust, pricing, verification and enforceable expectations.
- Does one administration define the whole legal order? No. Law can persist through voluntary agreements, known property boundaries, custom, arbitration and shared records. But a substitute money cannot, by itself, substitute for every rule that makes peaceful exchange possible.
What Peter Levin gets right
Levin is not speaking as a distant spectator. He told reporter Georg Szalai that he owns more than 500,000 cards and has collected since childhood. His larger point is that trading cards sit at the intersection of global intellectual property, physical ownership, play, nostalgia and community. Grading and authentication have also made condition easier to communicate across a secondary market.
That combination gives a Pokémon card something most random objects do not have: a widely recognized story. A Pikachu or Charizard card can be identified across language and geography. Collectors know that set, edition, rarity, condition and provenance matter. Stores, shows, grading companies, price guides, auction platforms and friendships form a living network around the object.
That network—not the cardboard alone—is the source of the monetary possibility. A card can carry value because people already know how to see it, discuss it and exchange it.
Money is a shared protocol
Economists usually give money three jobs: it should work as a medium of exchange, a store of value and a unit of account. The St. Louis Fed uses those same three functions. Good money also tends to be recognizable, portable, durable, divisible, relatively scarce and broadly acceptable.
A society does not use dollars because cotton paper has mysterious power. It uses dollars because prices, wages, debts, taxes, bank accounts, accounting systems and courts all speak dollars. People expect the next person to recognize the same unit. Money is therefore a physical or digital instrument resting on a social agreement.
Legal tender is not the same as acceptance
“Legal tender” has a narrower meaning than “anything a seller must accept.” In the United States, federal law makes U.S. coins and currency legal tender for debts, public charges, taxes and dues. The Federal Reserve also explains that no federal statute generally requires a private business to accept cash for a new purchase, although state or local rules may apply.
This distinction matters. Government recognition helps define final settlement, especially for debts and taxes. Everyday monetary life still depends on millions of people and institutions accepting the unit, keeping records in it and trusting that agreements made in it can be enforced.
If legal tender lost purchasing power but stores, courts, banks and communications still worked, people might price goods in a more trusted currency or commodity. If the rule of law itself vanished, the problem would be much deeper. Ownership, contracts, fraud remedies and physical safety would all become uncertain. A binder full of rare cards would not repair that missing infrastructure.
Put Pokémon cards through the money test
| Money test | Where cards are strong | Where cards are weak |
|---|---|---|
| Medium of exchange | Portable and already traded inside collector communities | Most people do not know which cards to accept or how to price them |
| Store of value | Some scarce, desired cards have retained or gained collector value | Prices can be volatile and depend heavily on condition, fashion and liquidity |
| Unit of account | A community could quote goods in common cards | Today, card values are usually quoted in dollars or another established currency |
| Recognizability | Pokémon characters and card formats have broad cultural recognition | Edition, language, rarity, alterations and counterfeits require expertise |
| Divisibility | Lower-value cards could handle smaller trades | A rare card cannot be cut into change without destroying the asset |
| Fungibility | Truly identical cards in the same condition may be comparable | Collectibles are valuable precisely because one card is not always equal to another |
| Verification | Grading and authentication can reduce uncertainty | Those services rely on expertise, reputation, logistics and functioning databases |
A historical clue: cigarettes became currency
There is a real historical parallel, though it points to organization more than apocalypse. In his 1945 paper “The Economic Organisation of a P.O.W. Camp,” economist R. A. Radford described how cigarettes became a normal currency among prisoners. Prices came to be quoted in cigarettes, and even nonsmokers accepted them because they could spend them later.
The most revealing detail is that the market worked better when information and organization improved. Notice boards made offers visible. Familiar prices spread between groups. Regular supplies supported trade. Radford observed that market unity varied with the camp’s level of organization and comfort.
That is the quiet lesson inside Levin’s vivid line: alternative money does not appear because society has no rules. It appears because a community builds enough rules to trade again.
Law is larger than administration
Rule of law sounds abstract until two people disagree about an exchange. Who owns the card? Was it stolen? Is the slab genuine? Did the seller disclose damage? Can a contract be enforced? Will a marketplace reverse fraud? Can the buyer safely carry the purchase home?
An administration can publish statutes, keep registries, operate courts and enforce judgments. It does not create every lawful relationship from nothing. Long before a distant office enters the picture, people recognize promises, possession, boundaries, restitution, reputation and the obligation not to take what belongs to another. Communities can preserve those principles through voluntary contracts, custom, arbitration and reciprocal enforcement.
Land keeps this conversation honest. Food is grown somewhere. Shelter occupies a place. A market needs a location, a path to reach it and boundaries people can recognize. Money may become abstract, but human life never floats free of the physical world. Any monetary order is ultimately tested by whether people can peacefully steward land, move goods, honor agreements and defend one another from fraud or force.
Voluntary order does not mean ruleless order. It means the legitimacy of the rules comes from consent, consistency and equal application—not merely from the name printed above an administrative desk. Reliable law and reputation lower the cost of trust. If all enforcement disappears, every transaction requires more personal knowledge, more inspection, more security and more risk.
This is why “worthless legal tender,” “failed administration” and “no law” are not interchangeable scenarios. A weak currency can exist inside a functioning legal order. A community can outlast a failed administrator. But a collapse of every dependable rule would threaten the ownership and exchange of each possible replacement, cards included.
From gold to Bitcoin to cardboard
This thought experiment continues a conversation I have carried elsewhere. In my February 2026 essay on X, “When Banks Don’t Trust Each Other and Gold Stops Explaining Itself,” I looked at interbank rates and gold as signals of institutional trust. “Trust is expensive again” was the short version.
On this site, I have described Bitcoin as the world’s strongest record: a public monetary history defended by transparent rules, signatures, independent validation and proof of work. That is another answer to the same human problem. How can value move when people do not want one institution to have the only copy of the truth?
Gold, Bitcoin and trading cards are radically different objects. Yet each forces us to ask where trust lives. In a metal? In a network? In a cultural community? In law? The honest answer is usually a combination. Our newer tools matter most when they create a less corruptible record of human activity—one that can be checked by more than the administrator whose conduct it records.
The loving case for cards
A trading card is unusually human. It is small enough to carry, beautiful enough to keep, structured enough to play and social enough to begin a conversation. It can hold memory before it holds monetary value. That is why people return to cards even as more of life moves onto screens.
I see the same possibility in the developing Doginal Dogs physical trading card game. The most meaningful outcome is not that a card becomes a miniature stock certificate. It is that art becomes play, play becomes ritual and ritual gives people a reason to meet. Community value comes first. A market may follow, but it cannot manufacture love.
So yes, I can imagine cards circulating when confidence in official systems breaks. Human beings are ingenious, and we create exchange out of whatever language we share. But the card would never be the whole currency. The real currency would be the voluntary trust between the people willing to recognize it.
A peaceful sunset
The happy ending is not a ruined world in which families fight over Charizards. It is a world wise enough to practice choice before crisis: communities free to use the instruments they trust, administrators required to earn confidence, and powerful people unable to rewrite the record simply because they control the office where it was kept.
Traditional ledgers, local agreements and cryptographic networks can coexist. The best newer records do not remove humanity from the story. They give humanity better receipts. A record that is open to verification can make corruption more difficult, memory less monopolized and peaceful cooperation easier across distance and time.
Law does not have to rise and fall with a single administrative construct. It can remain close to people and place: visible boundaries, cared-for land, voluntary promises, honest accounting, fair restitution and rules capable of binding the powerful as well as the ordinary.
That is the sunset I want to imagine—the peaceful fading of opaque permission and corruptible memory, not the end of civilization. We do not need an apocalypse to discover that trust is voluntary. We need loving communities, honest records and enough humility to let a better order be built in the light.
Frequently asked questions
Could Pokémon cards actually be used as currency?
Yes, within a community that agrees to accept particular cards and can authenticate, price and exchange them. They would be a weak general currency because cards are not fungible or divisible, values vary widely and most prices still depend on ordinary money and functioning markets.
What makes something money?
Economists commonly describe money through three functions: a medium of exchange, a store of value and a unit of account. Useful money also tends to be recognizable, portable, durable, divisible, relatively scarce and broadly accepted.
Are Pokémon cards legal tender?
No. Pokémon cards are collectibles, not government-designated legal tender. In the United States, coins and currency are legal tender for debts, public charges, taxes and dues, while private businesses generally set their own cash-acceptance policies unless state or local law provides otherwise.
Would trading cards keep their value if legal tender failed?
Not necessarily. A currency crisis could increase demand for familiar physical goods, but card values also rely on authentication, market access, communications, secure ownership and enough social stability for people to trade. The loss of those systems could make cards harder—not easier—to value.
Why do grading and authentication matter?
They help buyers and sellers describe condition, distinguish genuine cards from counterfeits and compare transactions. They reduce uncertainty, but they do not eliminate price volatility, fraud, custody risk or dependence on trusted institutions.
Does monetary order require one administrative authority?
Not necessarily. People can voluntarily adopt a medium of exchange and build shared rules for ownership, contracts, verification and dispute resolution. Administration can support that order, but voluntary does not mean ruleless: peaceful exchange still needs reliable records, consequences for fraud and a fair way to settle disagreements.
Sources and further reading
- The Hollywood Reporter: Georg Szalai’s interview with Peter Levin
- Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis: the functions and characteristics of money
- Federal Reserve Board: legal tender and cash acceptance
- R. A. Radford: “The Economic Organisation of a P.O.W. Camp” (1945)
- The Pokémon Company: official Pokémon Trading Card Game
- Anthem Hayek on X: “When Banks Don’t Trust Each Other and Gold Stops Explaining Itself”