Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh... In Issy-les-Moulineaux, a museum dedicated to playing cards

Marie Gicquel / Photo credit: Ida Marie Odgaard / Ritzau Scanpix / AFP 06:19, July 27, 2023

Traded in playgrounds, sometimes even sold at auction, playing cards retain their popularity intact over time. To the point of being dedicated in a dedicated museum located in Issy-les-Moulineaux, in the Hauts-de-Seine. Visitors can observe hundreds of coaster vignettes, but also James Bond cards with unusual powers: diving for Sean Connery, cocktails for Roger Moore.

There are also Lord of the Rings or Star Wars cards - with the maximum number of power points for Darth Vader - and, of course, the stars of the course. Starting with the Pokémon cards, derived from the video game and inspired by the Yokai, Japanese spirits of the Middle Ages. Monsters with supernatural powers adored by children for three decades.

Playing cards... mainly collected

Eugenie, 9 years old, savors this visit with her grandmother Françoise. "It was not bad because I collect Pokémon cards. Even though I already knew some of them," smiled the girl. "I don't understand anything about Pokémon, but what I really like is admiring the graphics of the different drawings. Even if some are quite horrible," adds Françoise.

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These playing cards are often accompanied by rules that are sometimes obscure and ignored by their owners. Denis Buté, the director of the museum, concedes: "Pokémon card games are, indeed, more collected than played. There was an extremely strong craze, especially at the end of Covid, where there was a speculative phenomenon." Some Pokémon sometimes prove impossible to catch. A few months ago, a special Pikachu card was put on sale for 1 million euros on an auction site.