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Inside Jacob Misiorowski’s Pokemon card obsession as Brewers ace chases World Series crown
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Inside Jacob Misiorowski's Pokemon card obsession as Brewers ace chases World Series crown originally appeared on The Sporting News . Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here .
"If he wasn't on TV or he wasn't 6-foot-7, he'd just be another normal person who's there opening packs and being passionate about the hobby."
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24-year-old Jacob Misiorowski might be a shoo-in for the NL Cy Young award and the World Series ace leading the Milwaukee Brewers , but to many in the local Milwaukee community, he's just as much an everyday Pokemon card collector as a national baseball superstar.
"They're normal people too," Tommy Rhyner, a front-of-house staff member at Brew Town Trading Co. in Greenfield, WI, where Misiorowski often goes to satisfy his love of collecting Pokemon cards, told The Sporting News.
"Just because they're on TV playing baseball and getting paid a bunch...he's more than approachable; he's a lot of fun, a very normal down-to-earth person who loves collecting like you and I."
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Inside Jacob Misiorowski's Pokemon card obsession
Misiorowski's meteoric rise to baseball stardom has, in many ways, mirrored the skyrocketing return that Pokemon cards have made back into the mainstream.
First exploding as a children's fad in the late 1990's and early 2000's, Pokemon's popularity had dropped considerably through the 2010's. Now, the hobby has come exploding back to life as waves of nostalgia-seekers flood the market with a sudden spike in demand. According to Yahoo Finance , since 2019, Pokemon cards are one step away from overtaking NVIDIA stock as the most profitable mainstream investment over that seven-year span, with the hobby's 40x return significantly outpacing other money-printing vehicles like the S&P 500, gold, and many others.
In a similar fashion, Misiorowski has exploded to prominence this season in Milwaukee. Drafted in the second round of the 2022 MLB draft, foregoing his commitment to play collegiately at LSU, Misiorowski's combination of explosive velocity and otherworldly stamina has seen him put up sensational numbers in his first full MLB season. Through the 2026 campaign, Misiorowski posted an MLB-best 1.80 ERA across 30 starts, leading the league in strikeouts (252), ERA+ (232), and WHIP (0.802).
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Now, he has led the Brewers to their first World Series appearance since 1982, and after getting the win in Game 1 against the Rays, they are now in pole position for the franchise's first-ever championship.
But to Milwaukee card collectors, he's just Miz.
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Milwaukee has fallen in love with Jacob Misiorowski, the collector
"When his fiance wants to run some errands out this way, they'll stop into the card shop," said Austin Barbee, an employee at Lake Country Cards, another location in Oconomowoc that Misiorowski frequents.
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Miz has a reputation for being excellent with handling other collectors that recognize his fame and want to interact with him. He has an understanding that while these moments may be mundane for him, they can create lasting memories for others.
Rhyner described a prime example of such a memory. He and Misiorowski share a favorite Pokemon — Lugia — so one day, when the Brewers' star was in the shop and the two were ripping sports packs, he decided to savor the moment.
"It was the day he had pulled his first Bowman orange foil refractor in store, so I just wanted to commemorate the moment, I had him sign a Lugia card for me," Rhyner said. "And now it's honestly one of my favorite cards in my collection now because it started off a great friendship and we had that great moment."
The autographed card, a Lugia VStar gold Secret Rare from the 2022 set Silver Tempest, was then authenticated by PSA and is now a truly unique piece of Rhyner's personal collection — what collectors refer to as a "1-of-1."
Jacob Misiorowski Lugia autographed card
Brew Town Trading Co.
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Misiorowski isn't shy about showing off his love for Pokemon. The Brewers ace boasted a Charizard-themed glove while attending the 2026 MLB All-Star Game, which featured a Japanese-exclusive Neo Premium File Charizard reverse holo in a specially-made card slot on the outside, plus his last name written in the Pokemon font. He also wore a suit with a Lugia stitched into the inside to the All-Star Game red carpet.
In his house, Pokemon has even overflowed into the bathroom.
"In my basement, I was getting yelled at for having my cards just scattered throughout the room," Misiorowski told Jeff Passan on his show Sources Tell Jeff Passan. "So my fiance was like 'hey we gotta figure this out, we gotta condense them and make it something people can look at.' So she decided I could do whatever with the bathroom, so I got crazy with it. I got a neon sign of Pikachu, I got a rug, my dad made a rug with Lugia, and I have a whole wall where I can hang cards with sleeves, it's a piece of art. So I have a bathroom in our basement that's full of Pokemon."
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Jacob Misiorowski hones his Pokemon collection
Of course, Miz isn't afraid of flexing his muscles at times. Both Rhyner and Barbee confirmed that the 24-year-old is in the process of master setting Legendary Collection, one of the most coveted — and expensive — sets in the entire hobby. Good-condition copies of the 2002 set's reverse holofoil cards, which feature a stunning and popular firework pattern across the entirety of the card, are currently fetching six, sometimes even seven figures. A PSA 10 Gengar reverse holo from Legendary Collection sold for over $400,000 on eBay back in June, according to PriceCharting , while a PSA 10 Charizard sold for $575,000 around the same time.
With the explosion in the popularity of grading, and the potential profits to be made doing so, finding raw copies in good condition is getting more and more difficult. Those numbers could be daunting even to someone in Misiorowski's position, but he did show off his PSA 1 Charizard from Legendary Collection to ESPN earlier this year .
Rhyner even thinks he may have put Miz onto the idea, saying, "After showing him mine I was doing with [modern set] Destined Rivals, it kind of inspired him to changing into doing a lot more full sets as well, so it's become truthfully about collecting."
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Speaking with Jeff Passan of ESPN back in May, Miz showed off a comically large six-card by six-card binder that was completely covered his face and body when flipping through it on camera.
When asked by Passan what his favorite pull has been while opening packs with his fiance, Misiorowski said, "We pulled the Sunbreon."
The card Misorowski is referring to the biggest chase from the modern set Prismatic Evolutions, a card of the Pokemon called Umbreon with a sun shining behind it. The card is highly sought after not only for its stunning art, but also because of its callback to a slightly older card nicknamed the "Moonbreon", the chase hit from the set Evolving Skies. Additionally, "Sunbreon" is a thrilling chase due to its extreme rarity — the Prismatic Evolutions set is known for being especially difficult to pull hits from, so much that collectors have affectionately dubbed it "Traumatic Evolutions."
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"The funniest part was this was when she was just getting into ripping packs, so she opens it, doesn't have a clue what she's looking for, just opens the pack, sees the card, is like 'oh this one's cute, look at this one,' turns it to me, and I'm like freaking out, and I'm like 'oh my gosh, you just hit like a thousand dollar card, you should have a little reaction!' But she's like stone cold, no reaction."
With the Pokemon hobby currently being overtaken by those who wish to profit off the skyrocketing prices, driving up costs even further and elbowing others out for limited supply of product, Miz's genuine love for collecting is a breath of fresh air for fans who feel a connection with others that show such an appreciation for the community.
"To me, it's great to see people being true collectors out there," said Lake Country Cards owner Tim Luke. "He'll come in and buy, like, $2 cards, $3 cards if he wants them, where a lot of guys that are up there, they're chasing big cards to make money on it and use it as an investment more than just collecting. And collecting is what the hobby is all about, collecting to me is first before selling it and making money on it.
"As soon as I get away from not collecting, that is kind of when I'm going to be done [with the shop] because then you take the hobby out of it."
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Jacob Misiorowski on the brink of a World Series title
Continuing to share the collecting but with others, before Game 2 of the World Series, Misiorowski took the time to open Pokemon packs with a young fan from the Make-A-Wish Foundation behind home plate.
"It's very exciting to see a city to come behind a new face like himself and be happy that he's into collecting, but also just 'Hey I want to come into the shop and see Jacob Misiorowski here and be able to open up some packs' and make that memory for you," said Rhyner. "You have a lot of people posting on Facebook and stuff, but nobody wants to live in the moment.
"To see the community of Milwaukee and Brewers fans wanting to come in and potentially see him, you're just connecting with all these fans that keep coming in trying to talk about the Brewers. The amount of World Series hype in Milwaukee has really taken over, and you're seeing a city come together that we haven't seen since the Bucks made this run.
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"We're unbelievably blessed to have a guy like him come into the shop every so often to have some packs. I don't even know how to put it into words. It's just one of those moments you would never think would happen."
Miz has gone viral on a number of occasions, between receiving a Lugia card as a gift from his childhood idol Chris Sale, or uncovering a base set Charizard in the Brewers' clubhouse last year alongside teammates Brandon Woodruff, Rhys Hoskins and Trevor Megill.
As he ramps up the velocity on the mound over 100 mph, strikes out batters at generational rates, and continues to gain popularity across the baseball world, Misiorowski's star is on a meteoric trajectory, but he remains a down-to-earth collector who makes fans feel like he's one of them too.
"He truly is a genuine collector who is just in this for the fun of it."
Oh, and he's also out to win Milwaukee its first World Series title.
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