As a child I had considerably more than 42 Pokemon cards, from that time range, and all in excellent condition with several "shinies"... all of which went into the washing machine because I left them in my pocket. Depressing.
Infinite theoretical printing supply. In reality, that specific really cool Charizard from my childhood stopped being printed decades ago, and natural wear and tear reduces the supply compared to 1999 (or whenever it was printed). Nostalgia kicks in, demand skyrockets. I don't know why Pokemon specifically did this, but it's far from the first trading card series to have this effect.
As for utility: it's still entertainment. remember that this is a TCG, so there technically is still a formatted game to play with these cards. Even if most effects in older cards have been long irrelevant in competitive formats, other TCG's can have card prices surge due to new strategies being discovered.
They are today's beanie babies and is a complete waste of money. Even stablecoins have a better use case than this over inflated garbage.
Today I went to a hardware store, and was humourously-surprised to find a Pokemon card vending machine there too.
Pokemon battles have some amount of entertainment value.
I mean sure, it's glorified cock fighting for kids, but that doesn't diminish the utility of the game as entertainment. It just makes it squishier.
As for utility: it's still entertainment. remember that this is a TCG, so there technically is still a formatted game to play with these cards. Even if most effects in older cards have been long irrelevant in competitive formats, other TCG's can have card prices surge due to new strategies being discovered.