Enter Giant Killer, who we can cast the adventure side of to get rid of a big threat, and then cast the creature side and keep something at bay, fits that nicely
Which would be around 5,7k USD in the current AUD to USD exchange rate (not sure what it was at the time he bought it, but not that much of a difference compared t now I assume)
And the cultural issues were just the tip of the iceberg
In the case of the classic Pokemon TCG , players at least have tangible cards to collect
Creature - Dragon Phyrexian Dollhouse of Horrors , , Exile a creature card from your graveyard: Create a token that's a copy of the exiled card, except it's a 0/0 Construct artifact in addition to its other types and it has "This token gets +1/+1 for each Construct you control." It gains haste until end of turn