Remember those Pokemon cards you used to collect as a child? The ones you were probably mocked and ridiculed for by anyone outside of your group of friends who also collected them? Well, I sure hope you’ve hung on to them and that they’ve been kept in a nice, mint condition.
Over the last few years, the market for mint condition Pokemon cards has quite literally exploded, and we’ve seen multiple headlines of cards selling for far too much money. Recently there was a holographic card that reached six figures at auction. Since the franchise celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2021, collectors have been going crazy searching for the rarest of rare cards dating back to the very first card prints in Japan.
To date, the most expensive of these cards was a PSA 10-graded Pikachu Illustrator, which was sold to Logan Paul for well over $5 million. Then, a few months later, a first edition Shadowless Charizard sold for a far lower but still ridiculous $420,000.
The card we’re talking about today might not fall within the million-dollar mark. However, it still sold for enough to buy a charming house or a mansion, depending on where you live. During an auction held by Heritage Auction, Trophy Pikachu No. 3 Trainer Bronze Professional Sports Authenticator Trading Card Game NM-MT 8 (Media Factory, 1997) First Tournament Holo sold for $300,000.
To put that in perspective for those of us in South Africa, that means one card sold for a whopping R5,438,615.
According to Heritage Auction, this was one of four Pikachu trophy cards awarded to the four participants who took third place at the first official Pocket Monsters Tournament to take place in Chiba, Japan, in 1997.
Trophy and Pikachu Illustrator cards are the rarest Pokemon cards out there, as only a limited number of cards were printed for each year’s Pokemon World Championships.
The sale of this card has set the bar in the future as there are only three other o. 3 Trainer trophy cards, also graded at a PSA 8, in existence, and now any collectors looking at adding one of the final three to their collections will most probably have to shell out $300,000 at minimum for the card.
Now I want to know if you have any rare Pokemon cards from your childhood lying around. Let me know in the comments below.