On Oct. 23, Weiss Auctions opened bidding on a super-rare Pokémon card, Japanese Illustrator Pikachu, a promotional card created as a contest prize in 1998. The card was never commercially available, which makes it so rare. Only 39 were handed out to contest winners.
Phil Weiss, a collectibles expert and owner of Weiss Auctions, knew the card was worth a lot. Ten of the Illustrator cards had been rated by PSA, a certification company that grades cards. This particular card is a PSA 9, the closest to perfect a card could get without a 10 rating. Weiss told me that the same card, with the same rating, sold at auction for around $50,000 a few years back. Other cards have sold for higher at online auctions, he said. This Pikachu card, however, went a lot higher — to $195,000 at the hammer.
“I was stunned it went that high,” Weiss said.
I took an economics class in high school, and I remember my teacher telling us that something’s worth what another is willing to pay. And that’s what happened here. Bidding started low with a “handful” of interested parties, but all dropped off at around $75,000, Weiss said.
“The two of them just bid back-and-forth until it went to $195,000,” Weiss said. “With the buyer’s premium, it’s over $220,000 for the card.” (The buyer’s premium is paid to the auction house.) IGN, which first reported the sale, said the sale broke the record for the highest-priced Pokémon card sold.
Despite the high price, Weiss said he wasn’t surprised. The whole business is generational. People nostalgic for stuff from the ’80s and ’90s are grown up now — and some of us have money to spend on the things we loved as kids. “It’s why you see vintage cast iron toys or tin wind-up toys’ prices dropping, while Star Wars and that kind of stuff is just increasing crazily,” Weiss said.
Weiss isn’t able to share details about the seller, but noted that the person fits within the generation that grew up with Pokémon. But it’s not just Pokémon and Star Wars, of course. Weiss pointed to another auction — of a set of early Magic: The Gathering cards — that sold for a combined $608,215. Among the cards was an Alpha Black Lotus, rated at 8.5, which is the most sought-after Magic: The Gathering card out there. Another, rated at 9.5, sold on eBay for $166,100.
“A lot of people throw these out,” Weiss added. “I just came from an estate where, very casually, a lady said, ‘Oh, I had these silly Magic cards in the original boxes and someone came over and gave me a lot of money for them.’ I asked what a lot of money was, and it was probably a tenth of what they should have been going for.”
