A Single Pokémon Card Just Became The Most Expensive Ever, Selling For $195,000

One time I bought a Philippe card from Guess Who on eBay as a joke for £1. A single Pokemon card is about as useless as Philippe but a whole lot more expensive.

Surely people who work at the manufacturing work shops could print an extra one and hold it for a few years for this kind of thing? I'm surprised there aren't rich card factory workers all around xD

I knew it was Illustrator Pikachu before I even clicked on the article, only a card of that caliber could sell for that much, but for some reason I only thought 6 of them ever existed. Nice to hear there are more out there.

That is pretty wild. But it's crazier to me that the game is still so popular. I was in high school when the game launched, and now every morning I see the kids at my daughter's bus stop trading and showing off their cards.

Bit steep.
More money then sense I guess

Not that surprised. In my opinion it's a better use of money that what most rich folk use their money for.

If I were sufficiently wealthy, I might consider such a thing, but only after a lot of other things I'd do with that wealth were accomplished. It would be very low on the priority list.

But what does it do in the TCG?

But this has been the most expensive card for years now NL didn’t you know that? Personally I wouldn’t buy it, there’s much more nicer cards

@KitsuneNight You can't put a price on collecting.

This card has been known to be the rarest for years now, this is nothing new

Can't wait for it to get lost in the mail like the other one.

Interesting that MTG has been doing this longer than Pokemon but never created a card anywhere near that expensive in collectibility.

@HeroponRiki It presumably has no functional role in the card game; it’s basically a miniature certificate in the shape of a Pokemon card.

The text is question states that the bearer’s artwork has been recognised for its superiority in the Pokemon card illustration contest, that the bearer has been recognised as an official Pokemon illustrator, and confers this honour upon them.

It’s hard to imagine how any of that information could be interpreted within the context of the game itself.

@TheAwesomeBowser : For that kind of money, why take the risk by relying on postal services? If one can afford $200K for a Pokémon card, they can certainly afford a first-class trip to Japan to pick it up.

If I was getting that much money I would hand deliver it. I would also want to meet the idi....sorry person paying me. 😀😁

@FantasiaWHT Pokemon worth more $$$
I say this as MTG collector

@Spoony_Tech : Idigenius?

Did that dentist collector guy buy this too? 🤔

@Silly_G idiot lol

The article says the card is called ”Pikachu Illustrator”, but the card itself says ”Pokémon Illustrator”.

I usually just buy pokemon cards to have a kickass deck not for the collectible factor. That said, this is pretty cool, a card selling for close to 200k. Good for the seller.

Huh, thought it was going to be another Charizard card.

@Silly_G @TheAwesomeBowser
For that price, if I had something like that to sell I'd fly and hand deliver it myself, then laugh my way all the way over to the bank.

@Kalmaro Ehh... ... ...debatable. As long as you can put a price tag on something, you can compare it to what you could get otherwise for the money. You might not be able to exactly measure the level of happiness you could get from collecting per se, but $195k is like buying a small house. Or buying yourself 13 thousand, $15 pizzas. Or if you want to be charitable, you could (per https://www.fmsc.org/) feed 534 poor families food for a year.

I'm pretty sure most everyone would get more happiness from these options then owning a small piece of cardboard. That said, that piece of cardboard was way overpriced comparatively, imho

@DeltaPeng That's just it though, this is about happiness and how much someone thinks something is worth.

They just think it's worth a LOT more than you or I do.

@Kalmaro True, I guess that's happiness versus overall (practical) utility or usefulness, to oneself/others. And it does vary by person.

We could debate that there are potentially/probably other options which would provide more happiness for the buck, and whether that level of money should be spent on the pursuit of leisure or even of one's own happiness, but that's probably best left to another type of discussion forum

@DeltaPeng We could debate it but at the end of the day, it's up to the individual to place a price on this and this person felt like the price was worth it.

Wish I had that kind of cash.

My friend has an uncle who owns one of these cards. He worked for Wizards of the Coast.

@FantasiaWHT @bluemujika MTG is 26 years old. Pokemon TCG is 23 years old. Not a big difference there.

Illustrator sold for $195,000 this year and only has 39 copies in the whole world.

Alpha Black Lotus sold for $166,000 this year, and has over 1,000 copies running around.

I'm pretty sure mtg cards are doing a lot better, value wise.

Alpha Starter decks sell for $70,000. Base Set Pokemon theme decks sell for $80.