The secondary market of vintage Pokémon continues to get more lucrative by the day. Alongside sports (baseball and basketball especially) cards and other cardboard-based collectibles, anything branded with the world’s most successful media franchise demands a premium. While they’re worth but a fraction of this auction item, even modern day expansions experience heavy markups by resellers and scalpers, making collecting ’em all incredibly difficult for genuine players.
In this instance, however, it’s an extremely rare 1st edition Base Set Charizard that’s been smashing all kinds of records, having fetched an eye-watering $311,800 at close on eBay yesterday. Considered the holy grail of Pokémon TCG memorabilia, this particular specimen had been assessed by card grading company PSA to have a flawless ‘Gem Mint 10,’ meaning for all intents and purposes, it’s borderline perfect. Thousands of similar versions have been submitted for grading over the years and less than 200 have ever received the highly sought after double digit score.
While a headline worthy sale, it’s worth noting that this still isn’t the highest amount of cash dumped for a single Pokémon card. Last year, a super rare Blastoise – of which only a handful are believed to exist – sold for $360,000, making it the current record holder outside of private, unadvertised auctions.
Will anything come close to surpassing that figure in the future? Considering the hobby’s seemingly unending rise in popularity, we’d imagine the answer to that question is absolutely, though how long it’ll take is anyone’s guess. As more and more lapsed fans revisit their old collections, there’s potentially no limit to the hidden gems gathering dust, just waiting to be rediscovered. If you’re one such individual, now’s as good a time as any to have a dig around your parents’ attic. Happy hunting!