Right about now, I imagine many longtime Pokémon fans are frantically trying to get in touch with their parents. Not for an impromptu catch-up, of course, but to enquire if their childhood card collection is still gathering dust somewhere in their old bedroom. Should that be the case, an unscheduled visit is in order – you could be sitting on a goldmine. Print runs of modern Pokémon cards from the franchise’s long-running Trading Card Game might only fetch modest prices, but vintage sets from the late 90s? Well, you’ve already seen the title of this post, haven’t you?
It’s not an error, either. As per a recently completed transaction on website Goldin Auctions (thanks, TMZ), one Pokémon fan recently dropped more than $100,000 for a mint condition assortment of the Trading Card Game’s original Base Set. Each and every card included in the lot had been awarded a perfect 10 by grading company PSA and been encapsulated in plastic casing to preserve their quality.
The final sale price, as recorded by the auction house, was $107,010 and included 103 cards, among them the famously rare #4 Charizard holographic. Alone, the iconic Fire-type starter has been known to fetch multiple thousands, with Goldin referencing one such specimen to have gone under the hammer for a cool $8,800 back in 2016. For a brand as young, relatively speaking, like Pokémon, that such memorabilia already fetches such outlandish figures at auction is incredible and proves, yet again, just how globally popular the franchise is across multiple generations.
A massive sale for both buyer and seller, then, but not all stories have happy endings. Just recently, in fact, an extremely rare Pokémon card sold on eBay for $60,000 went missing in transit. Despite foul play being suspected, the collector’s item has never been recovered and both parties have been subsequently left out of pocket. Ouch.
