Rare Pokémon Card Recently Sold For A Whopping $4 Million On eBay

As noted by Kotaku, Pikachu Illustrator is one of the rarest Pokémon cards ever printed, with only around 41 copies created for the winners of the 1998 CoroCoro Comic Illustration contest in Japan. In 2022, the card made headlines after YouTube and boxer Logan Paul bought a Pokémon Illustrator for over $5 million. This most recently sold card was graded by PSA (Professional Sports Authenticator) as a 9 on a grading scale of 10, meaning it’s in incredible condition. It was sold by Scott “smpratte” Pratte, an established Pokémon card collector. He was profiled by PSA in 2017, where he shared that “at one point or another, he has owned all four PSA 9 examples of this card and has sold them for as much as $60,000.” The jump from this price to the recent sale of $4 million shows just how dramatically the popularity and perceived value of Pokémon cards have increased in recent years.

While Pokémon continues to be an absolute juggernaut of a series in general—with Pokemon Legends: Z-A being hotly anticipated for this October, a new theme park coming in 2026, a stop-motion Netflix TV show recently dropping its second season, and another new game having been announced at the latest Nintendo Direct that looks like Pokémon meets Animal Crossing: New Horizons—the card game has seen an uptick in interest from collectors since around when covid lockdowns kicked in 2020.

Even when people aren’t being caught using company funds to fuel their Pokémon habit, or stealing thousands of dollars worth, scalpers and shortages have been causing significant issues as all types try to cash in on the high demand for these cards. Who knows how long the fad will last, but a card selling for $4 million is probably a good sign that the craze is still going strong.