I think this is the most expensive Pokémon card I’ve ever set my eyes upon. Right now it’s set at the incredibly cheap buy it now price of $100,000 on Ebay – it’s safe to say I don’t have money to even think about putting an offer in on this piece of Pokémon Trading Card history. The last copy of this ‘Illustrator’ card to go on sale is meant to have sold for upwards of $20,000, and that was an ungraded copy. Which means its condition wasn’t graded. This card however, has a PSA grade of 9 which pretty much means its almost perfect condition and could go for some very serious money. It’s almost ridiculous how much money could be made on this card – considering that it pretty much is a picture printed on card. Don’t get me wrong, I understand how rare this card is, it was limited to a strict run of only 5, but 100k is a serious amount of money to pay for anything. I used to collect Pokémon cards pretty seriously when I was younger, and have thousands of thousands of them, with quite a few complete sets and rare cards. I don’t think I ever spent more than about £20 on a card though, and that seemed like a lot to me. I really enjoyed collecting and trading the cards, and sometimes its fun to look up what the rarest cards are going for at the moment. I think this one takes the cherry though.
The card was awarded to those who had a winning entry in the Pokémon Card Game Illustration Contest that was held in 1997. As the name might suggest, this was a competition held in conjunction with CoroCoro Magazine in Japan where fans could submit their illustrations of a requested Pokémon. As I said there are only 5 of these cards that were ever released and there’s a further mint copy held by the Official Pokémon TCG Blog. Meaning a total of only 6 copies of the card exist, now that’s pretty rare.
The text of the card reads:
We certify that your illustration is an excellent entry in
the Pokémon Card Game Illustration Contest.
Therefore, we state that you are an Officially
Authorized Pokémon Card Illustrator and admire your skill.
Meaning the card has no official function in the Trading Card Game. Not that you would use it even if it had!
One of the few cards designed by the winning entrants of the competition
Having collected Pokémon cards for quite some time, it’s really interesting to find that there are some cards which can achieve or warrant a price tag of $100,000. Currently the card has over 57,000 views, which is one of the mos viewed items I think I’ve ever seen on Ebay, and it still has over 11 days left. After having almost 200 offers on the card it’ll be interesting to see what it finally goes for – if it does
You don't know what you can't 