An incredibly rare Pokémon TCG tournament prize has now been sold for an eye-watering amount of money. The card itself is a 1997 Trophy Pikachu and was the very first prize in a Japanese tournament, hence why many collectors are willing to break the bank for it.
Dexerto claims that this incredibly rare piece of card was purchased for $300,000. If that wasn’t impressive enough, this version of the Trophy Pikachu card was reportedly the highest-graded copy available.
In an effort to show how rare this Pokémon TCG prize is, Heritage Auctions released a statement about this ridiculous purchase. The store reveals that this card was never in booster packs and was only available to those who reached the third place or higher in the aforementioned Japanese tournament.
“This card was not in the booster boxes that were offered at the time,” Heritage Auctions’ trading card games consignment director Jesus Garcia said. “It only was available to trainers who finished third at the First Official Pocket Monsters Tournament in Chiba, Japan, in 1997. It is an extraordinarily rare card [that] now stands as a centerpiece in the winning bidder’s collection.”
While the craze for Pokémon TCG has died down a bit, there’s no denying that this is still a fairly popular and lucrative hobby. Fans regularly participate in tournaments and they still purchase those booster packs. YouTube influencer Logan Paul brought a ton of attention to these cards, even wearing one of them for his entrance at WrestleMania last year.
For less positive news, these cards have also been involved in a number of robberies that cost a ton of money. Some were inside jobs where an employee from the company tried to sell them while others were regular burglaries. Either way, crimes were committed for thin pieces of shiny plastic.
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The Pokémon Trading Card Game is currently still ongoing, and recently started its Scarlet and Violet expansion. A new era of the popular card game, the new run includes art of cute critters introduced in Game Freak’s latest video game.