The world's rarest Pokémon card sells for $195,000 at auction

The world’s most valuable Pokemon card has sold for $195,000 (£151,000) at auction, making it the most valuable of the series. In 1998, just 39 copies of the Pokémon Illustrator card were printed, with only 10 certified copies believed to exist today.

The world’s rarest Pokémon card sells for $195,000 at auction

The card, which contains a picture of Pikachu by artist Atsuko Nishida, was created expressly for the magazine CoroCoro Comic’s competition. Readers could enter their own drawings for a drawing contest in the January 1998 issue, with first and second place winners receiving 23 copies of the card. Throughout 1998, two more contests were held, one to design your own Pokémon card and the other to draw an original “Pokémon attack.” Following that, winners received an additional 16 cards. Due to the cards’ scarcity, a number of counterfeit versions have appeared on the market in the two decades since they were first released, raising the value of legally certified copies.

The Pokémon card is the only one of its kind to include the word “Illustrator” inscribed along the top, in addition to featuring original artwork by Nishida, the graphic artist who first drew the Pikachu mascot. The Pokémon Illustrator Card has become increasingly valued over time. The cards were often sold for roughly $23,000 in the early 2000s. One of the cards was last auctioned in 2013, for $54,970, setting a new record for a Pokémon card, which was shattered at the most recent auction, held in Lynbrook, New York, in early October.