A Retired Decorator Found Old Pokemon Cards in His Attic and Sold Them for £1.6 Million
One folder of pristine cards brought £100,000 as hundreds of buyers bid online.
Global News Podcast · Yemen's humanitarian crisis“At £100,000, we sell £100,000. £100,000 is with the online buyer,” auctioneer Alex Eubank said as the bidding stopped.
The bid was for a single folder of Pokemon cards, the small trading cards printed with cartoon creatures that children collect, trade, and use in games. Correspondent Duncan Kennedy described that folder as pristine.
The cards belonged to a retired decorator from Woking, near London. Eubank said the anonymous owner had collected the cards 25 years ago and found them while looking around his house. He had left them in his attic, where they stayed for 15 years. Eubank described them as master sets, meaning complete runs of a release. He said he sat the owner down and talked to him about what they might fetch at auction.
The characters on the cards have names like Pikachu, Charizard, Blastoise, and Squirtle. The cards came to Britain from Japan in 1999. After that, as Kennedy put it, “playgrounds turned into exchange grounds as millions of youngsters sought to bolster their collections.”
When the collection went to auction, hundreds of buyers joined online. That single folder sold for £100,000. In total the cards brought £1.6 million, or about $2 million.
Questions people ask
What does "master set" mean?
It means every card from a particular release, usually including common cards plus rare, holographic, and secret versions. Collectors prize master sets because they take time and luck to complete, especially for releases from the late 1990s and early 2000s. A complete set is typically worth more than the same cards bought separately in mixed condition.
Why did this collection sell for so much?
This story does not explain the price. It only notes the cards were described as master sets, one folder was pristine, and hundreds of buyers bid online. In general, early Pokemon cards can sell for high prices when complete, well-kept sets survive from childhood collections and several bidders want them.