2003 Pokemon card sells for $30,000 at GameStop
GameStop received $30,000 worth of trade-ins after accepting 2003 Pokemon cards, according to the retailer. This is the highest trade-in value ever for GameStop.
Fox – 5 Atlanta
If you’re a growing Pokemon fan, you might have thousands of dollars sitting around in a warehouse somewhere.
Nostalgic fans celebrating Pokémon’s 30th anniversary with Pokémon Day on Friday, February 27th may feel the urge to dive into a throwback collection of Pokémon trading cards and collectibles.
They may also be surprised to learn that the cards may hold more than just childhood memories, authenticators say, with some rare editions being resold for thousands.
For fans who like to revisit their old collections, here’s how to tell if your old Pokemon trading cards will make you money.
What should you look for in a Pokemon card?
Before knowing the price of a collectible Pokemon card, fans must have the card authenticated and graded. This means that a professional must inspect the card to determine how close it is to “perfect” condition using a designated grading scale, often from 1 to 10. The higher the grade, the higher the potential price you can sell for.
Jonathan Holloway, founder of Pokemon card authentication and pre-grading company Validoe, told USA TODAY that with so many counterfeit cards on the market, it is necessary to verify the authenticity of a card before grading, and that often comes at a price. A real card should have a bright holographic pattern, he said. After authentication, you need to consider the state of the card.
“If someone has a Pokemon card, whether it’s 30 years old or 20 years old and it’s sitting in their mom’s basement or sitting in their mom’s attic, the first thing I recommend is to have someone look at the card,” Holloway said. “You have to look at the condition of the card because I think that’s the biggest indicator of the value that the card can potentially experience.”
According to Holloway, cards are typically evaluated by looking at four specific areas during grading: centering, surface, edges, and corners.
- Centering refers to the balance between the front and back borders of a card. The ratio of a card’s border to its center determines the card’s grade height.
- Surfaces such as holographic elements, artwork, and text are inspected to determine how clean the card is. It also requires imperfection and clarity.
- Look around the edges of the card to see if there are any scratches or marks on the back or front.
- The corners are inspected to determine if all four corners of the card are symmetrical, sharp, or have white spots or dents/marks.
Some companies, like Holloway’s, also allow you to have your card pre-graded to make sure it’s in good enough condition to submit for official grading. This will help inexperienced collectors and boost their confidence, he added.
Which Pokemon cards are popular?
Perhaps the most popular Pokemon cards are known as the “core set,” or the first original set of Pokemon cards created in the late 1990s. There are several base set versions that include first edition cards. Core set cards can be identified by looking in the bottom right corner and finding the number out of 102.
If you collected cards in the 1990s, Holloway said, those cards may have been included in core sets.
“These are different versions of the same card. But the important thing is that the most popular cards in terms of potential next value are the first editions of the core set,” Holloway said. “Because if you could find a base set first edition Charizard in its original condition, it would now cost six figures.”
Simon Hancox, director of card grading company and marketplace website TC Grader, shared a similar opinion, adding that the original Pokemon Charizard, Blastoise, and Bulbasaur “will always be the most expensive cards in everyone’s collection.”
Hancox, a Pokemon fan and collector for decades, said the value of the cards in the core set inspired people to dig into their collections starting in the early 2010s. Previously, children, including himself, would write their names on cards without worrying about whether they would be able to collect them.
He said the Pokémon community experienced a huge boom during the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused the value of cards to skyrocket.
“Right now in the industry, people are buying products and storing them sealed,” Hancox said. “Now, it’s difficult to judge whether this phenomenon will be the same in 10 or 15 years because everyone is collecting data now.”
Logan Paul sells rare Pokemon cards for $16.5 million
One of the cards, YouTuber Logan Paul’s rare PSA 10 grade Pikachu Illustrator Pokemon card, sold at Goldin Auctions this month for approximately $16.5 million. This sale broke the Guinness World Record for the most expensive Pokemon card sold at auction, making it the second time Paul and this particular card have broken the world record.
Paul purchased the card in Dubai in 2021 for $5.275 million, setting a Guinness World Record as the most expensive Pokemon card sold in a private sale, according to a Guinness World Records news release.
AJ Scaramucci, founder of Solari Capital, was the lucky purchaser and current owner of the rare card, according to a Goldin news release.
Culture related to collecting Pokemon cards
Hancox predicts that the 30th anniversary will see card values skyrocket again, with fans digging through old cards to see their value. He said anniversaries tend to remind collectors of the past and motivate them to buy new packs of cards.
“Once the news becomes mainstream that the 30th anniversary is coming up and more propaganda starts getting out, 100 percent, all the old-school collectors will come back,” Hancox said. “Even people who were collecting five or six years ago will be coming back to reevaluate their cards, purely because new people are coming into the hobby.”
He added that the 30th anniversary gives parents who were once card collectors an opportunity to share the hobby with their children.
“As we approach the 30th anniversary, it’s going to be another opportunity to get kids to open the packs and get involved in the collection and the fun of it and even the (trading card) board game,” Hancox said.
Similarly, Holloway said the nostalgic feelings that cards and Pokémon stories create in people draw them back into the world.
“Most of those kids are adults now. They have money, money at their disposal, so they can now create their own collections that they couldn’t create when they were younger,” Holloway said. “That’s not all. Pokémon is constantly being reinvented. People can’t escape the nostalgia of the brand.”
Kate Perez covers national trends and breaking news for USA TODAY. You can reach her at kperez@usatodayco.com or X @katecperez_.
