A 1998 Pocket Monsters Japanese Promo “Illustrator” Pikachu Holo card, graded PSA NM 7, sold for $900,000 at a recent Goldin auction.
The world is perhaps within spitting distance of seeing its first million dollar Pokemon card sale, now that this card has landed within $100,000 of that benchmark. This scarce promo was only released in Japan back in 1998, and is widely considered one of the most elusive Pokemon cards out there. It was originally distributed through a series of illustration contests by Coro Coro Magazine.
“What the T206 Honus Wagner is to baseball cards, this Pikachu-Holo Illustrator essentially is to Pokemon cards,” PSA posted on their Twitter account in reaction to the sale (see below).
There are only 40 copies of this card that are known to exist, and only 23 copies of this card have been graded by PSA (see below). This PSA NM 7 copy is one of two known in that grade.
Last year, PWCC sold a 1999 Pokemon Base Set Shadowless 1st Edition Holo Charizard #4 PSA 10 GEM MINT for $311,800 (see “‘Pokemon TCG’ Shadowless Charizard #4 Holo“).
Source: ICV2