It feels like almost every other day we come across news of a rare Pokemon card fetching a stupendous sum of money. The frequency of these occurrences has made it really hard to move the needle anymore, so the weight of this latest deal making headlines cannot be overstated.
On June 11, a groundbreaking sale took place at the auction house PWCC, where the Spikey-Eared Pichu Pokemon card, illustrated by a second-grader and showcasing Pikachu’s pre-evolution Pichu, was sold for an astounding $25,800. This card, in flawless Gem Mint 10 condition, has now claimed the title of the most valuable Pichu-themed Pokemon card ever sold.
To give context as to why someone would cash in so much money for what the uninitiated would term a piece of cardboard, here’s a brief history of the card. In 2009, Shogakukan, the parent company that owns Viz Media, organized a contest across Japan as part of a promotional campaign for the release of the Pokemon movie, Arceus and the Jewel of Life.
The contest extended its invitation to children from kindergarten to 12th grade to showcase their artistic skills by drawing and submitting artwork featuring either Spikey-Eared Pichu or Arceus. Ultimately, a winner was chosen from each age group, and their designs were transformed into actual Pokemon cards.
In the case of the Spikey-Eared Pichu, the winning artist emerged from the second-grade group. While the exact number of cards created for each contest winner remains undisclosed, PWCC approximates that there are somewhere between 13 and 100 copies in existence, which places them on the list of the most rare Pokemon cards ever designed.
To date, a total of 60 cards from the contest have been authenticated and graded by PSA (Professional Sports Authenticator), among which are three Spikey-Eared Pichu cards. For those who may be unfamiliar with Pokemon cards, it is worth noting that there are merely 41 known copies of the highly sought-after Pikachu Illustrator cards in existence worldwide.
Surprisingly, only one of these cards has been certified as a flawless Gem Mint 10, and it fetched an outrageous $5.275 million when it was sold to YouTuber Logan Paul in 2021. This latest $25 Pichu card sale isn’t quite in the same league, but is still a heavy hitter.
