Random: Rare Pokémon Trading Card Auctioned For $480K Gets Zero Bids

I cannot even begin to wrap my head around spending even a double digit amount of dollars on a piece of cardboard that took like 12 cents to produce.

Apparently a lot of people can't judging by how this went.

Better luck next time, seller. That card won't be your ticket to fast riches.

Surprised pikachu face

Only slightly less stupid than the guy who tried to sell his 'First Tweet' NFT for $48 million.

Why spend for million dollars of Pokemon card when you can print the template from Google image and keep the printed Pokemon card for yourself privately ?

(Sees the seller's name is Tomoya Ohno)

I bet it's name is indicative of its reaction.

Pokémon is releasing a classic Pokémon card set with all the original designs for the cards. Will tank the value of some of them

well that's interesting, looks like the tcg hype is finally slowing down?

I recently went to a garage sale where I found (and bought) a full box of 48 brand new sealed Topps Nintendo Game Pack cards for a bargain.

I'll keep those instead thanks.

@Eel

For once, society has decided that no, they don't want to Consume the Product. And for a moment? There was peace.

Since I started having disposable income, I've been known to pay 50 bucks for an amiibo from eBay here and there... But I can't fathom spending this amount of money on a single card. You could make a difference in so many lives with that amount of money. And yet, people will bid it all on a Cheeto vaguely shaped like Richard Nixon.

That's some pretty expensive cardboard.

Not worth it at all I know two others sold for mad money but I suspect this is proof that there's a limited market for these investment cards one I'd suspect is creating an artificially high price for pokemon cards.

Makes sense, i imagine the “I’ll spend enough to buy a house on a single piece of cardboard”-market isn’t an overly large one…

I don’t spend double-digit amounts on a single card often, but i’m still shocked at people plopping down six-figure sums on them.

Just list it again. Someone will buy it eventually.

@TheBigBlue
Nah it wont, there's nothing like the originals and it will only be the 'base set' which has already been remade several times over by this point.

I had $479,999 dollars saved up but just couldn’t find another dollar anywhere oh well will keep saving I guess xxx

@TheBigBlue Those new cards will have different backs and not be legal for tournament play. They will be, in effect, proxies. For collectors, this means they have little value. You can still have fun playing with them, of course.

I’ll post-date a cheque for 30th February 2190.

You love to see it

How is this news worthy lol

I dont want to be the guy that bought the same card for double the money

Supply and demand. Demand went up during pandemic, there was only so much of things old and new to go around. Now, Pokemon TCG has returned to pre-pandemic and Diamond/Pearl era levels where it is quite simply dead. Stores have SO MUCH leftover stock they have to sell for near wholesale prices which even them have gone up due to the cost of living.

Huh? What kind card goes for THAT much these da-oh it’s an Illustrator Pikachu never mind.

That said, he’s listing the product at THE WORST possible time considering the rising costs of pretty much everything and less cash entering peoples’ pockets.

@Lizuka As a competitive player I can understand it to some extent. In the current format a single Lugia V/VSTAR pair is usually around $18 USD at minimum and, historically speaking, there used to be tournament-viable cards that at the very least commanded $100 USD.

$480,000 can buy you a really nice house or a fancy car like a Lamborghini. Maybe even two Lamborghinis. And yet this person wanted to sell a piece of cardboard for that? To quote William Shatner in Saturday Night Live, "Get a life!"

Frankly, this scalping thing is getting out of control. It's to the point where even Girl Scout cookies are being resold for at least five to six times their original value, maybe even more than that.

Frankly, if I was in charge of eBay, there would be no more of that. Any scalped items would be delisted and the user banned from the platform.

The story of a passionate Pokemon fan who decides to auction off their most valuable collectables at a jacked up price because some self-proclaimed grading service says its worth something.

Get real, I know these things have collector value but if you're shelling out thousands for a card, especially if its on the basis that you're speculating it will appreciate in value, you're a clown.

@Lizuka I'd even consider 12 cents double digits here. But yeah, the title made me sigh in relief actually. For once, the human collective has NOT shown to have collectively lost ALL basic brain functionality requiring at least one functional brain cell. A day to remember, as humanity finally steps out of its homo mass hypnosis state into a more autonomous sapiens state again. A long way to go still, but that is always the case, even when you arrive at what you thought was your destination, because goal posts move as long as there is life and changing circumstances, and only the "fit" can keep up and fit in, adapt. Only the intelligent know when goal posts are moving in a direction we shouldn't follow though.

Oh well, enough about that. I know I can go on all day about these things.

It's not sold.

That is good.

@FishyS I've had 40.000 euro's saved, twice. Once I bought a cabin in the forest (and a piece of forest) where I live now, the other time I bought a huge plot of forest with a basic stone house in it and a caravan, in the mountains in Spain where I'll start a second off-grid this spring / summer. In between I saved for a camper to move from one to the other and return occasionally. If only I had known I could have saved 1/6th of a pokenmon card instead...

People in the comments focus on "it's a silly amount of money" and "it's no wonder in this economy", but completely omit the grade 7 Illustrator Pikachu that apparently sold for 900k last year.
With how much of a flop this new auction turned out to be, I wonder just how many people were involved in inflating the worth of that card last time. Especially considering that the same card with grade 9 was sold for 195k in 2019.

@Xiovanni your username and profile pic..... Chef's kiss!

@Xiovanni or they are calming down their money laundering schemes.

@Preposterous It’s clearly money laundering. Same thing we’ve been seeing with the brand new retro games lately

@Preposterous Yeah obviously purposeful inflation, millionaires making high value purchases with themselves to try and steer the perceived value of the cards upwards.

With some retro games its no surprise something like Fire Emblem Path of Radiance, became really valuable because Fire Emblem went from unpopular to mainstream. Or Earthbound (SNES) when it reached cult classic status but was an originally a flop. Because it means something limited and unpopular has become inherently much more desirable.

But Pokemon has always been popular, the demand would always have been there, so really prices should would only be expected to rise gradually as supplies dwindle.

Ha! Good, stop these stupid auctions.

I have a book that was published 110 years ago of which only 1200 copies were ever printed in the world. It cost $6. Scarcity does not equal value.

This is one of the rarest and most valuable Pokemon cards there is. You can't expect it to find a buyer that quickly. Some of these can sit for years before the right collector comes along. I don't really get why this article is painting it like a failure. This is typical in the high-end collecting world.

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. Comeuppance.

@Wordbonder I have a feeling that it’s because of the whole “eBay is working with the seller to re-list the product” bit. It could be nothing but it could also be eBay trying to game the market, there were hints of that when they bought TCGPlayer back in October.

Do you know how many other Pokémon cards you can buy with 480,000$!

If you spend half a million dollars on a single card from a kids' trading card game, I honestly feel like you either have and earn too much money for your own good ...or you need to rethink just what led you to this moment in your life ...where you decide to spend more than most ordinary people make in a year on a single trading card with a slightly more fancy print than all the others worth literal pennies.

@Deady Yeah, demand does though. There is a pretty big market of die-hard Pokemon TCG collectors and the illustrator Pikachu is an exceedingly rare card that a lot of people want. Honestly the TCG is kind of ruined as a collector's hobby now, not only is it a speculators' market and prices has soared on items, but it's also very unlikely that the market will crash anytime soon now unless everyone collectively stops giving a crap. Which is easier said than done I'm afraid

@KingOhger You’re totally right. I feel like this is (as other more informed commenters than I have noted) is part of the pandemic movement and questionable authority of grading companies that came from it. Million dollar Pokémon cards and NES games certainly have collector value, and could be argued to have cultural value as well. I wonder if there’s an echo chamber of value inflation, or intentional fixing and have my doubts as to whether any of these values from the recent years would actually grow as time goes on. It is unfortunate that hobby/love collectors are completely priced out of these items.

The most expensive collectible I have cost me $600, a 1962 hardcover of The Stealer of Souls signed by Michael Moorcock. Since there’s not a demand/investment market, I was able to afford this just as something for me to keep and cherish.

Why are people so against it, nobody will be poorer if some rich nerd decide to put a lot of cash into things they like