Okay, so I just heard about this and it’s insane! A Pikachu card – seriously, the Pikachu card, apparently the rarest one ever made – just sold for over $1.4 million! It’s wild how much some of these old Pokemon cards are going for these days, it’s all over the internet!
A highly graded 1998 Japanese Pikachu Illustrator card recently sold for an incredible $1,406,250 at Heritage Auctions on March 27, 2026, gaining widespread attention online.
The Pikachu Illustrator card is considered the most valuable Pokémon card because it was never available for purchase in booster packs or through normal release channels.
I always thought it was so cool to learn that the Pikachu Illustrator cards weren’t given out randomly! They were actually prizes in art contests held by the Japanese magazine CoroCoro Comic back in 1997 and 1998. So, every single one of those cards originally belonged to a fan who actually drew their own Pokémon artwork – how amazing is that?
Pikachu card sells for eye-watering figure
The auction listing shows only 39 copies of this item were ever released: 23 were given away in the first competition, and 8 each in the two after that. This extreme rarity is confirmed by professional grading services – PSA has only verified 15 copies in perfect Mint 9 condition, with just one card receiving a higher grade.
This card is special because it’s labeled “Illustrator” instead of the typical “Trainer.” It also includes a pen symbol and features artwork by Atsuko Nishida, the original designer of Pikachu.
Although this card sold for over $1.4 million, it’s still not the most expensive Pokémon card ever. A perfect-condition version, once owned by Logan Paul, sold for a record $16.5 million in February, confirming the Pikachu Illustrator’s status as the most valuable Pokémon card ever made.
Although a drawing of Pikachu by an artist could fetch a million or two dollars, here are the 50 most valuable and rarest Pokémon cards that have ever been sold.
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2026-03-30 12:48