Rare Pokemon card in record sale at auction

A rare Pokemon card, the “Pikachu Illustrator”, was sold at auction for a record price of $54,970 on Monday near Los Angeles.

There are only 39 copies of the card. This one was purchased by an unidentified Hong Kong-based collector during the Heritage Auctions sale on Saturday in Beverly Hills.

The seller, who has been a collector of the cards since his teens, lives in the United States and is thought to be about 20-years-old.

“The card + Pikachu Illustrator + was presented in January 1998 to the winners of the CoroCoro cartoon illustration contest,” said Michael Halperin, spokesperson for Heritage Auctions.

A first “Pikachu Illustrator” card was sold for about $23,000 in the early 2000s, Halperin said.

Only 10 of these cards are still in good condition but the number of private holders is not known.

Considered by the collectors as the most emblematic of the Pokemon cards, it was illustrated by Atsuko Nishida, who depicted the small yellow rodent Pikachu holding in his paws drawing tools.

The phenomenon Pokemon was born in Japan in 1996 and is now the subject of a gaming app called Pokemon Go, which became a big hit with gamers earlier this year, with more than 20 million active users.