The rarest and most expensive Pokemon card in the world has resurfaced

A famed and elusive Pokemon card that many collectors thought to have been lost has resurfaced, with a new purchase of the card shaking up estimations of how many were originally printed.

If you were to ask a lot of Pokemon TCG collectors out there what the holy grail card in the community is, one of the rarest and most expensive cards ever printed, many would answer that the ‘Pikachu Illustrator’ just might be the pick of the pack.

The card was originally released in 1998 as part of an illustration competition in Japanese gaming magazine CoroCoro, and in recent years copies of the card have sold for as much as $800,000 at auction. Even celebrities like Logan Paul have gone out of their way to buy one.

As originally shared by Pokemon TCG fan u/Internal_Level_6828 in a Reddit post, a copy of the famed Pokemon TCG Pikachu Illustrator has been sold in Japan, though currently, the price it was sold for is unknown.

Both the buyer and the shop have verified the sale on X, with TCG collector @k_avatar_k sharing a post detailing the purchase, also tagging the retailer Vintage Card Japan, who later shared the original post.

The person behind the Reddit post sharing the news gleans some light on the situation, saying, “for those asking about price, it was sold during private negotiations between the shop selling it and the buyer it seems. It is likely that we never hear what the actual price paid for it was, however, there will likely be rumors.”

Others in the Reddit chat want to know more about the card, with one person asking the person behind the original post, “Do you know how many of these were made originally? I’m guessing some got lost over time”.

OP Internal_Level_6828 replied, saying, “The original belief was 39 were made. Before that, 20, before that 11, and before that Bulbapedia said it was only 4. Since then, it’s grown to about 41 being found/discovered. Unless this card was documented being sold to the Japanese shop I’d assume it’s possibly 42?”

While the actual number of the cards printed remains to be seen, the rare Pikachu Illustrator card is still possibly the most coveted card in existence, meaning this sale was sure to be a very expensive one.