In recent years, trading card games like the Pokemon Trading Card Game and Yu-Gi-Oh! have become more popular collector's items than ever, with fans clamoring to seek out the games' oldest and most valuable cards. With Pokemon recently concluding its 25th anniversary and Yu-Gi-Oh! welcoming the 20th anniversary of the game in the West, both franchises have seen major spikes in collectors looking to buy in, leading to classic sets selling for exorbitant prices. Now, a recent listing on auction site Goldin presents a rare opportunity to own a piece of Pokemon's past.
The Pokemon TCG has been a hot topic for both fans of the franchise and collectors looking to invest in the iconic monster-catching card game over the past few years. The now 25-year-old game has recently seen major influencers and celebrities like Logan Paul and Steve Aoki throwing themselves into the Pokemon conversation between Paul's high-profile purchase of a classic booster box and Aoki's collaboration with popular marketplace TCGPlayer. Now, a unique piece of Pokemon history has recently gone up for listing on Goldin, enticing interested fans with an uncut sheet of first-edition cards.
A recent auction listing on Goldin sees the appearance of the classic uncut sheet of Pokemon cards, containing first-edition prints of the trading card game's original Base Set. Pictures contained within the listing show several iconic and highly sought after cards including Venusaur, Blastoise, and even the legendary Base Set Charizard, a card that has sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars on eBay. However, fans looking to chase the legendary sheet will have to be prepared to pay a small fortune with the current bid sitting at $34,000 at the time of writing.
The Pokemon Trading Card Game's Base Set has grown into the "holy grail" of collector's items for many of the long-running franchise's fans. The game's first few sets regularly appear at auctions fetching high values with booster boxes of old sets frequently fetching values as high as $360,000 at auctions. The craze over Pokemon's earliest trading cards has even led The Pokemon Company to reprint many of the game's most iconic cards with an entire anniversary set from earlier this year featuring several re-releases.
As trading card collecting has continued to grow into a more popular avenue for collectors, the trend has also seen a significant rise in the quantity of fake cards and scammers looking to capitalize on the craze. eBay recently announced that the online auction storefront would start officially authenticating cards and several high-profile collectors, like the previously mentioned Logan Paul, have even fallen victim to the onset of fake cards. Classic Pokemon cards have become more popular than ever and fans have shown they are willing to pay a premium to own a piece of Pokemon's origins.
Source: Goldin