Pikachu Illustrator: the story of the most expensive Pokémon card

Pikachu Illustrator is a prize card given between 1997 and 1998 to the winners of illustration contests run by the Japanese magazine CoroCoro Comic. Around 39 copies are known to exist, and in 2022 a PSA 10 changed hands for $5.275 million, a figure recognised by Guinness World Records as the highest ever paid for a Pokémon card. It is not a collectable card in the ordinary sense: it is a trophy, and this is its story.

A prize, not a card from a pack

In 1997 and 1998 CoroCoro Comic, the children's magazine that published the Pokémon comics, ran a number of illustration contests: readers sent in their own drawings of Pokémon, and the winners received a card that could not be bought in any shop. That card was Pikachu Illustrator.

The exact number of copies given out is debated; the most cited estimates speak of around 39 copies known of, out of a total printed that was probably slightly higher. It never existed in packs, in any language, and has never been reprinted.

What makes it different at first glance

The illustration is by Atsuko Nishida, the artist who created Pikachu's original design, and shows the Pokémon with brushes and pen, busy drawing. In the top left corner, where cards of the time say Trainer, this one says Illustrator: it is the only card with that wording.

Below, a text in Japanese thanks the winner for their illustration; in the bottom right corner, in place of the rarity symbol, there is a small pen. These are the details that make it an object apart, outside any set and any numbering.

The 2022 sale and Guinness World Records

Over the years copies of Pikachu Illustrator have come up at auction ever more rarely and at ever higher prices, reaching six figures in dollars even for copies in middling grades. The leap came with a private sale made public in 2022: a PSA 10 copy, the only one known in that grade according to what was reported at the time, bought by the content creator Logan Paul for a value of $5.275 million.

Guinness World Records certified the transaction as the most expensive sale of a Pokémon card in a private transaction. The detail of the deal, which according to trade reports also included a trade-in, matters less than the result: since then, no other Pokémon card has come close to that figure.

Why it is so rare

Three factors together. The print run, a few dozen copies in all. The channel, a contest for children in Japan in the 1990s: many cards ended up in binders, decks, drawers, and some were probably lost. And condition: a card handled by a child in 1998 rarely reaches 2026 without a mark, and grade 10 is almost a statistical exception.

Add to this the symbolic weight. Pikachu is the most recognisable Pokémon, Atsuko Nishida its creator, Illustrator a word that appears on a single card. Whoever owns it has the piece that ends every argument.

What a trophy card means

Trophy cards are those given as prizes, at tournaments or contests, never sold in packs: besides Pikachu Illustrator, the trophies of the Japanese championships of the 1990s and the cards handed to the winners of the World Championships. What they share is a tiny print run and a market made of very few transactions, often private.

That is why their prices cannot be read like those of set cards: there is no monthly value, no twelve-month trend. There is one sale every few years, and each one is a story of its own.

The Pikachus you can actually collect

For anyone who wants an important Pikachu without entering a museum, the catalogue offers two routes. The first is the Pikachu 58/102 from the Base Set, the most famous common card in the game, illustrated by Mitsuhiro Arita: ungraded it is worth between €25 and €80, in PSA 10 about €480 according to PriceCharting in October 2026, because a common card from 1999 and 2000 in perfect condition is less frequent than you would think.

The second is modern: the two SIRs of Pikachu ex from Ascended Heroes, January 2026, between €760 and €1,120 ungraded and about €1,500 in PSA 10. These are cards you can find, that you can verify on the grading company's website and that go through a single-bid auction with the certificate in the open. Pikachu Illustrator stays where it is: in a display case, a reminder of how far a piece of cardboard can go.