A complete set of first-edition Pokémon cards just sold for $107,010 on Goldin Auctions. But don’t worry—it’s extremely unlikely the card binder your mom threw out would have sold for anywhere near that.
As TMZ first reported, The 1999 set, sold last Saturday, includes 103 cards, one of which is a holographic Charizard. Twelve bidders elevated the price to over $100,000, with a minimum bid of $25,000 for the mint condition cards. Over the phone, Goldin Auctions’ consignment director, Dave Amerman, told Kotaku that not just any complete first-edition set would sell for the price of a Mercedes-Benz S-class.
Pokemon - Base Set Price Guide. Bill Common 91 $0.37 $0.31 Blastoise Holo Rare 2 $27.58 — Bulbasaur Common 44 $0.99 $0.51 Caterpie Common 45 $0.44 $0.41 Chansey Holo Rare 3 $6.96 — Charizard Holo Rare 4 $88.30 — Charmander Common 46 $0.55 $0.36 Charmeleon Uncommon 24 $0.63 $0.43 Clefairy Holo Rare 5 $6.33 — Clefairy Doll Rare 70 $0.70 $0.72.
“There’s a common misconception with these cards,” he explained. “The key to the sale here isn’t so much the fact of having the entire set together. You can put together an entire set for maybe $1,000.”
The missing link here is something called a “GEM mint condition grading,” a metric that assesses the cards’ corners, color consistency and gloss. As for the $107,010 Pokémon set, Amerman said, “On the back they have the dark color, the blue Pokémon border. You can’t tell if you’re not looking closely, but on the back, there’s a white chipping sometimes. To get the perfect grade, it has to be a solid color on front and back.”
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Amerman said that sometimes, millennials’ dads will call him in to evaluate their 50-year-old baseball card sets. Even after a $15,000 valuation, he said, “They’ll ask, ‘What about these?;” of their kids’ Pokémon cards. Sometimes, he’ll respond, “These are worth twice what your cards are worth!”
Since 2016, Pokémon card sets similar to this one have gone up almost 10 times in value, said Amerman. He added a completely unrelateable anecdote: “You get these millennials, who are broke, maybe finishing college and have six figures in their closet.”
![1st 1st](https://d1w8cc2yygc27j.cloudfront.net/3388716122986085343/-5016313376085933279.jpg)
This is yet another report of old Pokemon cards selling for an jaw-dropping amount. Back in August 2018 an unopened booster box of Pokemon Base Set sold for $56,000.For more from the world of Pokemon, be sure to keep an eye on IGN this weekend as we report from the 2019 Pokemon World Championships where players will compete to win over $500,000 in prizes in tournaments for Pokemon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, Pokken Tournament, and of course the Pokemon Trading Card Game.Joshua is Senior Features Editor at IGN. If Pokemon, Green Lantern, or Game of Thrones are frequently used words in your vocabulary, you’ll want to follow him on Twitter @JoshuaYehl and IGN.