Admit it: you want to keep the old collection of Pokémon cards, don’t you?
But chances are you’ve never looked at a single rare book: a holographic Blastoise that sold for $ 360,000 at an online auction last week.
The CGC Trading Cards collector posted the auction live on January 14 via YouTube, noting that the “presentation” card – one of two prototypes used in marketing and promotion “to demonstrate what an English Pokémon card would look like” – is the only known that it still exists.
“This is a historic moment, ladies and gentlemen,” the bidder said before reaching the final bid. The buyer was anonymous, while almost tying the record for the highest amount paid for any English Pokémon card, according to CGC.
The print of the test, commissioned by Wizards of the Coast in 1998, is one-sided, showing an empty space in which the Pokémon logo would have been. Cardmaker Cartamundi has produced other similar Blastoise cards, some of which carry models for “Magic: The Gathering” – a different game also distributed by the Wizards brand.
Blastoise’s second blank book “is unknown,” CGC said.
Late last year, a pair of Charizard books sold for $ 369,000 each at Goldin Auctions. It surpassed the previous record held by the rapper and, obviously, by the Pokémon Logic collector, who dropped over $ 220,000 on a Charizard book from the same edition.
“The first record was set only last month,” CGC wrote, “demonstrating how hot the trading book market is, with CGC trading books adding fuel to the fire through its expert certification services.”