Tamamushi University Magikarp Trophy Promo
- Release Date: 1998
- Grading: PSA Gem Mint 10
- Pokemon card value at auction: $66,100
In 1998, Shogakukans Magazines in Japan offered a contest for school students. Fans that took the various tests offered in the publication could send them back to the company to have them graded.
Those studious enough to pass with high scores were then invited to a special conference held in Osaka of that year. Once there, the children got to participate in a unique Pokemon card battle tournament. Winners of the rare contest ultimately received the Magikarp Trophy Pokemon card Promo.
Due to the insane obscurity of how the TCG item was given out, its easily one of the rarest Pokemon cards on our list. It was not very surprising then when the Trophy collectible went up for auction in February 2021 and sold for $66k at PWCC.
Base Set Shadowless 1st Edition Charizard: $420000
Charizard cards are generally more sought after than others, and its been this way since 1999. Thats one reason why this Base Set Charizard card from 1999 is so valuable today. At the PWCC Auction in March of 2020, the card sold for a record-breaking $420,000. However, a few months later, another card would swoop in and grab the World Record title.
Squirtle First Edition $222
Squirtle is the first evolution of Blastoise and carries the 2nd most Pokemon card value of any of the big three pre-evolutions. Although grading has slowed down drastically, prices have dipped in the Pokemon market. That said, Squirtle is one of the essential characters of the show and is a must have for any collector. Be sure to assemble your Squirtle-Squad by acquiring his English Rookie card.
PSA Pop: 822 – 1386
Current Pokemon Card Value: PSA 10 $1225 PSA 9 $222
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Chansey #3 1st Edition Shadowless Base Set
- Release Date: 1999
- Grading: PSA Gem Mint 10
- Pokemon card value at auction: $36,877
For many Pokemon card collectors, it doesnt get any better than the Base Set which made its North American debut in 1999. Not only does it feature some of the TCG series most iconic artwork, but there is also a ton of nostalgia players have connected to the release.
As a result, Pokemon cards from the release have seen the most explosion in value over the last decade. While not a heavy-hitter in the franchise itself, fans have been going wild for the adorable Chansey #3 Pokemon card. So much so that it surprised industry veterans when it started fetching jaw-dropping prices.
While hovering around $20k since 2019, the collectibles value has only continued to grow. According to PWCC, a 1st Edition Shadowless version sold for $36,877 in a November 2020 auction.
Umbreon Gold Star Holo
- Release Date: 2005
- Grading: BGS 9.5
- Pokemon card value at auction: $70,000
Eevee and its evolutions are some of the most popular characters in the Pokemon franchise. It makes sense then that a Gold Star Umbreon would quickly become one of the most coveted Pokemon cards in the TCG.
The story behind this Pokemon card also makes it unique as players had to accumulate over 70,000 XP points by the end of the Pokemon Players Clubs fourth season to obtain it. Trainers not only had to physically go to events, but they had to win a lot of matches.
Due to its low population, not a lot of these Pokemon cards have actually gone up for sale. All of that changed in June 2021 when the Gold Star Umbreon sold for $70,000 at auction. Its BGS grade of 9.5 makes it all the rarer, as only two in the whole world have received a grade this high.
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Charmander 1st Edition $300
Charmander’s value has been all over the place in the last 12 months. After the 2020 summer of record sale after record sale, baby Zard’s value has taken a dip recently, but don’t be surprised if Charmander rebounds due to the power Charizard yields on the market.
PSA Pop: 652 – 661
Current Pokemon Card Value: PSA 10 $979 PSA 9 $300
Prices For Pokemon Base Set Pokemon Cards
Pokemon Base Set card list & price guide. Ungraded & graded values for all Pokemon TCG Base SetPokemon Cards., historic prices, and past sales.
Find out how to identify your pokemon card using card numbers, sets, foil, and editions.
Prices are updated daily based upon Pokemon Base Set listings that sold on eBay and our marketplace. Read our methodology.
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Cons Of Graded Pokmon Cards
Despite all the positives to graded Pokémon TCG cards, there are also some downsides. The cost of card grading is pretty high and can result in situations where players actually lose money. At PSA, it cost around $18 to $30 to get a single card rated by the company. Rare cards from modern sets such as the Pokémon Brilliant Stars TCG expansion may end up being worth less than the grading fees depending on the score it gets. For instance, a fan that submits their card for grading may lose all potential value if the card doesn’t come back a perfect grade of 10. There are many factors that can play into a Pokémon card not getting the score it needed to have value as well, such as scratches, whitening on corners, or off-center printing.
Because of the TCG‘s recent resurgence in popularity, it’s also resulted in grading companies like PSA and CGC becoming slammed with people trying to send their cards in to be rated. As a result, wait times are extremely long. According to PSA, a single Pokémon card can now take up to 150 days to get graded and sent back. Collectors who want to speed the process up will have to shell out at least $100 in order to get their cards back within thirty days. So not only will it take up to half a year for most fans to get their TCG items graded, but their cards might end up not being worth anything if they end up receiving lower than expected scores.
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Best Pokemon Cards To Buy
Looking for the strongest, rarest, and coolest looking Pokemon cards ever made?
In this guide, weve outlined the 12 best Pokemon cards to buy right now, no matter how much youre willing to spend.
Weve chosen cards for this list based on how cool they are, as well as their popularity, and how they might appreciate in value.
Note: this is a subjective list! There are plenty of other awesome Pokemon cards not included here these cards are just our personal favourites from our collections.
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First Edition Holographic Raichu
Estimated PSA 10 Gem Mint Value: $2,500
Raichu, the rodent-like evolved form of Pikachu, is an electric-type Pokémon that uses its tail to gather electricity from both the ground and atmosphere.
As it charges, the creature stores the electricity in those circular, yellow sacs on its cheeks and once fully charged, Raichus ears will point directly upwards.
Raichu also uses its pointed tail as a ground to prevent itself from being electrically shocked.
Lend A Hand Is My Charizard Pretend
Excellent information, Unwell get started by way of pronouncing theres a excellent likelihood your Charizard is actual. If its faux, aka a proxy card, its value $0. Weve treated actually tens of millions of Pokemon playing cards all the way through our time accumulating. If theres something had been excellent at, its recognizing a pretend Pokemon card.
Weve got observed just about each unmarried faux counterfeit Charizard 1st version card below the solar.
Seeing pictures over a pc display can infrequently be tough when figuring out authenticity. Thats why once we get introduced a Pokemon assortment we cant be offering our very best worth till we see the playing cards in hand.
Whilst it can be 2d nature for us to identify them out, we needed to take a while and put in combination this information that will help you spot faux Pokemon playing cards and higher train your self.
In case your Charizard is any/all the following, your invoice is pretend:
- It appears like printer paper
- Its smaller than Pokemon as of late
- Its a lot larger than Pokemon as of late
- It does now not have a holographic layer
- It seems blurry
- It doesnt really feel like a Pokemon card
There are lots of different components that pass into learning if a Charizard card is pretend or actual. Those are the fast signs which can be perfect to identify when first studying.
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Pokmon Japanese Promo Tropical Mega Battle Tropical Wind
An ultra-rare promo card – one of only a dozen ever made
Sold for $65,100 in October 2020
Only 12 Tropical Wind cards were produced as promo cards for the 1999 Tropical Mega Battle, a precursor to the Pokémon World Championships, making it one of the most valuable Pokémon sets around.
The Tropical Mega Battle saw 50 players from around the globe take part in a tournament for the trading card game in Honolulu, Hawaii. The only way to participate was to win a battle in your local region and earn an invite, making it an exclusive event for the best Pokémon trainers in the world – and the cards offered as prizes some of the rarest Pokémon cards in existence.
This particular Tropical Mega Battle promo card, the 1999 Japanese-language copy of Tropical Wind, has sold at auction for as much as $65,100 in PSA Gem Mint 10 condition, with the most recent record-breaking sale taking place in October 2020. PSA estimates its value to be as high as $148,482, making the ultra-rare card a contender for one of the most expensive Pokémon cards ever made.
First Edition Holographic Magneton
Estimated PSA 10 Gem Mint Value: $1,750
Composed of three individual Magnemite held together by a strong magnetic force, Magneton is a dual-type electrical and steel Pokémon.
Often found near industrial areas and power plants, this mechanical creature charges itself by eating electrical currents.
Magneton is certainly one of the more unusual-looking of all Pokémon.
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Find The Year Your Pokemon Card Was Made
Look at the bottom of the card and find the year it was printed. Thats the first key indicator when identifying your card.
For example, the Base Set Pokémon Cards have 4 different print runs while looking almost identical each time. Of those sets, the UK 4th Print Base Set identifies as 1999-2000, which is the key indicator to separate those cards from the rest.
What Condition Is Your Pokemon Cards
At first, take a look at the condition of the card youre considering selling.
Even when it comes to the rarest of Pokémons cards, the condition is everything.
Collectors are much less willing to spend money on a card that has creases, stains, or even rips. While a card in Gem Mint is always the sought-after ideal, lightly played cards still have value and can be sold for a respectable amount of money.
This means that if you were a tidy child that took diligent care of their collection, you may be in luck!
If your cards do show traces of gameplay and handling, you may not have to despair immediately.
Generally speaking, the rarer the card your selling, the more obliging potential buyers will be with regards to its condition, but dont expect life-changing offers of cash for cards in poor condition.
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Top First Edition Pokemon Cards: Summary
As you can see, the best first edition Pokémon cards contain some of the biggest names, and theres a distinct preference for the 1999 set. Most of the shiny cards have been long forgotten, and PSA 10 graded shadowless versions often have fewer than 100 copies.
That leads to increased rarity, and the extreme prices were seeing this year. Its only expected to continue as time goes by.
Theres been a massive influx of interest in the hobby in recent months, probably fueled by the record-breaking Charizard purchase for the most part.
For the best investments, its hard to beat the original 151, or exceptional cards such as the Neo Genesis 1st Edition Holo Lugia.
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Slabs And Sealed Prices
There are a lot of things listed on eBay and can be confusing to use at first but if you get used to it its one of the best sources for finding prices of trading cards in general. This goes especially for graded cards and sealed packs or boxes. Just search what product youre looking to sell, select sold and see what that product has recently sold for. You can see this by sorting the results to ended recently at the top right. This doesnt give you an exact number but will show you roughly how much people are willing to pay for that product. You can list on the higher side if youre looking to get more out of it or list a lower price if youre just trying to get rid of it quickly.
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What Are My Pokemon 1st Edition Base Set Cards Worth
If you own any of the cards listed below, condition is the biggest factor in figuring out your Pokemon card value. The prices below illustrate what these cards are worth after grading in mint condition as PSA 9’s & 10’s.
Important to note: It is very unlikely that your cards will grade this high if they have been played with. If you have these cards laying around in less than mint condition, it still may be worth getting them graded as long as they are in pretty good shape.
Pokemon Cards That Are Way More Valuable Graded
Trading card collectors are familiar with the idea of grading. Cards are evaluated on a numerical scale by a third party to determine their condition. This allows collectors to determine the true value of a card. Therefore, grading often majorly increases the market price of a card, because buyers know the quality they will receive.
While grading trading cards is nothing new, eBay now requires cards over a certain selling price be graded. eBays card marketplace has become a multi-billion dollar businessbut scams and counterfeits have increased as well. This new program is meant to prevent this issue for buyers moving forward. Its likely this requirement will become a more common trend, as other companies seek solutions for preventing the same problems.
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Ex Dragon Frontiers Gold Star Charizard
Despite being printed in 2006, a Gold Star Charizard managed to bring in an incredible $60,066 at auction not too long ago. The Delta Species card was sold through eBay in October 2020 and attracted interest from a number of interested parties before the final sale price was finally confirmed.
According to the PSA website, there are just shy of 1,500 graded copies of the card in existence, although only 59 of those have been awarded the coveted GEM-MT 10 rating. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, the record-setting sale was of one of these 59 cards. Others regularly sell for between twenty and thirty thousand dollars.
St Edition Shadowless Blastoise
It might not be quite as popular as Charizard, but Blastoise comfortably beats out the likes of Venasaur and Chansey for the second spot when it comes to valuable base set cards. A mint condition copy of the card was sold for a little over $45,000 just last November, once again through a PWCC eBay auction.
It’s one of 100 copies of the card to have been given the GEM-MT 10 rating by the PSA making it one of the more common base set holographic cards in perfect condition. As with Charizard though, the relatively high population doesn’t seem to have impacted its value all too much most probably because so many of them are already in the hands of collectors.
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The Original Pokmon Base Set
Where it all began, the original English base set collection was release in 1999 and consists of 102 cards. 16 of which are holos.
Now at this point its worth mentioning 1st Edition and Shadowless cards. These are considerably more valuable.
1st Edition is pretty self-explanatory they are the first ever print-run of the cards.
Shadowless cards, you guess it, dont have a shadow!
Specifically, youre looking to see if theres a shadow around the rectangle box containing the Pokémon illustration.
But there are also some other clues like a lighter HP font at the top of the card and the date including 99 at the bottom.
Now to throw something else in the mix, its also worth pointing out that graded cards are more valuable too if the grading is good of course.
The top two graders are PSA and Beckett.
PSA tend to get the majority of the Pokémon grading market and are most commonly use by collectors.
However, because its generally harder to achieve GEM MINT 10 status from Beckett, if you do, your cards will be worth more.
At this stage though, all of this is very hypothetical for a beginner collector.
GEM MINT 10 Base Set Cards go for hundreds of dollars on eBay, and if theyre 1st Edition or Shadowless, were talking thousands sometimes tens of thousands!
For example a 1st Edition Base Set GEM MINT 10 Charizard can expect to sell for upwards of $50,000. Maybe even in the $60k-70k range.
