Rare Charizard card to fetch for over R860K at auction – Why some Pokémon cards are worth thousands

Gotta catch ’em all…is what you might say when you find out that serious money can take the form of Pokémon cards. What used to be a hobby and trades that didn’t involve money on playgrounds, Pokémon has turned into six-figure auction sales today. This comes as a rare first-edition Pokémon card, which many described as a “holy grail”, could fetch £40,000 when it goes for auction.

For the South Africans who don’t feel like googling a currency converter, that is a staggering R862,118. Hansons Auctioneers, based in Etwall in Derbyshire, said the shadowless base set Charizard card was the centrepiece of its auction. The auction is set to be on Friday to mark the 30th anniversary of the beloved series.

Pokémon cards have evolved into serious collector assets. But what actually makes some of these small cardboard rectangles worth thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, of rands? It boils down to scarcity, condition, hype, and, since it’s a much-loved franchise, nostalgia.

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The Charizard card that is set to fetch for up to the price of a decent-sized property is a shadowless base set. So what does this mean? The original English Base Set of the Pokémon Trading Card Game was printed in 1999 by Wizards of the Coast. Collectors often distinguish between “shadowless” and “unlimited” cards.

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