This is $4 million worth of Pokémon cards.
The cards are making an incredible comeback since their heyday in 1999.
Today, it's one of the largest media properties of all time.
YouTuber Logan Paul bought one Pokémon card for $150,000.
Rapper Logic bought one for a cool $220,000.
But on December 12th, 2020, this card broke the Pokémon collectible record
for selling over $350,000.
That record was broken just a few hours later when this card sold for
$369,000. Each of the high value cards were the same.
The 1st Edition holographic Charizard, the rarest Pokémon card in the 1999
Base Set. But why are these cards reaching such insane values?
And why now? Dust off your Pokémon binders.
This is Suddenly Obsessed.
The concept of Pokémon was created in Japan in 1995.
A year later, the first Pokémon video game debuted two versions in Japan:
Red and Green. In 1997, the anime series was launched in Japan.
It gained worldwide attention because some of the scenes caused some
viewers to have seizures.
The animators quickly fixed this issue.
And in 1998, the U.S.
version of the anime was released.
That same month, Pokémon: Blue and Red were released for Game Boy.
Nintendo spent $20 million on publicity before it ever introduced Pokémon
in the United States, four times its usual budget for new products at the
time. Needless to say, Pikachu and the crew exploded in popularity.
The Blue and Red games raked in $70 million in the first 7 months alone,
but there were still billions of dollars to be made by the popular
franchise. In 1999, the Pokémon Trading Card Game was introduced in the
United States. Kids were immediately drawn to them and a new craze was
born. Garry Haase, known in the Pokéverse as the Pokémon King, spotted the
trend right away and made it his mission to collect the rarest 1st Edition
Pokémon cards. He's the one that sold his card to Logan Paul for $150,000.
I was living in Southern California.
I traveled to Nevada, Utah, Arizona, just trying to follow leads where I
could get ahold of Pokémon packs.
And I knew that because of the popularity of Pokémon that this was going to
be a great collectible item.
There are three kinds of prints from the 1999 Base Set, each with vastly
different values.
The most valuable are called 1st Edition, which can be spotted with a
little stamp on the left side of the card below the Pokémon that simply
says 1st Edition. These are the most sought after because they're the
rarest. Next up are cards known as Shadowless, which can be spotted by
shadows around the border of the Pokémon creature.
These were printed shortly after the 1st Edition cards were released and
are nearly identical in look, except for that fancy stamp, of course.
The last batch is known as the unlimited set, which were the most abundant
cards in circulation. But that doesn't mean some of them aren't valuable.
The rise in value since their debut is stunning.
Let's take the rarest card in the Base Set, the holographic Charizard, to
use as an example of what the market for this card looks like.
I was able to dig up an old Beckett Pokémon magazine from July 2000 that
listed the prices of a 1st Edition and unlimited Charizard.
For a 1st Edition Charizard, prices range from $275 to $375.
An unlimited Charizard card ranged from $35 to $50.
Today, it's not uncommon for a 1st Edition Charizard to fetch anywhere from
$100,000 to $300,000. An unlimited Charizard card sold for between $15,000
to $30,000 in recent auctions.
Of course, the card's condition is nearly as important as its rarity.
There are two main card grading companies and their scores carry a lot of
weight. Professional Sports Authenticator, better known as PSA, and
Beckett Grading Services, known as BGS.
A card is given a score from 1 to 10 based on its condition, 10 being the
highest and 1, the lowest.
Most of these rare cards mentioned are in perfect mint condition and are
known to card collectors as either PSA 10's or BGS Pristine 10's.
Gary says 1st Edition Charizard cards rated at a 10 are rare, and that's
even an understatement. There's 120 PSA 10's graded.
That's the population report.
About 40 of them I had in my hand graded through PSA and then
over the last 20 years sold them.
Logan Paul got his card.
I was almost in tears giving that card up.
You know, I really felt a piece of me was going, but I honestly believed
that it was better for Pokémon.
Better for the hobby.
Gary has 20 rare Charizards left in his possession and their value is
shocking. In total at today's valuation, these
approximately 20 cards are worth about $4 million.
Conservatively.
These 20 cards. And the market continues to climb for all of those cards,
but only two of them are 1st Edition Charizard cards with a rating of BGS
Pristine 10. Gary is the only person in the world to own two of those rare
cards, and he's looking to add another to his collection.
A third BGS 10 recently showed up in the pop report from Beckett.
And Gary is willing to go to extreme lengths to get it.
Right now, I would pay $750,000 for that third card.
The combination of social media, live streaming and the pandemic are
creating a perfect storm for nostalgia.
And Pokemon cards are a perfect fit for the current era.
The nostalgia factor plays in and then we're also wanting to get things in
better quality. And then with all the celebrities coming out and just
saying, like, "Hey, I'm buying a bunch of Charizards and Base Set stuff."
And it just completely, even more magnified it.
Livestream guys like PokéRev that crack insane boxes on Twitch all the
time. And I think things like that, you have it on in the background
enough, it just keeps getting more and more traction.
Oh, we got a Mewtwo. Are you kidding me right now?
The Pokégame luck is absolutely insane.
Beckett is grading over 400 Pokémon cards per day, by far the most popular
trading card that gets graded.
And since demand is sky high, people are digging into their old collections
and sending them in to get graded.
I think I've had a premium day order come in where there was at least 100
cards. That's, like, $12,000 or a little over it and you're just like, oh
my gosh, just to grade cards.
It's pretty insane when things like that happen.
But generally there those are the kind of orders that are rocking multiple
Charizards, gold stars.
Like, high end Pokémon stuff.
Which got me thinking: I collected these Pokémon cards when I was younger.
I have every unlimited card from the 1999 Base Set.
I kept my rarest cards in a protected sleeve within a Pokémon binder.
I wanted to see what their value was worth.
So I sent in the Holy Trinity of the set: My holographic Charizard,
holographic Blastoise and holographic Venusaur to get graded by Beckett.
They're not perfect, but they're in good condition for being over 20 years
old. The first thing that we do is we check for whether or not it's even
real. There's so many counterfeits out there today.
The next thing that we do is we check for alterations whether the card has
been recolored. A lot of times there are chipped corners that show the
white stock underneath.
And so people will color those in.
There's things called power erasing where they're erasing vintage borders.
To make a card look more centered on one way or the other.
People trim down corners to make them look more sharp.
And then once all that passes all that criteria, then we actually give it a
number grade. After the examination of my cards by Dave, the box came back
to my house and the results were in.
Alright. So the day is finally here.
I got my three cards back from Beckett and I'm about to unbox it right
now, see what grades I got.
So here we go. First grade, no idea which one it's going to be, but let's
find out. OK, so I got an 8.5 for my Charizard.
Not bad, considering I was thinking I was going to get like around a 7.5,
maybe an 8 if I was lucky.
So 8.5. Hey, I'll take it.
This is, you know, 21 years in a binder with just a regular sleeve.
I feel like that's a pretty good score.
Second one up: We got a 9 for Venusaur.
Wow, that's pretty good.
I was not expecting a 9 from my cards.
Hey, I'll take a 9 any day.
This is great. I love that.
OK, so last but not least, we got Blastoise.
And a Blastoise was a 9.
Wow. How about that?
Again, I wasn't expecting a 10.
I wasn't expecting really a 9.5 either.
So a 9 here is great.
So the fact that I got two of them is really surprising.
I'm pretty pumped about this.
Let's talk to Dave, see why these scores are why they are.
The surfaces on your particular cards were very well.
They didn't have any damage on them.
And that's hard to come by with Pokémon cards.
The centering on all of them, except for the Charizards, were 9's.
They were all slightly off left to right.
And then they all had corner wear on the back and edge wear on the back,
which is what kept them all in the 9 area.
The Blastoise it was, I think, one small imperfection on the surface, which
is why it got a 9.5 instead of a 10.
But man, you had some really nice cards.
I appreciate that. I mean, to be honest with you, I was expecting 8's.
I was super pumped about it.
And this is something I'll probably just cherish for the rest of my life.
And it'll definitely be like a great memory to look back on.
Definitely happy to have you guys be a part of that process.
Oh, man, we were honored. Thank you for choosing us to grade your cards.
The Pokémon industry has generated nearly $100 billion and is considered by
many to be the most successful franchise of all time.
That includes Star Wars, Harry Potter and Hello Kitty.
So if you're sitting on some old Pokémon cards, even if it's just the
unlimited 1999 Base Set and they're in good condition, you may want to
hold on to them. If Pokémon continues making cards, producing cards for
all the kids for the next 20 years, we could be looking at over $1 million
a card.