A complete set of first-edition Pokemon cards from 1999 has sold for $107,010 at auction.



The collection, comprising of 103 cards, was sold in mint condition and included a rare Charizard card, which alone could sell for up to $20,000, according to card authenticators. A single near perfect copy of the card is currently being sold on eBay, with bidding standing at $2,174 less than a day before the auction closes.

The set that was sold was a collection of first-edition cards printed in English.

Auction house Goldin Auctions said in the listing on its website that each card was graded at GEM-MT 10 — or "Gem Mint" — condition by authentication body Professional Sports Authenticator (PSA), meaning the set was "virtually perfect."

Bidding started at $25,000, with the set receiving 12 bids before the auction closed on Saturday.

First-edition Pokemon cards can be identified by a small black circular stamp to the bottom left of the Pokemon image, denoting they were part of the original release in 1999.

Goldin said some experts believed Pokemon cards would become as important to modern collecting as some highly coveted sports cards, like the 1986/87 Fleer basketball set.

"For many Millennials, the original 1999 Pokemon video (and) card games remain a staple of their childhood, providing what seems like a lost art in a nostalgic feeling," the listing said.

"For a generation such as the Millennials it signals the end of the tangible toy age and the beginning of the virtual age, as no other item became as popular or as connective as Pokemon in years following."

The auction house noted a similar set of Pokemon cards was sold in its December 2017 holiday sale for just under $100,000, adding that demand for complete first-edition sets in high-grade condition was continuing to grow.

Source: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news...t-auction/ar-AAFJE7U

Try as I might, I just can't regard gaming cards as being the same as non-sport titles. They might fall under the big umbrella of non-sport products in general, but I really put them in their own class because they can be utility cards with a function and they can be strictly collectible decks and the tournament play adds a level of non-physical sportsmanship. I just think there are too many fundamental differences between gaming cards and Game of Thrones cards.

WOW! Thanks for posting this -- very interesting. . .

It is a bummer to me that we are seeing articles like this with gaming cards selling for tens of thousands of dollars and sports cards selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars, but entertainment cards don't seem to get the same love -- hopefully it is coming!

Is there any mass produced single non-sport card from the last 20 years that is worth over $10,000?

quote:

Originally posted by webjon:
Is there any mass produced single non-sport card from the last 20 years that is worth over $10,000?

By saying mass produced, you'd have to eliminate all the super rare autographs, 1/1's, Scarce etc., and sketches, which might get above $5,000 and then could get graded. By saying the last 20 years, you'd have to eliminate all vintage cards, which could possibly yield something over $10,000 if it were in a pristine graded card version.

So no, can't really think of anything even close with those specifics in non-sport.

There is an ad in NSU that says a Magic The Gathering Summer Edition Serendib Efreet BGS 10 sold for $50,000. It's gaming, it's graded, don't know the year and I have no idea what the production was, but BGS likes it enough to put it next to the lesser graded sports cards.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Raven,

Anyone have the Black Lotus, card # 1 on the list below ?


https://gemr.com/blog/10-rares...the-gathering-cards/

The Black Lotus was only available in Magic's earliest editions, the Alpha, the Beta and a couple of others prior to and in 1993, which puts it out of the 20 year window. It was a Rare card, but I know over a thousand got made. Because the Magic printings were so large and worldwide, I guess that wasn't much.

The initial reason it was valuable was because it was a super powerful card and if you had it in your deck, you were almost impossible to defeat. That's why it got banned and was not subject to continuous reprinting as were most of the other cards. It was too big a card, so players couldn't use it and it was thrown out of competitive play.

I think its still the most expensive Magic card that came from a deck construction. I never saw one or knew of anyone who had one, even though I was dabbling with Magic in 1993. Figures.

Harrison Ford autograph from Star Wars 30th sold for over $10,000 back when it was released but the card has come down in value since then as there are more Fords available now. Still was cool there was a thread on this board at one time but probably long gone at this point.

quote:

Originally posted by Batman:
Harrison Ford autograph from Star Wars 30th sold for over $10,000 back when it was released but the card has come down in value since then as there are more Fords available now. Still was cool there was a thread on this board at one time but probably long gone at this point.

Harrison Ford was the only card I could think of that I thought might come close, but I can't come up with any $10,000 mass produced cards from the last 20 years either.

quote:

Originally posted by Raven:
Try as I might, I just can't regard gaming cards as being the same as non-sport titles. They might fall under the big umbrella of non-sport products in general, but I really put them in their own class because they can be utility cards with a function and they can be strictly collectible decks and the tournament play adds a level of non-physical sportsmanship. I just think there are too many fundamental differences between gaming cards and Game of Thrones cards.

Yes and no, IMHO. (Poet mode off.) Many of the sets have attractive artwork and come close to featured-artist regular sets. Some have information that makes them interesting to collect for reading's sake for some of us junkies who love good base sets even more than "hits." Of course others are mostly configured for gameplayers, but many mainstream sets (like a lot of the Marvel universe sets of the 1990s) have character strength/attack/defense stats and might even have inserts that tell you how to use the cards for simple gaming. More recently you have the same with Topps's Star Wars Galactic Files. Some bigger series like Top Trumps look like game cards but were marketed primarily to set-collectors.

You generally get images only on one side of the card, of course, but some mainstream sets that are essentially movie/TV screen shots on both sides, without text, can be boring to base-set junkies.

Except for collectors who focus on Hits, game series usually have the annoying (to pack openers) trait of rarity distributions (Common-Uncommon-Rare). But mainstream is moving that way too, with for instance most of the recent Upper Deck sets with "base" and "low insert" sets including Short Print and Super Short Print subsets of up to 50 cards each.

So yeah, they're a different animal, but there's a spectrum, and a lot of the same attraction of opening packs and filling sets appeals to a significant part of the collecting hobby. Because many of the sets had attractive artwork and text, I dabbled more in them in the days when they were overprinted for wide retail sales, and then boxes and cases were dumped a year or two later after the gamers were sated. Once cardmakers started reducing print runs to match early-sales numbers from the previous expansion, this became tougher. I did chase after early Pokemon cards early but now get my jollies as a GO trainer with 54M XP. (My Pokedex includes mons renamed after some people on this forum ...)

Way back in 1995-96, I chased after James Bond, GOLDENEYE gaming card set. Not because I wanted to play it, but because I was a Bond fan and I wanted to collect any Bond related cards that came out.

Going from memory, I think there were around 210 cards in the set, which consisted of common, scarce, and "rare" cards, and 10 glossy chase cards. Back in 1995, I must have opened 6 to 8 boxes of packs, at $ 100 per box, but I did manage to put together a set. It was quite expensive for me.

I distinctly remember that they gave you a checklist of all of the cards in the set. However, there was an error on the list. 1 card which they listed did not exist, and instead there were 2 cards with the same title but with different photos, which accounted for the "missing" card.

Finally, just 2 years ago, I discovered a website with photos of all of the CCG cards in this set. I learned for the first time that there were foreign language versions of these Bond CCG cards, including an Italian version which had 3 cards that were NOT in the English version, and were only available through a wrapper sendaway offer, in Italy.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: David R,

Yes, similar thing, I started collecting Magic the Gathering because I thought the artwork was great. However subsequent editions reproduced the same artwork, on the same texted cards, so you were only getting the same card with a different date. And Magic had foreign language versions with the same artwork in a host of countries. I can't speak for now, but back in the early editions, CCGs were very much unregulated in the sense of production numbers and data and they were made in the millions. To maintain an active interest in CCGs, I really think you have to play the game and not get involved just because you think it ties into some other of your interests like comic characters and such.

On the plus side, in the mid 90s the artists on Magic were super friendly and published their addresses in gaming magazines like Wizard. I was able to mail away and get autographs from the artists on about 350 Magic cards, along with other personal correspondence they sent back. I sold all my regular Magic cards around 2000 for much less than spent, but those autograph cards aren't going anywhere and they look terrific in my binder. Strangely enough, because those were mostly graphic artists of the 90s, I don't know that any of them became known sketch artists in other non-sport products. I'd have to check the cards again to be sure. There was a problem with the copyright licensing and many of those artists stopped working for Wizards of the Coast around 95 - 96, so maybe they just left the industry.