On February 16, 2026, the Pikachu Illustrator card sold for $16,492,000 at Goldin Auctions, shattering every previous record for the most expensive trading card ever sold. The seller was Logan Paul, who had purchased the card privately in 2021 for $5.275 million, meaning he walked away with roughly a 3x return on what was already the most famous Pokémon card in existence. The buyer, A.J. Scaramucci — a venture capitalist and son of former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci — placed the winning bid after 41 days of competitive bidding.
The sale didn’t just break the previous trading card record of $12.932 million, set by a 2007-08 Upper Deck Exquisite Collection Dual Logoman Autographs Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant card in August 2025. It obliterated it by more than $3.5 million. The Pikachu Illustrator has long been called the “Holy Grail” of Pokémon card collecting, but this sale cemented it as the most valuable trading card of any kind, across any hobby, ever documented. This article breaks down what makes this particular card so impossibly rare, how its journey from a Japanese magazine contest prize to a $16.5 million auction lot unfolded, and what this sale signals for collectors trying to understand the market going forward.
Table of Contents
- What Makes the Pikachu Illustrator Card Worth $16.5 Million?
- The Auction That Broke Every Trading Card Record
- Logan Paul’s Role in Elevating the Card’s Profile
- What Should Collectors Take Away From This Sale?
- The Risks of Treating Trading Cards as Investments
- Who Is A.J. Scaramucci, and Why Did He Buy It?
- What This Sale Means for the Future of Pokémon Collecting
- Conclusion
- Frequently Asked Questions
What Makes the Pikachu Illustrator Card Worth $16.5 Million?
The short answer is scarcity at a level that barely exists in the trading card world. The Pikachu Illustrator was never sold in stores. It was awarded as a prize in illustration contests organized by CoroCoro Comic magazine in Japan between 1997 and 1998. Only 39 copies were ever distributed. Of those, only 24 have surfaced and been graded by PSA (Professional Sports Authenticator), the industry’s most trusted authentication service. The rest are either lost, destroyed, or sitting in collections that have never been submitted for grading.
What pushed this particular copy into a category of its own is its condition. logan Paul’s card is the only Pikachu Illustrator in existence graded PSA GEM MT 10 — a perfect score. In PSA’s grading population reports, it sits as a “Pop 1,” meaning there is literally one card at that grade level. For comparison, even a PSA 9 Pikachu Illustrator has sold for over $900,000 in past auctions. The jump from a 9 to a perfect 10 isn’t just one grade point — it represents the difference between an extraordinarily rare card and a singular object. No other copy has achieved that distinction, and given the age and fragility of 28-year-old promotional cards, it’s entirely possible none ever will.
The Auction That Broke Every Trading Card Record
Goldin auctions, the house that handled the sale, has become the dominant platform for high-end trading card transactions over the past several years. The auction opened in early January 2026, and bidding stretched across 41 days before the hammer finally fell on February 16. That extended timeline isn’t unusual for Goldin’s marquee lots — their format allows for bid extensions when activity continues near the deadline, which tends to push final prices significantly higher than early estimates. The $16.49 million result surpassed the previous all-time trading card record by a wide margin.
That record had been held since August 2025 by a 2007-08 Upper Deck Exquisite Collection Dual Logoman Autographs card featuring both Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant, which sold for $12.932 million. However, it’s worth noting that record-setting prices in this market don’t always reflect broader trends. Single-card records are almost always driven by unique circumstances — a perfect grade, a one-of-one designation, or intense demand from a small pool of ultra-high-net-worth buyers. If you’re a collector watching this sale and wondering whether your own collection has similarly appreciated, the honest answer is probably not at this rate. Cards outside the absolute top tier tend to follow more modest trajectories, and the gap between a record-setting trophy card and even a very valuable one is enormous.
Logan Paul’s Role in Elevating the Card’s Profile
Logan Paul purchased the Pikachu Illustrator in a private sale in 2021 for $5.275 million, which at the time set a Guinness World Record for the most expensive Pokémon card ever sold. That purchase was itself a cultural event. Paul, already one of the most visible figures on the internet, didn’t just buy the card and vault it. He turned it into content, spectacle, and eventually a genuine pop-culture artifact.
The most memorable moment came when Paul wore the card around his neck in a custom diamond chain necklace at WWE WrestleMania 38. The image of a $5 million Pokémon card dangling from a wrestler’s neck during a pay-per-view event introduced the Pikachu Illustrator to millions of people who had never thought about card collecting. Whether that kind of showmanship helps or hurts the hobby’s credibility is debatable among serious collectors, but the market effect is harder to argue with. Paul’s ownership period saw the card’s value roughly triple. He bought it for $5.275 million and sold it for $16.49 million — a return that outperformed virtually every traditional asset class over the same timeframe.
What Should Collectors Take Away From This Sale?
For collectors evaluating their own holdings or considering new purchases, this sale reinforces a pattern that has been consistent across trading cards, art, and other collectible markets: the very top of the market operates by different rules than everything below it. A PSA 10 Pop 1 of the rarest Pokémon card ever produced is not comparable to a PSA 10 of a card with thousands of copies in existence. The Pikachu Illustrator’s price reflects its absolute singularity, not a general pricing benchmark. That said, there are practical takeaways.
Provenance and grading matter enormously at every price level, not just the top. A raw, ungraded Pikachu Illustrator — if one were to surface — would sell for a fraction of what a PSA 10 commands, even though the underlying card is identical. The tradeoff for collectors is the cost and risk of grading itself. Submitting a card to PSA means accepting the possibility that it comes back at a lower grade than hoped, which can actually decrease its perceived value relative to remaining ungraded. For high-value cards, the decision to grade is essentially a bet on condition, and it’s not always the right one.
The Risks of Treating Trading Cards as Investments
The $16.5 million headline is exciting, but it can also be misleading if it encourages people to treat Pokémon cards primarily as financial instruments. The Pikachu Illustrator’s appreciation from $5.275 million to $16.49 million happened under conditions that are almost impossible to replicate: a one-of-one perfect grade, massive media exposure through a celebrity owner, and a buyer with deep pockets and personal motivation. Most cards, even genuinely rare ones, don’t have those tailwinds. The trading card market is also illiquid compared to stocks or real estate.
Selling a $16 million card requires finding a buyer willing and able to spend $16 million on a card. That pool of potential buyers is vanishingly small. At lower price points, liquidity improves, but cards can still sit unsold for months or years if pricing expectations don’t align with demand. Collectors who buy what they love and treat any appreciation as a bonus tend to fare better psychologically — and often financially — than those who chase returns based on record-breaking headlines.
Who Is A.J. Scaramucci, and Why Did He Buy It?
A.J. Scaramucci, the buyer, is a venture capitalist and the son of Anthony Scaramucci, the financier who briefly served as White House Communications Director in 2017.
While the younger Scaramucci has kept a lower public profile than his father, the purchase signals the continued interest of finance-world figures in high-end collectibles as alternative assets. The elder Scaramucci’s firm, SkyBridge Capital, has been active in cryptocurrency and alternative investments, and trading cards occupy a similar space in the portfolios of wealthy individuals looking to diversify beyond traditional markets.
What This Sale Means for the Future of Pokémon Collecting
The Pikachu Illustrator sale will inevitably draw more attention — and more money — into the Pokémon card market. Each time a new record is set, it validates the asset class for a wider audience and pulls in buyers who might previously have dismissed trading cards as children’s novelty items. The trajectory from $5.275 million in 2021 to $16.49 million in 2026 suggests that the ceiling for top-tier Pokémon cards hasn’t been found yet.
But the more interesting question is what happens one tier below the summit. If the Pikachu Illustrator is the Mona Lisa of Pokémon cards, there are still dozens of cards that function as the Vermeers and Rembrandts — extraordinarily rare, historically significant, and valued in the six- and seven-figure range. Whether this sale lifts those prices proportionally, or whether the market concentrates even more heavily at the absolute top, will tell us more about the health of the hobby than any single headline number.
Conclusion
The sale of Logan Paul’s PSA 10 Pikachu Illustrator for $16,492,000 at Goldin Auctions on February 16, 2026, is the kind of event that redefines a market. It broke the Guinness World Record for the most expensive trading card ever sold, surpassing the $12.932 million Jordan-Kobe Logoman by a comfortable margin. It validated years of growing institutional and celebrity interest in Pokémon cards as serious collectibles. And it delivered a roughly 3x return to a seller who, whatever else you think of him, understood the power of visibility in driving value.
For collectors, the takeaway isn’t that every card is a lottery ticket. It’s that scarcity, condition, and cultural relevance remain the three pillars of value in this market. The Pikachu Illustrator sits at the intersection of all three in a way that no other card currently does. Whether you’re holding a modest collection or chasing your own grail card, the fundamentals haven’t changed — this sale just illustrated them at a scale that the hobby has never seen before.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many Pikachu Illustrator cards exist?
Only 39 copies were ever awarded through CoroCoro Comic magazine illustration contests in 1997–1998. Of those, 24 have been graded by PSA. The rest are unaccounted for — potentially lost, damaged, or held privately without being submitted for grading.
Why is the PSA 10 Pikachu Illustrator so much more valuable than lower grades?
Logan Paul’s copy is the only Pikachu Illustrator ever graded PSA GEM MT 10, making it a “Pop 1” — the sole example at that grade level. In the grading world, the jump from PSA 9 to PSA 10 on an extremely rare card can multiply value by a factor of ten or more because it represents perfection in a pool where perfection may never appear again.
Who bought the Pikachu Illustrator card?
The buyer was A.J. Scaramucci, a venture capitalist and the son of Anthony Scaramucci, a financier and former White House Communications Director.
What was the previous record for the most expensive trading card?
The previous record was $12.932 million, paid in August 2025 for a 2007-08 Upper Deck Exquisite Collection Dual Logoman Autographs card featuring Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant.
How long was the Goldin Auctions bidding period?
Bidding lasted 41 days before the final hammer fell on February 16, 2026.
How much did Logan Paul originally pay for the card?
Paul purchased the card in a private sale in 2021 for $5.275 million, which set a Guinness World Record at the time. He sold it for $16.49 million, roughly tripling his investment over five years.
