Logan Paul just turned a $5.275 million Pokemon card into $16.492 million, pocketing roughly $11.2 million in gross profit and proving that niche collectibles can deliver returns that make the stock market look sleepy. His 1998 Pikachu Illustrator, graded PSA 10 and the only copy at that grade in existence, sold at Goldin Auctions on February 16, 2026, setting a Guinness World Record for the most expensive trading card ever sold at auction. That works out to approximately a 212% return over roughly four and a half years, a figure that dwarfs the S&P 500 and even high-flying tech stocks over the same period.
The sale is more than a headline about a YouTuber getting rich. It lands at a moment when Pokemon cards as an asset class are up 3,261% over the past 20 years, with one-year returns of around 46% outpacing Nvidia stock at 35% and the S&P 500 at roughly 17% year-to-date. But before you liquidate your index funds, there are serious caveats to consider. This article breaks down the auction itself, what drove the price, how niche collectibles compare to traditional investments, the risks that rarely make the headlines, and what collectors should actually take away from all of this.
Table of Contents
- How Did Logan Paul Turn a Pokemon Card Into a 212% Return?
- Why the Pikachu Illustrator Commands Record Prices
- Pokemon Cards vs. Traditional Investments: What the Numbers Actually Show
- Should You Allocate Part of Your Portfolio to Collectibles?
- The Risks That the Headlines Leave Out
- What the Scaramucci Purchase Tells Us About the Buyer Pool
- Where Niche Collectibles Go From Here
- Conclusion
- Frequently Asked Questions
How Did Logan Paul Turn a Pokemon Card Into a 212% Return?
The card at the center of this story is a 1998 pikachu Illustrator, one of approximately 39 copies ever produced. They were awarded to winners of a CoroCoro Comic illustration contest in Japan, making them rare by any standard. But Paul’s copy carries a PSA 10 Gem Mint grade, and it is the only one in the world at that level. He acquired it in July 2021 through a combination deal: a PSA 9 Pikachu Illustrator valued at $1.275 million plus $4 million in cash, totaling roughly $5.275 million. At the Goldin Auctions sale, bidding started modestly by the card’s standards, reaching $6.882 million before a rush of last-minute bids during an extended bidding period pushed the final tally to $16.492 million across 97 total bids.
The buyer was AJ Scaramucci, founder and managing partner of Solari Capital and son of Anthony Scaramucci, who paid a $13.3 million hammer price plus a 24% buyer’s premium. In a theatrical touch that surprised no one familiar with Paul’s brand, the card was handed over on a $75,000 diamond-encrusted necklace, the same chain Paul had worn to WWE events. The math is straightforward: buy at $5.275 million, sell at $16.492 million, gross profit of approximately $11.2 million. That is a roughly 212% return, not accounting for insurance, storage, or the opportunity cost of having millions locked in a single trading card for more than four years. Still, as pure return on investment, it is the kind of number that gets attention far beyond the collecting world.
Why the Pikachu Illustrator Commands Record Prices
Scarcity is the engine behind the Pikachu Illustrator’s price. With only around 39 copies ever made, the card was already one of the rarest Pokemon items in existence before grading entered the picture. psa grading introduces a second layer of scarcity. While a handful of copies exist at PSA 7, 8, or 9, the PSA 10 designation means the card is essentially flawless, with perfect centering, no surface wear, and sharp corners. Only one copy has ever achieved that grade, which transforms an already rare card into a singular object. However, scarcity alone does not create a $16.5 million price tag. If you have a one-of-one card from a set nobody cares about, it is still worth very little.
What makes the Illustrator special is the intersection of extreme rarity, the cultural weight of the Pokemon franchise, and the emotional resonance of the Pikachu character specifically. Pokemon is the highest-grossing media franchise in history, and Pikachu is its most recognizable symbol. The Illustrator sits at the origin point of the entire hobby’s collectible history, which gives it a mythological quality that few other cards in any trading card game can match. It is worth noting that this dynamic does not scale down neatly. A PSA 10 base set Charizard is a desirable card, but there are thousands of them. The lesson from the Illustrator is not that any rare Pokemon card is an investment vehicle. It is that truly singular items at the apex of a massive cultural franchise can behave more like fine art or trophy real estate than like typical collectibles. If your card has even a few hundred copies at high grades, you are operating in a fundamentally different market.
Pokemon Cards vs. Traditional Investments: What the Numbers Actually Show
The broader market data around this sale is striking. Pokemon cards are up approximately 3,261% over the past 20 years, a number that sounds almost absurd until you remember that the hobby was largely dormant for a decade before the pandemic-era boom revived it. More recently, one-year returns on Pokemon cards have run around 46%, outpacing Nvidia stock at roughly 35% and the S&P 500 at approximately 17% year-to-date at the time of the sale. In the three months leading up to the auction, Pokemon card values climbed about 25%. These figures are real, but they require context. Pokemon card indices tend to be weighted toward high-end, graded cards in popular sets. The average collector sitting on a shoebox of ungraded cards from 2002 is not experiencing 46% annual returns.
Market-wide statistics reflect the performance of the most liquid, most desirable portion of the market, which is a relatively small slice of the total cards in circulation. It is similar to how the S&P 500’s returns are driven disproportionately by a handful of mega-cap stocks. logan Paul himself framed the sale as vindication, pushing back against what he called “armchair quarterbacks yelling from the sidelines” who had criticized the original purchase. His broader point, that passion-driven alternative investments deserve consideration, is not unreasonable. But he was also careful to note that he is not urging people to abandon their 401(k) plans. The returns on his Illustrator were spectacular. They were also the returns on a singular, irreplaceable object purchased by someone with the resources to absorb a total loss.
Should You Allocate Part of Your Portfolio to Collectibles?
The question this sale inevitably raises is whether ordinary collectors and investors should treat Pokemon cards as a legitimate asset class. A 2025 Slab Capital report offers a measured answer: allocate no more than 5 to 10% of a portfolio to alternative collectible assets. That recommendation acknowledges the potential for outsized returns while recognizing the substantial risks, including illiquidity, price volatility, storage and insurance costs, and the absence of the regulatory frameworks that govern securities markets. The tradeoff is clear. Traditional investments like index funds offer diversification, liquidity, dividend income, and decades of historical performance data. You can sell shares of an S&P 500 fund in seconds at a transparent market price.
Selling a high-value Pokemon card requires finding the right buyer at the right time, often through an auction house that takes a significant cut. Goldin Auctions charges a 24% buyer’s premium, and sellers typically pay their own commission on top of that. These friction costs eat into returns in a way that has no parallel in public equity markets. For most collectors, the practical advice is to collect what you genuinely enjoy and treat any appreciation as a bonus rather than an expected return. If you happen to own cards that have appreciated significantly, it makes sense to understand their market value and protect them with proper grading and storage. But building a collecting strategy around the expectation of 212% returns is a recipe for disappointment, because the conditions that produced that result, a unique card, a unique moment, and a buyer with deep pockets, are not replicable on demand.
The Risks That the Headlines Leave Out
Logan Paul’s Pokemon card story is the one that makes the news. His NFT investments are not. According to reports, Paul lost approximately $634,845 on NFT investments over five years, a reminder that niche collectibles and digital assets carry real downside risk alongside the possibility of exceptional gains. The same person who turned $5.275 million into $16.5 million on one card lost more than half a million dollars on another category of alternative investment. This is not an anomaly. It is the normal distribution of outcomes in speculative markets. For every Pikachu Illustrator that triples in value, there are countless cards, memorabilia items, and digital assets that decline or become illiquid.
The Pokemon card market itself experienced a significant correction in 2022 and 2023 after the pandemic-era spike, with many mid-tier cards losing 40 to 60% of their peak values. Collectors who bought at the top of that cycle and needed to sell during the correction took real losses. The other risk that rarely gets discussed is concentration. Paul had millions of dollars tied up in a single physical object for over four years. If that card had been damaged, lost, or stolen, the loss would have been catastrophic and unrecoverable. There is no FDIC insurance for trading cards. There is no options market to hedge your position. You are holding a piece of cardboard, and its value depends entirely on the continued willingness of wealthy buyers to pay extraordinary prices for it.
What the Scaramucci Purchase Tells Us About the Buyer Pool
The identity of the buyer matters. AJ Scaramucci is not a lifelong Pokemon collector who saved up for years to acquire his grail card. He is the founder and managing partner of a capital management firm, the son of a prominent financier, and someone for whom $16.5 million represents a meaningful but not life-altering sum. This is the buyer profile that drives trophy collectible prices: individuals with significant liquid wealth who view ultra-rare items as both personal passion pieces and alternative stores of value.
This dynamic has implications for the broader market. The very top end of the Pokemon card market is increasingly driven by a small number of wealthy buyers competing for a tiny pool of singular items. That competition can produce eye-popping prices, but it does not necessarily reflect the health or trajectory of the market for cards that most collectors actually own. The forces that push a one-of-one Illustrator to $16.5 million are largely disconnected from the forces that determine whether your PSA 9 Gold Star Rayquaza goes up or down 10% in a given year.
Where Niche Collectibles Go From Here
The Pikachu Illustrator sale will likely accelerate a trend that has been building for years: the financialization of high-end collectibles. More auction houses, more grading submissions, more data platforms tracking prices, and more investors treating cards as portfolio assets. Whether that is good for the hobby depends on your perspective. It brings liquidity and price discovery, but it also introduces speculative pressure and can distort the market for collectors who are primarily motivated by nostalgia and enjoyment rather than returns.
Looking ahead, the Pokemon franchise shows no signs of cultural decline, which provides a durable foundation for the collectibles market built around it. But durable does not mean immune to correction. The next downturn, whenever it comes, will test whether the 3,261% twenty-year gain represents a new permanent plateau or whether some of the recent appreciation was driven by speculative excess. For collectors, the smartest posture remains the same one it has always been: buy what you love, protect what you own, and treat any profit as a pleasant surprise rather than an entitlement.
Conclusion
Logan Paul’s 212% return on the Pikachu Illustrator is a genuine landmark in the collectibles world. A $5.275 million purchase became a $16.492 million sale, setting a Guinness World Record and demonstrating that singular items at the top of culturally significant franchises can deliver investment returns that rival or exceed traditional financial markets. The broader Pokemon card market, up over 3,261% in twenty years, provides a supportive backdrop for the argument that niche collectibles deserve a place in the conversation about alternative investments.
But the full picture includes Paul’s $634,845 in NFT losses, the illiquidity and concentration risk inherent in physical collectibles, and the reality that the conditions behind this particular sale are essentially unrepeatable. The 5 to 10% portfolio allocation recommended by financial analysts reflects a sensible middle ground: enough exposure to benefit from potential upside, not so much that a downturn becomes devastating. For collectors, the takeaway is to keep doing what brought you to the hobby in the first place. Collect with knowledge, protect your cards, and let the market take care of itself.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Pikachu Illustrator card?
It is a promotional card from 1998 given to winners of a CoroCoro Comic illustration contest in Japan. Approximately 39 copies were produced, making it one of the rarest Pokemon cards in existence. Logan Paul’s copy is the only one graded PSA 10, which contributed to its record-breaking auction price.
How much did Logan Paul’s Pikachu Illustrator sell for?
The card sold for $16,492,000 at Goldin Auctions on February 16, 2026. The buyer, AJ Scaramucci, paid a $13.3 million hammer price plus a 24% buyer’s premium. Paul had originally acquired the card for approximately $5.275 million in July 2021.
Are Pokemon cards a good investment?
Pokemon cards have returned approximately 3,261% over the past 20 years as a category, and recent one-year returns of around 46% have outpaced major stock indices. However, these figures reflect the performance of high-end graded cards, not the market as a whole. Financial advisors recommend limiting collectible investments to 5 to 10% of a portfolio due to risks including illiquidity, price volatility, and concentration.
Who bought Logan Paul’s Pikachu Illustrator?
AJ Scaramucci, founder and managing partner of Solari Capital and son of financier Anthony Scaramucci, purchased the card. The card was handed over at the auction event on a $75,000 diamond-encrusted necklace that Paul had previously worn to WWE events.
Did Logan Paul make money on all his collectible investments?
No. While the Pikachu Illustrator sale produced a roughly 212% return, Paul’s NFT investments reportedly lost approximately $634,845 over five years. This contrast illustrates the significant risk that accompanies niche collectible investing alongside the potential for outsized gains.
