“Bought because of his son” ... Pokémon cards kept in an attic for 15 years hit a ₩2.8 billion jackpot

[Financial News] A Pokémon card collection that a man living in Woking, Surrey, England, had kept in his attic for 15 years has attracted attention after selling at auction for £1.56 million (about ₩2.8 billion). The auction house said the total sale price was the highest ever for a trading card auction held in the UK.
According to Surrey-based auction house Ewbank’s on the 21st (local time), the total sale price was about six times the pre-auction estimate. Ewbank’s said the auction was the highest-grossing trading card auction in UK history, adding that it had yet to be confirmed whether it was a European record.

The lucky owner is reportedly a retired interior contractor. He began buying Pokémon cards in the late 1990s after his son showed an interest in them by trading cards at school, and bought complete sets on eBay from sellers including those in Malaysia.
The man, who said, “I thought they might be a good investment,” later kept the cards in a dedicated binder in the attic. About 15 years later, he read a local newspaper article about a Pokémon card selling for more than £6,000 and thought of the cards he had stored away. He said, “The saying about finding treasure in the attic became literally true in my case.”
The man brought a total of 42 sets to the auction house. Forty-one went under the hammer, while he kept one. James Spooner, head of the trading card department at Ewbank’s, said, “I couldn’t believe it,” when he first saw the condition of the cards.

The most expensive lot was the “Legendary Collection Complete Master Set,” which included a “Charizard” card; it sold for £100,000, more than five times its estimate. One set the man bought for about £300 sold for £75,000, more than 250 times what he paid.
Spooner said written bids submitted in advance alone had reached £825,000 on the day before the auction, adding, “We thought it might reach as much as £270,000, but then the advance bids started coming in.”
Andrew Ewbank, head of the auction house, described the auction as “the highest total our auction house has ever achieved in a single auction.” The previous record was £1 million, set at the 2007 auction of the Robertson Collection.

In February this year, the “Pikachu Illustrator” card owned by American YouTuber Logan Paul sold at Goldin Auctions for $16.5 million (about ₩21.8 billion), setting the highest auction price ever for a trading card, a record recognized by Guinness World Records. Pikachu Illustrator is a rare card, with only several dozen believed to remain.
Paul, who bought the card in 2021 for $5.275 million (about ₩7 billion), managed to resell it for nearly three times as much. The winning bidder for Paul’s card was reportedly venture capitalist A.J. Scaramucci.
[email protected] Kim Hee-seon Reporter