A trading card the size of a playing card just sold for more than most houses. "Raincoat Pikachu," a 2015 Japanese promotional Pokémon card showing the character in a red raincoat holding an umbrella, sold for $8.4 million — buyer's premium included — at a Fanatics Collect auction that closed September 28, after drawing 64 bids. It is now the second-most expensive Pokémon card ever sold.
The card, graded a flawless PSA 10, is one of only 100 ever printed. It originated as the winning entry in a global fan-art contest run through the Nintendo 3DS game Pokémon Art Academy, where artist Y. Fujishima's illustration of a rain-coated Pikachu beat out thousands of submissions. Unlike most sought-after Pokémon cards, it was never sold in packs — it exists only because of that contest, which is part of what has driven its price into the stratosphere.
The jump is dramatic even by the standards of a hobby prone to sudden swings. A PSA 10 copy of the same card sold for $12,600 in July 2024 and $19,200 in June 2025, according to sales tracked by Kotaku — meaning this week's sale values the card at roughly 440 times what it fetched a little over a year ago.
It still falls well short of the all-time record: "Pikachu Illustrator," a different ultra-rare promo once owned by a YouTube star, sold for $16.4 million in February. But the Raincoat Pikachu result adds to a run of eye-popping trading-card sales this year that have turned a corner of the collectibles market once dominated by hobbyists into one where cards now trade more like fine art or classic cars.
Market watchers attribute the surge to a mix of nostalgia-driven millennial buyers with new wealth, limited supply of graded "gem mint" copies, and auction houses increasingly willing to market cardboard alongside paintings and watches. Whether $8.4 million proves to be a peak or simply another data point on the way up will likely depend on how the next few marquee Pokémon auctions perform.