A retired decorator from Woking, Surrey, could be sitting on a collection worth up to £270,000 after rediscovering 42 complete Pokémon "master sets" he had stored in his attic for roughly 15 years.
The owner began collecting in the late 1990s, when his son swapped cards at school, and later expanded the haul by buying cards from a seller in Malaysia. He only realized the collection might be valuable after reading about a single Pokémon card selling for £6,000, prompting him to contact auction house Ewbank's.
'Easily the most valuable' the auction house has seen
James Spooner, Ewbank's head of trading cards, said the cards were in mint condition and that the owner had no idea what they were worth when he brought them in. He called it easily the most valuable collection the auction house has handled since it began holding dedicated trading-card sales five years ago. The lot is expected to go under the hammer this month, with pre-sale estimates putting its value at more than £250,000 and potentially as high as £270,000.
Part of a wider boom
The find adds to a string of eye-catching Pokémon card sales at Ewbank's in recent months, including a sealed Base Set booster box that sold for £10,400 including premium at an August auction that brought in more than £136,000 in total. The market for vintage, pristine-condition cards has climbed steadily as the hobby's original 1990s collectors — many of whom, like this one, packed their cards away as children — rediscover what their old collections are now worth.