Rare Book Monthly

Articles - April - 2022 Issue

A Pokemon Card Sells for Over $300,000. What Does This Mean?

A Pokemon Card Sells for Over $300,000. What Does This Mean?

A Pokemon Card Sells for Over $300,000. What Does This Mean?

Another spectacular price for a collectible card was achieved at Heritage Auctions last month. It wasn't another multi-million dollar sports card, the price being a “modest” $336,000. However, this was for a Pokemon card, which at least ought to provide some insight into today's collectors, along with some wonderment to the parents of Millennials and Gen Zers. They're the ones who threw this stuff out when their children-collectors moved out of the house.

 

I know some people are wondering what any of this has to do with book collecting. More about that in a moment. First, some details about the card. At $336,000, this was not a record price for a Pokemon card. One once actually sold for $900,000, but that was from a small group of promo Pikachu cards from Japan in Japanese. This appears to be the highest price for a card from a regular English set (though complete sets have sold for more).

 

This card came from the first edition base set of English trading cards and was in the highest condition rating possible – PSA 10. It was for a Charizard card. For those not thoroughly familiar with Pokemon characters, Charizard is Charmander all grown up. While Charmander is a cute, endearing little lizard-like creature, the grown-up Charizard is a fierce fighter and not one to get on the wrong side of. It is a 199.5 lb. fire-breathing dragon who can incinerate you with a single breath.

 

Now, what does any of this have to do with book collecting? A lot, actually. Book collecting has long encompassed more than what is implied by a narrow interpretation of the word “book.” It has included other bound paper items, such as booklets, pamphlets, magazines, catalogues and brochures, along with unbound paper items such as manuscripts, maps, newspapers, letters, prints and photographs. It has all been subsumed under the description “works on paper.”

 

In recent years, we have seen an enormous rate of growth in two particular types of works on paper, comic books and trading cards. Trading card collecting generally has been focused on baseball and other sports cards, but now we are seeing that expand. That brings us to this recent sale and the rapidly growing interest in Pokemon cards. Sports cards, and the once popular carte-de-visite, have been around for over a century. Pokemon cards are only slightly over two decades old. This is something new in more ways than one.

 

Elsewhere in this month's issue of Rare Book Monthly, we have written about the Honey & Wax book collecting prize for women collectors age 30 and under. What we discovered is that the elusive new book collector isn't fictional after all. They exist. It's just that their collecting focus is different. Whether it is other forms of paper or unusual topics, youth is charting its own course when it comes to collecting.

 

By and large, people like to collect things with which they were familiar when they were young. Everyone for the past five centuries has been familiar with books from their youth. For most of that time, books were the only source of information and entertainment from the outside world. However, radio and later television made baseball players household names. For more recent generations, cable television and the internet has done the same for other sources of entertainment, including Pokemon.

 

This makes the breakthrough prices on Pokemon cards all the more significant. Pokemon is a 1990s phenomenon. While I don't know for certain who is buying collectible Pokemon cards, it's hard to imagine they would have much appeal for people over the age of 35. Pokemon would not be a part of their youth. These are almost certainly the focus of new collectors.

 

This sale led us to search through the auction records to see how many books published from Pokemon times, the 1990s to the present, have sold for as much or more than this Pokemon card. I found only one. A single copy of the first edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, the first Harry Potter book, sold for $471,000 last year. That's it. The number of Pokemon Charmander cards sold for over $300,000 equals the total number of books first published after 1990 that have sold for that price. I know this is a small sample, but don't be surprised to see the trend continue as new collectors replace old ones.

 

Some older people will scoff at the significance, even the relevance of this sale. Older people do a lot of scoffing. Those in the book trade do need to take the interests of younger collectors seriously. We may wish younger people preferred Shakespeare to Pikachu, reading books to watching Tik Tok videos, but that is not our choice. We can try to influence, teach, share experiences, but ultimately, we don't get to decide for them. We retain the right to choose what we like, but we do not have the right to make those choices for others. As the Baby Boomers' musical and poetic voice warned, the times they are a-changin'.

Rare Book Monthly

  • Sotheby's
    Sell Your Fine Books & Manuscripts
    Sotheby’s: The Shem Tov Bible, 1312 | A Masterpiece from the Golden Age of Spain. Sold: 6,960,000 USD
    Sotheby’s: Ten Commandments Tablet, 300-800 CE | One of humanity's earliest and most enduring moral codes. Sold: 5,040,000 USD
    Sotheby’s: William Blake | Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Sold: 4,320,000 USD
    Sotheby’s: The Declaration of Independence | The Holt printing, the only copy in private hands. Sold: 3,360,000 USD
    Sotheby's
    Sell Your Fine Books & Manuscripts
    Sotheby’s: Thomas Taylor | The original cover art for Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Sold: 1,920,000 USD
    Sotheby’s: Machiavelli | Il Principe, a previously unrecorded copy of the book where modern political thought began. Sold: 576,000 GBP
    Sotheby’s: Leonardo da Vinci | Trattato della pittura, ca. 1639, a very fine pre-publication manuscript. Sold: 381,000 GBP
    Sotheby’s: Henri Matisse | Jazz, Paris 1947, the complete portfolio. Sold: 312,000 EUR
  • Gonnelli
    Auction 59
    Antique prints, paintings and maps
    May 20th 2025
    Gonnelli: Pietro Aquila, Psyche and Proserpina,1690. Starting price 140€
    Gonnelli: Jacques Gamelin, Memento homo quia pulvis es et in pulverem reverteris, 1779. Starting price 300€
    Gonnelli: Giorgio Ghisi, The final Judgement, 1680. Starting price 480€
    Gonnelli
    Auction 59
    Antique prints, paintings and maps
    May 20th 2025
    Gonnelli Goya y Lucientes Francisco, Los Proverbios.1877. Starting price 1000 €
    Gonnelli: Domenico Peruzzini, Long bearded old man, 1660. Starting price 2200€
    Gonnelli: Enea Vico, Leda and the Swan,1542. Starting price 140€
    Gonnelli
    Auction 59
    Antique prints, paintings and maps
    May 20th 2025
    Gonnelli: Andrea Del Sarto [school of], San Giovanni Battista, 1570. Starting price 25000€
    Gonnelli: Carlo Maratta, Virgin Mary and Jesus, 1660. Starting Price 1200€
    Gonnelli: Louis Brion de La Tour, Sphére de Copernic Sphere de Ptolemée / Le Systême de Ptolemée. Le Systême de Ticho-Brahe…, 1766. Starting price 180€
    Gonnelli
    Auction 59
    Antique prints, paintings and maps
    May 20th 2025
    Gonnelli: Marc’Antonio Dal Re, Ville di Delizia o Siano Palaggi Camparecci nello Stato di Milano Divise in Sei Tomi Con espressevi le Piante…, Tomo Primo, 1726. Starting price 7000€
    Gonnelli: Katsushika Hokusai, Bird on a branch, 1843. Starting price 100€
  • Swann, May 15: Lot 4: Helena Bochoráková-Dittrichová, Z Mého Detství Drevoryty, Prague: Obzina, 1929. First trade edition, signed by the artist. $4,000 to $6,000.
    Swann, May 15: Lot 10: Nancy Cunard, Negro Anthology, with a tipped-in A.L.S. to Karl Marx's niece, 1934. First edition. $3,000 to $5,000.
    Swann, May 15: Lot 14: Margaret Fuller, Woman in the Nineteenth Century, 1845. First edition. $4,000 to $6,000.
    Swann, May 15: Lot 17: Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun, inscribed first edition, 1959. $2,000 to $3,000.
    Swann, May 15: Lot 28: Margaret Hill Morris, Private Journal Kept during a Portion of the Revolutionary War, for the Amusement of a Sister, 1836. First edition. $3,000 to $4,000.
    Swann, May 15: Lot 38: Anna Sewell, Black Beauty: The Autobiography of a Horse, 1877. First edition. $3,000 to $5,000.
    Swann, May 15: Lot 43: Gertrude Stein, Portrait of Mabel Dodge at the Villa Curonia, signed presentation copy with photograph of Stein, 1912. First edition. $8,000 to $12,000.
    Swann, May 15: Lot 48: Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse, first edition in the scarce dust jacket, 1927. $6,000 to $8,000.
    Swann, May 15: Lot 54: Katherine Dunham, large archive of material from her attorney, 1951-53. $20,000 to $30,000.
    Swann, May 15: Lot 55: Margaret Fuller Signed Autograph Letter, New York City, 1846. $3,000 to $5,000.
    Swann, May 15: Lot 92: Sonia Delaunay, illus. & Tristan Tzara, Juste Present, deluxe edition with original gouache, 1961. $20,000 to $25,000.
    Swann, May 15: Lot 93: Flor Garduño, The Sonnets of Shakespeare, 2006. Limited edition. $6,000 to $8,000.
  • Ketterer Rare Books
    Auction May 26th
    Ketterer, May 26: Th. McKenney & J. Hall, History of the Indian tribes of North America, 1836-1844. Est: €50,000
    Ketterer, May 26: Biblia latina vulgata, manuscript on thin parchment, around 1250. Est: €70,000
    Ketterer, May 26: M. Beckmann, Fanferlieschen Schönefüßchen, 1924. Est: €10,000
    Ketterer Rare Books
    Auction May 26th
    Ketterer, May 26: A. Ortelius, Theatrum orbis terrarum, 1574. Est: €50,000
    Ketterer, May 26: M. S. Merian, Eurcarum ortus, alimentum et paradoxa metamorphosis, 1717-18. Est: €6,000
    Ketterer, May 26: PAN, 9 volumes, 1895-1900. Est: €12,000
    Ketterer Rare Books
    Auction May 26th
    Ketterer, May 26: Breviarium Romanum, Latin manuscript, 1474. Est: €15,000
    Ketterer, May 26: Quran manuscript from the Saadian period, Maghreb, 16th century. Est: €10,000
    Ketterer, May 26: E. Hemingway, The old man and the sea, 1952. First edition in first issue jacket. Presentation copy. Est: €3,000
    Ketterer Rare Books
    Auction May 26th
    Ketterer, May 26: Flavius Vegetius Renatus, De re militari libri quatuor, 1553. Est: €3,000
    Ketterer, May 26: K. Marx, Das Kapital, 1867. Est: €30,000
    Ketterer, May 26: Brassaï, Transmutations, 1967. Est: €6,000
  • Leland Little, May 21: Signed Artist Proof of the Monumental G.O.A.T.: A Tribute to Muhammad Ali.
    Leland Little, May 21: Assorted Rare Publications Related to H.P. Lovecraft, Including The Recluse Signed by Vincent Starrett.
    Leland Little, May 21: Two Issues of The Vagrant, Including the First Appearance of H.P. Lovecraft's "Dagon" in Number Eleven.
    Leland Little, May 21: Rare First Printing of Anne of Green Gables, With ALS from the Author.
    Leland Little, May 21: First Edition of Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, In First Issue Jacket.
    Leland Little, May 21: The Limited Paumanok Edition of The Complete Writings of Walt Whitman.
    Leland Little, May 21: Beautifully Bound Limited Flaubert Edition of The Works of Guy de Maupassant.
    Leland Little, May 21: First Edition of Bonaparte's Celebrated American Ornithology, With Spectacular Hand-Colored Plates.
    Leland Little, May 21: A Rare Complete Set of Jardine's The Naturalist's Library, With Hand-Colored Plates.
    Leland Little, May 21: Invitation to the Lincoln-Johnson National Inaugural Ball, March 4th, 1865.
    Leland Little, May 21: A Scarce Inscribed First Edition of James Baldwin's Nobody Knows My Name.
    Leland Little, May 21: Picasso's Le Goût du Bonheur, Limited Edition.

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