A retired decorator from Woking is in line for a significant payday after discovering that a collection of Pokémon cards he kept in his attic for 15 years could be worth as much as £270,000. The collector, who wishes to remain anonymous, had no idea the haul might hold significant value until he saw a story in his local newspaper about a single card selling for £6,000.
He realised he owned several cards similar to the one that fetched £6,000, so he took a sample of his collection to Ewbank’s auction house in Surrey. His sets were assessed as highly valuable, with head of trading cards James Spooner estimating they could sell for north of £250,000 later this month.
Discovery of 42 Master Sets
“When we saw what he had – all in mint condition – we couldn’t believe it, or the fact that he had no idea what they were worth,” said Mr Spooner. “When we then discovered that he had 42 such sets, our jaws hit the floor.”
Ewbank’s has been staging dedicated auctions for trading cards for five years and has recorded sales totalling more than £1.1 million. But Mr Spooner added: “Even with that, this is easily the most valuable collection we have handled so far, and it could go as high as around £270,000 hammer.”
How the Collection Was Built
The collector explained how he came to own the cards. “When my son was young, in the late 1990s, he started getting cards and swapping them at school,” he said. “I thought they looked nice and wondered whether they might be a good investment.”
“I was lucky enough to find someone in Malaysia who sold complete sets, and I bought a couple of things from them on eBay. They then asked me if I would be interested in buying a complete master set of Pokémon cards as they had about two or three master sets for each issue.”
He continued: “I thought that it would be cheaper to buy the full set rather than keep buying sealed packs of random cards in hope that when you opened them you could complete a set. The first set I bought cost me around £300. It’s the Sky Ridge Charizard set and Ewbank’s have estimated it for the sale at £20,000 to £40,000.”
Mint Condition and Previous Sales
The cards, all carefully inserted in bespoke Pokémon binders while still sealed and in mint condition, come to auction as new, having been stored in the attic after the owner’s son lost interest in Pokémon. The collector added: “He had his own cards, but he never got to touch these, I’m glad to say. I know people always talk about finding treasure in the attic, but in my case that is literally true. I had no idea what I had until the team at Ewbank’s explained it to me.”
This is not the first time the auction house has made such a discovery. In April this year, teacher Andrew Braund approached Ewbank’s with a 20-year-old collection of Pokémon cards he had kept in his parents’ attic. He consigned the three rarest cards to Ewbank’s, which took £32,800 for them on April 16, with Andrew using the proceeds to pay for his August wedding to Rachel Moseley.
Titled Pokémon: A Decade of Masters (1999-2009), the single-owner collection will be offered on October 21.
