Pokemon trading cards may just be pieces of paper to some, but in the eyes of true collectors, they're worth thousands of dollars. The rarer the card, the higher the price.
Rare Blastoise Pokemon card sells for $300,000 in an auction
The recent rise in popularity that the Pokemon Trading Card game has seen is because of Twitch's Pokemon Week. Popular streamers got together and unboxed a few rare Pokemon card sets, which got viewers interested in getting their hands on the cards themselves.
The card in question however, is a very rare one. So rare, that there are only two in existence. Unlike other Pokemon cards, this card had a blank space on the back, indicating that it was a prototype card.
Prototype cards are meant for display only, to give vendors an idea of how the card would look. This card was commissioned back in 1998 by the Wizards of the Coast. This prototype card was meant to show different shop vendors what Pokemon cards would look like.
Logic, a very famous rapper, won a first edition Charizard for $266,000 at an auction in October 2020. However, his victory didn't last long enough, because a couple of months later, the same type of card sold for $369,000 on eBay, marking it as the costliest Pokemon Trading card in the world.
The identity of the buyer is still a secret and so is the current location of the card. Given the fact that there's a twin which is still out, that too will sell for such high a price, if it hasn't been lost or sold already.
The problem with these cards is that since they're so old, people usually forget about them until they come across these cards while cleaning their houses. Unless of course, the owner is a collector, in which case, these cards are actually maintained properly.
Having said that, this Pokemon card is the 2nd most expensive one in the market right now, with the most expensive being the Charizard which was mentioned above.