A retired British man struck it rich after 42 forgotten Pokémon card sets stored in his attic for 15 years sold for more than $2 million at auction.
The 76-year-old retired painter and decorator from Woking, Surrey, England, was shocked when a Pokémon card collection he stored in the attic sold for $2.09 million at Ewbank’s Auctions. The amount was way higher than his estimates for the collection, which he thought would be £250 to £270 ($335 to $361). It turned out that the 42 complete Pokémon master sets from the late 1990s generated huge interest among bidders.
It started with a newspaper article about a single Pokémon card that had recently sold for over £6,000. The man, intrigued by the story, remembered the large binder full of cards he had stored away in his attic for around 15 years.
He retrieved them from the attic to see if they had any value. What he discovered ultimately changed his financial future.
“I know people always talk about finding treasure in the attic, but in my case that is literally true,” the BBC reports the man, who asked not to be identified, said.
The collection started as investment inspired by his son
It was when his son was playing with Pokémon cards that he started to buy the cards online and put them into binders. He bought complete sets of cards from online marketplaces such as eBay, hoping they would increase in value. He had them stored away in the expectation that they might increase in value at a later date but he never suspected that they could fetch millions.
When his son lost interest in the cards, he continued to buy complete sets of the cards online, just to add to his investment.
“When my son was young, in the late 1990s, he started getting cards and swapping them at school,” the man said.
“I thought they looked nice and wondered whether they might be a good investment. He had his own cards, but he never got to touch these, I’m glad to say.”
Rare Pokémon sets fetch extraordinary prices
Part of the large collection of rare Pokémon cards was sold at auction at Ewbank’s. James Spooner, head of trading cards at Ewbank’s, described the man’s 42 complete Pokémon sets as “astonishing.”
“When we saw what he had – all in mint condition – we couldn’t believe it,” Spooner said.
The man remembered paying just £300 ($400) for an entire collection of cards from a Malaysian seller on eBay. At Wednesday’s auction, the set reportedly brought in almost $100,000, a remarkable return on his investment. A Legendary Collection Complete Master Set with a nearly-mint Charizard card was another highlight of the auction.
It’s not often you hear of treasure buried in an attic, but for one retired British decorator an investment into his son’s childhood hobby has yielded a multi-million pound payoff.
“If you buy something for your son, as happened in this case, and they don’t want it, well, maybe pop it away because you never know what value it might have in the future,” said Andrew Ewbank, who runs Ewbank’s.
He also urged anyone who thinks they might have collectibles hidden away somewhere at home to “get it down and looked at” following the record-breaking sale. Ewbank said the sale’s total was the highest they have ever gotten for collectibles at auction in 30 years.