Before you get too excited, you might want to consult a loan officer.
You may have been the very best Pokemon card collector (like no one ever was), but it's doubtful you were ever the proud owner of the Pikachu Illustrator card.
If you're racking your brain right now trying to remember which generation the Illustrator Pokemon was in, you might want to stop now before you go crazy. The Pikachu Illustrator card was actually a design created especially for a contest that CoroCoro magazine once ran. You may remember CoroCoro as the magazine that ran the infamous Mew promotion that helped Pokemon become one of the world's most popular franchises. This time, the manga publication had 39 Pikachu Illustrator cards to award to the artists of the very best illustrations the magazine received over an entry period that ran through November of 1997.
One of those cards is being auctioned this week on Heritage Auctions. The seller is unknown, but this has been identified as an authentic copy of a card that some have deemed to be the holy grail of the Pokemon card collection. That's an impressive title considering that the card itself has no effect on the game. The text is simply a congratulatory message to the winner of the contest. That's in stark contrast to cards like the Pre-Release Raichu which are incredibly rare and can actually be played.
Besides the fact that the card features a couple of unique design touches that no other card does, what makes this one so special is the fact there are only six known copies of it left in the world according to the latest estimates. Of those, only five have ever really found their way into resale. One of them, a mint condition edition, even went for $100,000 on eBay a few years ago.
This recent copy will probably set you back a little less. At present, it's going for $18,000 (with a $21,000 buyer's premium), and the seller expects to get somewhere in the neighborhood of $50,000 before it's all said and done.