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What’s Behind the Million-Dollar Pikachu Cards and the Record-Breaking Anime Auctions

With Pokémon hitting a record $7.6M at Heritage and Christie’s first anime sale topping $1.4M, auction houses are discovering that the nostalgia market is a niche with serious potential.

Nineties nostalgia has created an entirely new market for anime- or fantasy-inspired trading cards, as well as for action figures, manga and vintage consoles and electronics, largely driven by Millennial collectors with disposable income. In late March, Heritage Auction’s Trading Card Games & Manga Signature® sale achieved a record $7.6 million total, confirming the continued surge of demand for Pokémon cards three decades after the IP was introduced to the world with the Japanese release of two Nintendo Game Boy cartridges: Pocket Monsters Red and Pocket Monsters Green. Closely linked to the Pokémon 30th anniversary, the sale featured some of the most iconic pieces associated with the hobby, including a PSA Mint 9 Pikachu Illustrator, which led the sale and sold for $1.4 million.

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The result followed the staggering $16.5 million record achieved at Goldin earlier that month by another near-perfect Pikachu Illustrator sold by influencer Logan Paul, who had made headlines in 2022 for buying one for $5.3 million, setting a Guinness World Record for the most expensive Pokémon card ever sold in a private transaction and further fueling the hype around these collectibles.

In the same Heritage sale, a complete master set of 332 Pokémon Skyridge cards—all graded Gem Mint 10 by PSA and the only known fully PSA-10-graded set—also topped the million-dollar mark, achieving a record $1.2 million. Skyridge is considered a holy grail of Pokémon sealed sets, as it was the last designed by Wizards of the Coast and received only one print run. It’s among the scarcest sets in Pokémon TCG history. Wizards of the Coast also included all six Crystal Secret Rare cards in the set, printed as both holographic and reverse holographic. Heritage’s lot was a complete master set, consisting of cards 1 through 150, cards H1 through H32 and the reverse-holo versions of cards 1 through 150. It also included all six of the most sought-after characters: Umbreon H30, Ho-Oh 149, Vaporeon H31, Pikachu 84, Articuno H3, Celebi 145, Kabutops 150 and Charizard 146—some of the most sought-after and expensive cards from the Wizards of the Coast era of the Pokémon TCG.

A sealed Pokémon Skyridge Booster Box also set an all-time high at $212,500. With 36 booster packs of nine cards each, the box featured four of the six coveted Crystal-type cards, including what is arguably the most popular Pokémon in the franchise: Charizard. Other highlights included a $125,000 sealed Japanese booster set released in Japan on October 20, 1996—more than two years before the English version (January 9, 1999)—containing 14 early Pokémon cards including iconic characters such as Charizard and Venusaur.

In a clear sign that Pokémon-collecting mania goes deeper than the object itself, with collectors increasingly interested in the artistry, creativity and legacy from which this contemporary myth originated, the sale also featured an original sketch by Ken Sugimori of Misty and Pikachu, which sold for $600,000, becoming the most expensive Pokémon original artwork ever sold. Dated June 23, 1998, the PSA-authenticated work was signed in both English and Japanese and also set a new auction record for a drawing by Sugimori, who was the designer behind some of the most sought-after cards in the hobby as well as the original video games.

“The franchise’s popularity is at an all-time high,” Jesus Garcia, managing director of trading card games at Heritage Auctions, told Observer, adding that what many people don’t realize is that Pokémon is the largest media franchise in the world—far surpassing others, including Disney, Star Wars and Marvel. That sustained, multi-generational awareness is what sets Pokémon apart from other collectible markets, as it continues to bring in new collectors year after year. “Attend any Pokémon card convention, and you’ll see collectors ranging from 5 years old to 50 and beyond. It’s rare to find something that both parents and their kids are genuinely, emotionally invested in collecting together.”

Notably, Heritage was the first major auction house to offer a Pokémon card in a sale. In 2016, the house sold a PSA Mint 9 Pikachu Illustrator for $54,970, setting a world record at the time. The fact that another copy just sold for over a million underscores how dramatically the market has evolved over the past decade. “A few years after that initial sale, we began offering select cards within our Comics & Comic Art Signature Auctions before launching the first dedicated Trading Card Games auction in 2021, headlined by Pokémon, which realized $1,216,594 in total sales,” Garcia said. “Since then, we’ve continued to build on that momentum, now holding standalone TCG auctions on a weekly basis.”

Heritage posted more than $2 billion in sales last year—the highest total in its history—positioning it, by volume, as the third-largest auction house, surpassing both Phillips and Bonhams. Its early focus on developing markets for Pokémon cards, action figurines and comics, as well as other nostalgia-driven collectibles, likely contributed to that standing. “Toys from the ’50s and ’60s used to be super collectible, but now it’s the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s toys that are really collected, because the age group is moving up,” Heritage Auction’s executive president Joe Maddalena observed in a recent interview with Artnet News, noting how interest in the popular-culture space—whether sports, comic books, entertainment or trading cards—has been growing worldwide in recent years. What initially appeared to be a pandemic-era trend has turned into a market with real potential to expand as new collectors begin building their collections.

Historical auction houses following Heritage’s lead

Facing the limits of the multibillion-dollar painting market’s ability to expand indefinitely, centuries-old auction powerhouses like Christie's and Sotheby's are rethinking their models and diversifying their offerings, first by embracing the luxury collectibles sector and now increasingly, by engaging more deeply with other collectibles categories, as well as brand-extension products and experiences that can attract buyers at different price tiers and inspire lasting customer loyalty.

In the same week as the Heritage sale, Christie’s hosted its first auction dedicated to popular Japanese art forms—anime, manga and movie posters—titled Anime Starts Here: Japanese Subculture Reimagines Tradition. The sale attracted the new bidders the auction house was looking for: 36 percent of bidders were entirely new to the house and 35 percent of buyers were Millennials or Gen Z. It closed on March 31 with a combined total of $1,442,466—four times its pre-sale estimate with a remarkable 90 percent sell-through rate.

What a historical auction house like Christie’s can bring to the table when selling next-gen collectibles is the same historical, cultural and contextual rigor that underpin its more traditional sales. The record-setting Anime Starts Here sale intentionally paired traditional Japanese objects and artifacts with contemporary art, manga, illustrations and figurines—literally ranging from Hokusai to Doraemon—drawing parallels between the two in order to contextualize what has long been dismissed as “underground culture” as part of the lineage of a broader, centuries-old artistic, cultural and often mythological heritage.

The top anime-manga work, a highly anticipated Ito Ikuko illustration of Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, achieved $88,900—nearly 18 times its pre-sale low estimate of $5,000. Also notable was the $50,800 result for an LV Surfboard created in collaboration with Yayoi Kusama and featuring her iconic yellow dots (pre-sale estimate $8,000-12,000) and several works by living Japanese artists in dialogue with tradition.

Ken Sugimori’s interpretation of Hokusai’s iconic composition, The Great Wave and Two Whales (2021), sold for $50,800 against an initial estimate of $12,000-22,000. A video game designer, illustrator, manga artist, director and co-founder of Game Freak alongside Satoshi Tajiri, Sugimori is best known as one of the primary character designers and art directors for the Pokémon franchise—an association that likely contributed to the result. He drew and finalized all 151 original Pokémon, conceiving the majority of them in close collaboration with Atsuko Nishida, Motofumi Fujiwara, Shigeki Morimoto and Satoshi Ota, and co-directed the video games Ruby and Sapphire, Diamond and Pearl and Black and White, while also working on various Pokémon films and other titles, including Super Smash Bros.

In The Great Wave and Two Whales, Sugimori’s bold contours and flattened space link to the graphic language of manga and anime, while the whales—immense yet stylized—evoke the cinematic scale associated with the kaijū (giant monster) tradition, most famously embodied in Godzilla. Yet the work reaches further still, tying directly not only to Hokusai’s masterpiece but to medieval tales, Japanese folklore and Edo-period literature.

What is particularly compelling is how the works in the sale sustained a dialogue with history and tradition while also carrying a universal resonance—a point explored in our interview ahead of the sale with Christie’s Asian department specialist Takaaki Murakami. While manga and anime emerged in response to Japan’s accelerated modernization, tradition remains deeply embedded in the country’s cultural fabric, visible in the symbolism, mythologies and value systems that manga and anime continue to carry forward. This was a key aspect the sale set out to highlight. As Murakami explained, the word “manga” itself traces back to Hokusai’s Hokusai Manga, a series of printed books containing sketches of daily life, animals, spirits and ghosts. “What’s exciting is how contemporary manga and anime both inherit and reshape this tradition. You can still see Hokusai’s sense of motion in modern works.”

A woodblock print of Hokusai’s Kanagawa oki nami ura (Under the Well of the Great Wave off Kanagawa) also exceeded all expectations, selling for $228,600 against an estimate of $40,000-60,000. Last November, another example fetched HK$21.7 million (around $2.7 million) in Sotheby’s HK$688 million sale of works from the Okada Museum of Art.

The top lot of the Anime Starts Here sale, however, was Shiomi Ryosuke’s 2019 work Wolf and Armor, which fetched $698,500—nearly 35 times its pre-sale estimate of $20,000-30,000—setting a new record for the Japanese artist. A metalsmith born in Osaka and raised in Miyazaki and Gifu, Ryosuke won the 2019 Taro Okamoto Award for Contemporary Art, one of Japan’s most prestigious prizes for contemporary work, and the piece was featured in the Biwako Biennale held in Hikone, Shiga Prefecture in 2022. His singular reinterpretation of the ancient Japanese tradition of armor-making—tankin, or metal-hammering—elevated into fine contemporary art with a distinctive anime-inspired aesthetic, not only fit the sale’s curatorial thinking perfectly but also clearly whetted bidders’ appetites. Other manga and anime illustrations also sold above estimate, including a 1984 illustration of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, the Giant God Warrior by TOPCRAFT LTD., the production studio behind the film ($12,700); Studio Ghibli’s original poster for the 1988-1989 film featuring Totoro ($3,556); a 1995 poster for Ghost in the Shell ($1,905); and two Akira posters ($2,032 and $2,286, respectively).

According to Murakami, three elements are driving manga and anime’s global success. The first is visual clarity: images are simple yet highly expressive, allowing emotion and movement to be immediately legible. Second, a strong character focus enables audiences to follow protagonists over time and witness their growth and struggles. Third, cultural specificity combined with universal themes: deeply rooted in Japanese history and culture, manga and anime nonetheless reflect shared human dilemmas—becoming, as a contemporary form of mythopoiesis, metaphorical representations of humanity’s central existential questions. International museums are likewise beginning to recognize the role of manga and anime in shaping contemporary global culture—as seen in the recently closed “Art of Manga” exhibition at the de Young Museum in San Francisco.

Still, many longtime Pokémon collectors are skeptical, if not critical, of mainstream auction houses trying to tap into this niche market. “Auctions are tricky with exclusive 1/1 cards because you never know if they’ve been manipulated,” said a collector who requested to remain anonymous. While global auction results confirm the market’s strength, the collector noted that Christie’s, in particular, is far behind companies like Goldin and Fanatics in Pokémon collectibles. “Goldin built his reputation by attending every comic con for a decade and doing three seasons on Netflix,” he explained. He also highlighted the buyer’s premium at Christie’s, which is significantly higher than what fans are accustomed to paying. “You don’t become a reference in the Pokémon market just by having a few good cards on consignment,” he said, emphasizing that the art market and Pokémon market remain very separate.

By contrast, Heritage Auctions has long been involved in collectibles and already has a strong reputation in those markets. “Most of the biggest grails on earth have been sold by them, way earlier than Goldin and Fanatics,” the collector noted. He did point out, however, that Heritage lags behind technologically, with no app and a relatively dated website, which may be an obstacle for younger, digital-native buyers. In the race to the top in this space, it could come down to reputation versus accessibility.

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