Rare variants of the original starter Pokemon cards just set an auction record at over $70,000 each
Extremely rare Pokemon Snap TCG variants of the series' original starter cards – Charmander, Squirtle, and Bulbasaur – recently sold for over $70,000 apiece, beating previous auction records by some distance.
The Collectibles Guru flagged the auctions on Twitter (X) over the weekend, and I only learned this in the first place because the post was shared by the official account for the PSA, which graded the cards in question: a 7 for Charmander, 8 for Squirtle, and a near-perfect 9 for Bulbasaur. All three auctions were conducted via Goldin, which is widely known for trading in sports cards and paraphernalia, and closed on November 18, 2023 after some eye-watering bidding wars.
The enormous caveat here is that Goldin charges a fairly exorbitant "buyer's premium" of 22% which inevitably inflates the final price. The actual winning bids for all three cards were: $65,000 for Charmander, $60,000 for Squirtle, and $66,000 for Bulbasaur. Finally, Bulbasaur gets the win it deserves. Even with the added fee factored in, these auctions are still head-and-shoulders above previous Pokemon TCG starter prices, and there are a few reasons for that.
Firstly, these starter variants are extremely rare. They can all be traced back to Japanese Pokemon Snap photo contests that ran decades ago. Basically, players sent in pictures they'd taken using the Nintendo 64 Pokemon photography sim – which finally got a deserved sequel on the Switch 22 years later – and the winners had their photos printed as actual cards.
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