Entertainment
Pokémon fan buys wedding ring and vacation after selling a £6,100 card-Kenneth Andersen-Entertainment – Metro
A certain Gengar card netted one Pokémon collector a massive profit when they put it on auction on eBay, and now it’s time to celebrate.
Gotta collect and sell ’em all (The Pokémon Company)
A certain Gengar card netted one Pokémon collector a massive profit when they put it on auction on eBay, and now it’s time to celebrate.
Collecting and trading Pokémon cards was a big deal to many back in the 1990s and 2000s, when you might’ve exchanged your Snorlax for your friend’s Alakazam purely for the fun of it.
Today, two decades later, the landscape looks very different, with fans having to spend some serious cash to finish their collections, as the cards are no longer in production, with certain rare cards selling for hundreds of thousands of pounds.
One fan rolled the dice and bought a $400 (£307) Japanese Gengar Vmax card, which he later managed to upsell for a whopping $8,000 (£6,100) – paying for an engagement ring for their partner and a vacation with the proceeds.
Lets-Work-Together posted an image on Reddit showing off his Gengar alternative art card, which at that point had 15 bids on eBay, with the most recent – and later confirmed winner – at £6,100.
The Pokémon fan said he bought it three years ago at their local card shop, before sending it to a company that graded it.
It came back as a perfect 10 out of 10, earning the collector a profit of 20 times what they initially invested in it.
‘I’m a disabled veteran and only make so much. I wanted to keep it for 20+ years but I sold it to buy my girlfriend an engagement ring and a nice vacation place to propose,’ Lets-Work-Together said.
Another post from four months ago also shows that they have a collection with six other Gengar cards, all in Japanese and all but one graded to a 10, so it’s fair to say that Lets-Work-Together likes the ghost pokémon.
The Pokémon investment community has boomed in recent years, and there’s a subreddit called PokeInvesting with over 100,000 members, where they share thoughts on buying and selling rare cards.
While this was a great outcome for the collector, trading rare cards has had quite a few cautionary tales in recent years too.
Most famously was when content creator Logan Paul bought a fake 1st Edition Base Set Pokémon Trading Card Game box, which comes with 36 packs of 11 cards.
Paul paid $3.5 million (£2.55 million at the time) for them, but was later given a refund when it was revealed that it wasn’t as authentic as he was lead to believe.
Twitch streamer PayMoneyWubby got outright scammed when he bought what was later believed to be an altered pack of Magic: The Gathering cards, which sold for £37,000.
Additionally, there is a company that will reveal which cards are in a booster packs for a fee, leaving fans in the trading card market worried, with one saying it’s ‘the death of the loose pack market’.
Pokémon asset (The Pokémon Company)
Email gamecentral@metro.co.uk, leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter, and sign-up to our newsletter.
To submit Inbox letters and Reader’s Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here.
For more stories like this, check our Gaming page.
MORE : Pokémon’s hardest challenge beaten by Twitch streamer after 1,786 attempts
MORE : The best pokémon ever has been revealed after 1,810,053 simulations
MORE : Pokémon painter who went viral may quit his day job – ‘all because of Reddit’
Sign up to all the exclusive gaming content, latest releases before they’re seen on the site.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.Entertainment – MetroRead More