Blue Crystallized Pikachu

A Pikachu dug up a thousand years from now

Blue Crystallized Pikachu is a bust of the yellow electric mouse at the center of the Pokémon franchise, recast as if it were an artifact pulled from the ground in a distant future. Its surface is eroded and broken open in places, with crystal growths showing through, the look Arsham calls fictional archaeology.

Arsham has described the idea as imagining that we are archaeologists in the future, looking back at the objects of our everyday life. His collaboration with The Pokémon Company applied that idea to Pokémon itself, inviting viewers to picture the creatures being unearthed a thousand years from now.

The edition was cast from a Pikachu sculpted by hand in Arsham's studio. It stands 33 cm tall, weighs 5.13 kg, and is made of cast resin and aluminum oxide. Arsham announced it days before putting it on sale on Friday, April 24, at noon New York time. A white version was offered in China only, through a separate mobile channel.

The artist of eroded objects

Daniel Arsham was born on September 8, 1980, in Cleveland, Ohio, and raised in Miami. He went to the Design and Architecture High School there and won a full scholarship to Cooper Union in New York.

When he was 12, Hurricane Andrew destroyed his childhood home. That experience has been described as a continuous theme in his work, which shows ordinary twentieth-century objects in states of decay, as if they were relics of a future civilization. In 2014 he made Future Relic, a series of nine short films on post-apocalyptic themes.

Arsham also co-founded the design practice Snarkitecture with the architect Alex Mustonen. By 2020 he had worked across fashion and design, including runway sets, campaigns and a capsule collection for Dior's Spring/Summer 2020 season under Kim Jones, and in November 2020 he became creative director of the Cleveland Cavaliers.

A drop in the first pandemic spring

The Pikachu went on sale six weeks after the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic on March 11, 2020. Four days before the drop, the price of West Texas Intermediate crude oil fell below zero for the first time.

The pandemic also reshaped the Pokémon project. Arsham's first Pokémon show, Relics of Kanto Through Time, opened at a Tokyo gallery on June 9, 2020, and its larger museum presentation in Shibuya was rescheduled to run from August 1 to August 16, 2020, with advance reservations required. A 2-meter bronze Pikachu was installed on the ground floor of the Shibuya building as public art.

Even before the shows, the collaboration had reached a mass audience: T-shirts made with a Japanese clothing brand were released in April 2020.

Sold out, then resold

All 500 copies sold at release. A listing by a European editions dealer records the release price as $2,000 and marks it sold out; a toy-news report from release day gives $2,100. The two sources disagree, and neither is the artist's own shop page.

The edition soon reached the auction market. In October 2020 copy number 455 sold in a Hong Kong online auction for HK$43,750 with fees, against an estimate of HK$10,000 to HK$20,000, more than double the top estimate within six months of release.

Prices have since cooled. On August 18, 2025, copy number 008, sold with its original packaging, brought $1,708 in a U.S. auction devoted to Pokémon collectibles, against an estimate of $1,500 to $2,000.

How to identify one

Each copy carries an Arsham Editions holographic label that verifies its edition number and authenticity. The label on the box of copy 008 reads, in part, 'An Official Arsham Studio Device OFFICIAL ARSHAM EDITION ©2020 Pokémon. TM, ® Nintendo', with the number written as 008/500.

A complete example comes in its studio-designed box with die-cut foam and a sealing label, plus a pair of white art handling gloves. Auction descriptions treat the gloves and the original box as part of the work.

Published dimensions vary a little by source: one auction catalog gives 33 x 15.8 x 13.5 cm, another 34 x 22 x 16 cm.

From one bust to a world tour

The collaboration kept growing after 2020. A New York show, Time Dilation, ran from January 16 to February 20, 2021. In January 2022 the official Japanese Pokémon YouTube channel released Arsham's animated short A Ripple in Time, and in February 2022 a five-venue exhibition of the same name filled Tokyo.

The project then traveled to China as Artifacts of Indigo Plateau, in Shanghai from December 31, 2022, to May 7, 2023, Guangzhou from December 2023 to May 2024, and Wuhan from May to December 2024.

With 500 copies, the Blue Crystallized Pikachu put a piece of that body of work within reach of collectors who would never buy a unique gallery sculpture, an editioned object that sits between a contemporary art multiple and a high-end collectible toy.

The numbers

Medium

Cast resin and aluminum oxide

Dimensions

33 cm high; catalogs give 33 x 15.8 x 13.5 cm or 34 x 22 x 16 cm

Weight

5.13 kg

Edition size

500

Publisher

Arsham Editions, under license from The Pokémon Company

Catalogue raisonné

None stated

Timeline

1. Sep 8, 1980

   Daniel Arsham is born in Cleveland, Ohio.

2. 2014

   Arsham makes Future Relic, a series of nine short films.

3. Apr 2020

   T-shirts from the Arsham x Pokémon collaboration are released.

4. Apr 24, 2020

   Blue Crystallized Pikachu goes on sale at noon New York time in an edition of 500 and sells out.

5. Jun 9, 2020

   Relics of Kanto Through Time opens at a Tokyo gallery.

6. Aug 1, 2020

   The museum presentation of Relics of Kanto Through Time opens in Shibuya, alongside a 2-meter bronze Pikachu.

7. Oct 2020

   Copy 455 sells in a Hong Kong online auction for HK$43,750 with fees.

8. Jan 16, 2021

   Time Dilation, with Arsham's Pokémon sculptures, opens in New York.

9. Feb 2022

   A Ripple in Time spreads across five venues in Tokyo.

10. Dec 31, 2022

    Artifacts of Indigo Plateau opens in Shanghai, the first of three Chinese venues.

11. Aug 18, 2025

    Copy 008 sells at a U.S. auction for $1,708.

The world in 2020

• Mar 11, 2020

  The World Health Organization declares COVID-19 a pandemic.

• Mar 24, 2020

  The Tokyo Summer Olympics are postponed to 2021.

• Apr 20, 2020

  West Texas Intermediate crude oil trades below zero for the first time.

• May 25, 2020

  George Floyd is killed in Minneapolis, setting off protests around the world.

• May 30, 2020

  SpaceX's Crew Dragon Demo-2 launches with astronauts aboard.

Price record

A realized auction price is what a buyer actually paid on the date shown, including the buyer's premium where the sale reported it. It is the strongest kind of reference price, and it is a record of one sale of one object on one day, not a promise of what the next example will bring.

By reference price, Blue Crystallized Pikachu is number 93 of 100 in the art entries of the FLOAT 100. 88 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (77 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• Every copy ships with a pair of white art handling gloves, the kind museum staff wear.
• Buyers in China were offered a white version instead, sold through a mobile mini-program.
• Copy 455 resold in Hong Kong for more than double its top estimate within six months of release.
• The collaboration also produced a 2-meter bronze Pikachu, shown as public art in Shibuya in 2020.