FLOAT 100 · Trading cards · No. 75
Pikachu Illustrator promo (CoroCoro)
Readers of a Japanese children's magazine won it for drawing Pokemon cards in 1997 and 1998; fewer than four dozen exist, and one of them has sold for $16.492 million.
- Year
- 1998
- Maker
- Pokemon / CoroCoro
- By price in trading cards
- 9 of 100
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Create a free account- Issued
- 1997-1998, as a prize in three illustration contests run through CoroCoro Comic in Japan
- Card
- Pokemon Illustrator, a Trainer card from the unnumbered Japanese promos, holofoil
- Artist
- Atsuko Nishida, the original designer of Pikachu and Charmander
- How many
- 39 officially awarded; at least 41 known after two unawarded copies surfaced
- This entry
- PSA 7 (Near Mint), the grade of its first headline public sales
- PSA 7 sales
- $375,000 at auction in February 2021; $900,000 at auction in February 2022
- Record for any copy
- $16,492,000, the only PSA 10, at auction February 16, 2026
- Unique marks
- A pen symbol in the lower right, the only card with it, and a rare double-star rarity mark
A prize for drawing
The Pokemon card game launched in Japan on October 20, 1996, and its publishers promoted it heavily in CoroCoro Comic, the monthly manga magazine for children. The November 1997 issue, released October 15, 1997, announced the Pokemon Card Game Illust Artist Contest: readers were invited to submit illustrations, and winners were announced in the January 1998 issue in December 1997.
Three entrants received the Best Award, each getting 20 copies of a card printed with their own illustration plus one Illustrator card. Twenty more received the Excellence Award and one Illustrator card each. Two more contests followed in 1998, tied to the first movie and to the Pikachu's Summer Vacation short; readers designed whole cards, judged on illustration and on creative attacks. Those contests produced one more Best Award and 15 more Excellence Awards, each with an Illustrator card.
That makes 39 copies officially awarded. In 2019, unawarded copies of several early Japanese trophy cards began appearing for sale in Japan, and by August 2020 two more Illustrators had surfaced, both offered by Yuichi Konno, one of the four people who wrote the card game's rules. At least 41 are now known.
The card itself
The art is by Atsuko Nishida, who designed both Pikachu and Charmander for the original games; the card shows Pikachu alongside a drawing of Charmander. Its text is a certificate rather than a game effect: it tells the holder that their illustration was an excellent entry and names them an Officially Authorized Pokemon Card Illustrator.
The card carries a pen symbol in the lower right corner where an expansion mark would usually go, the only card with that symbol, and it is one of a handful of Japanese promos with a double-star rarity mark.
Japan, 1997 and 1998
The contests ran while Pokemon was becoming a national obsession. The anime premiered on TV Tokyo on April 1, 1997. On December 16, 1997, an episode's flashing lights caused seizures and seizure-like symptoms in 685 children.
The first Pokemon film opened in Japan on July 18, 1998, with the short Pikachu's Vacation; two of the Illustrator contests were tied to those films. The same year Nagano hosted the Winter Olympics in February, the Akashi-Kaikyo Bridge opened in April as the largest suspension bridge in the world, and Keizo Obuchi became prime minister in July. The English-language cartoon reached U.S. television on September 8, 1998.
From $100,000 to $16.5 million
When a PSA 9 copy sold for $100,000 in 2013, collectors believed only 12 existed. In late 2019 a copy sold at auction in New York for $195,000, and in 2020 a PSA 9 brought $233,000 on a Japanese marketplace. In December 2020 an Italian collector traded $900,000 worth of Charizard cards and Mitsuhiro Arita illustrations for one.
This entry is the PSA 7 grade, and its public record is short and steep. On February 28, 2021, a PSA 7 sold at auction for $375,000. That same month DJ Steve Aoki bought an ungraded copy from Japan for $420,000; it later graded PSA 9. On February 23, 2022, another PSA 7 opened at $75,000 and reached $900,000 after 34 bids, then the most ever paid for a Pokemon card. A PSA 7 brought $209,841 in July 2024, less than a quarter of the 2022 price.
Higher grades set the headlines. In June 2021 YouTuber and wrestler Logan Paul bought a PSA 9 privately for $1,275,000; in July 2021 he traded it plus $4 million in cash for the only PSA 10, a deal valued at $5,275,000. He wore it on a diamond necklace at his WWE debut at WrestleMania 38 in 2022. On February 16, 2026, after a 42-day auction in which bidding stalled at $6.882 million before a late flurry, it sold for $16,492,000 with buyer's premium after 97 bids. The buyer was venture capitalist AJ Scaramucci, and a Guinness World Records adjudicator declared it the most expensive trading card ever sold at auction.
Other grades fill in the curve: a PSA 8 brought $480,000 at auction in October 2022, a CGC 9.5 $672,000 in October 2022, a PSA 8.5 $570,000 at auction in June 2023, and in March 2026 a PSA 9 sold for $1,406,250.
Counting the copies
Published counts disagree. A February 2022 report said 24 copies were known through PSA grading. A February 2026 report said 20 had been graded by PSA, eight of them PSA 9 and one PSA 10. PSA's own online census, as fetched in October 2026, lists 1 PSA 10, 15 PSA 9s, 13 PSA 8s, 6 PSA 7s and 10 Authentic, a total above the 41 copies known to exist, so it should not be read as a simple count of surviving cards.
Genuine copies are Japanese-text holofoil promos with the pen symbol, the double-star rarity mark and Nishida's Pikachu-and-Charmander art. Because nearly every copy's sales are tracked, a copy's grade and certificate history are part of its identity.
The numbers
- Officially awarded
- 39 (23 in the 1997 contest, 8 and 8 in the two 1998 contests)
- Known to exist
- At least 41 (as of August 2020)
- Graded by PSA
- 20 per a February 2026 report; 24 per a February 2022 report
- PSA 10
- 1 (the Logan Paul copy)
- PSA 9
- 8 per a February 2026 report; 15 on PSA's census as fetched October 2026
- PSA 7
- 6 on PSA's census as fetched October 2026
- Rarity mark
- Double star; unique pen symbol
Timeline
The Pokemon card game launches in Japan.
CoroCoro Comic's November 1997 issue announces the first Pokemon card illustration contest.
Winners are announced; 23 Illustrator cards go to 3 Best Award and 20 Excellence Award winners.
Winners of the movie-tied second contest are announced; 8 more Illustrators are awarded.
Winners of the third contest are announced; 8 more are awarded, for 39 in all.
A PSA 9 sells for $100,000, when only 12 copies were thought to exist.
Two unawarded copies have surfaced, bringing the known total to at least 41.
A PSA 7 sells at auction for $375,000.
Logan Paul buys a PSA 9 privately for $1,275,000.
Logan Paul trades his PSA 9 plus $4 million for the only PSA 10, a $5,275,000 deal.
Paul wears the PSA 10 on a necklace at WrestleMania 38.
A PSA 7 sells at auction for $900,000 after 34 bids, a Pokemon record at the time.
A CGC 9.5 sells at auction for $672,000.
A PSA 7 sells for $209,841.
The PSA 10 sells at auction for $16,492,000, a Guinness world record for a trading card.
A PSA 9 sells for $1,406,250.
The world in 1997
The Pokemon anime premieres on TV Tokyo.
A Pokemon episode's flashing lights cause seizures and seizure-like symptoms in 685 Japanese children.
The Winter Olympics open in Nagano.
The Akashi-Kaikyo Bridge opens as the largest suspension bridge in the world.
The first Pokemon film opens in Japan.
Keizo Obuchi becomes prime minister of Japan.
The English-language Pokemon cartoon premieres in U.S. syndication.
Price record
| Date | Price | Kind |
|---|---|---|
| Feb 28, 2021 | $375,000 | Sold at auctionPSA 7, online auction. |
| Feb 23, 2022 | $900,000 | Sold at auctionPSA 7. Opened at $75,000; 34 bids. A record for a Pokemon card at the time. |
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, Pikachu Illustrator promo (CoroCoro) is number 9 of 100 in the trading cards entries of the FLOAT 100. 97 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 (75 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.
Did you know
- The card's text is a certificate naming the winner an Officially Authorized Pokemon Card Illustrator.
- It is the only Pokemon card with a pen symbol in the lower right corner.
- The third contest gave no Best Award because the winner could not be contacted.
- Two extra copies were offered for sale by one of the four people who wrote the game's original rules.
- Logan Paul's PSA 10 sold with the diamond necklace he wore it on at WrestleMania 38.
- In 2013 a PSA 9 sold for $100,000, when only 12 copies were thought to exist.
How this page is made
- The figure
- One reference price, shown with its own kind. FLOAT does not average it with anything or adjust it for time.
- Realized or not
- A realized price is a completed sale. An asking price, an estimate and a price-guide value are not sales, and are labeled as such wherever they appear.
- The story
- Researched from published records and checked fact by fact. Updated Oct 3, 2026.
- Archive
- Oct 5, 2026