Pensioner becomes millionaire thanks to Pokemon cards

In the UK, a collection of Pokemon cards sold at auction for a record £1.56 million. Its owner was a former painter-decorator who kept the cards in the attic for 15 years and did not suspect their value.

The most expensive lot was the Legendary Collection set, which at an estimate of £15-20 thousand went under the hammer for £100 thousand. According to the auction house, the auction became a record for the total value of sold collectible cards in the UK.

"I know people always talk about finding treasure in the attic, but in my case it's literally," the pensioner said.

He said he started collecting cards in the late 1990s when his son was in school. The man considered them a potentially profitable investment, and the son never used his collection.

The man said he bought several full sets of cards from a Malaysian seller on eBay. One of them, which cost him £300, sold at auction for £75,000.

The head of the auction house Andrew Eubank called the auction a success and noted that collectors from around the world participated in it, and this sale was the most successful in more than 30 years of work. According to him, interest in Pokemon cards has grown thanks to nostalgia: fans who were fond of them as children can now afford expensive purchases.

Collectible cards Pokémon ceased to be a child’s hobby and turned into a serious asset class – individual rare copies go under the hammer for millions of dollars, and the “crazy” card market is estimated at billions, wrote in September Financial Times.

The newspaper cited the example of Englishman Jordan Dunn, who in 2025 left his job as a data analyst to engage in the business of selling collectible cards. His company Big Box Gaming expected to increase sales from £1.2 million in 2025 to £4 million in 2026.