Most Valuable Pikachu Pokemon Cards: A Price Guide
The Pikachu Illustrator promo has sold for as much as $16,492,000, more than a hundred times the $148,800 a PSA 10 Gold Star Pikachu fetched at Goldin the same day. Below it, this guide ranks the top English Pikachu printings by median PSA 10 sale, among those with at least five confirmed PSA 10 sales on Cardboard Alpha's ledger since March 2026.
Pikachu Illustrator is the most valuable Pikachu card ever sold, and it is not close. A PSA Gem Mint 10 copy sold for $16,492,000 at Goldin Auctions on February 16, 2026, more than a hundred times the $148,800 a PSA 10 Gold Star Pikachu brought at Goldin that same day.
Among English printings on Cardboard Alpha's own confirmed-sale ledger, Gold Star Pikachu from EX Holon Phantoms leads by a wide margin. Its five PSA 10 sales recorded between April 20 and May 18, 2026 ran from $93,940 to $114,000.
Behind it, Legend Maker's Pikachu δ, the XY124 Pikachu-EX promo and Generations' RC29 Pikachu are the only other Pikachu printings with a median PSA 10 sale above $7,000, counting cards with at least five confirmed PSA 10 sales since March 1, 2026.
This guide ranks those printings by median PSA 10 sale, then covers a Pokemon Rumble promo that sits outside the rule and the Base Set Red Cheeks variant.
Pikachu Illustrator sits in a class of one
Pikachu Illustrator was never sold when it was new. Of the 41 copies known to have been printed, 39 were handed out as prizes to winners of CoroCoro Comic-sponsored illustration contests (Wikipedia, accessed September 27, 2026). Guinness World Records dates its release to a 1998 illustration contest.
Its PSA Gem Mint 10 copy, the only known copy graded at that tier, sold for $16,492,000 at Goldin Auctions on February 16, 2026 (Guinness World Records, accessed September 27, 2026). Logan Paul sold the card; Wikipedia lists the buyer as AJ Scaramucci.
That sale was not Logan Paul's first time trading the card. Per Wikipedia, he acquired the same PSA 10 copy on July 22, 2021 for $4,000,000 cash plus a separate PSA 9 Illustrator valued at $1,275,000.
Lower grades of the same card have also traded for large sums. A PSA 7 sold for $900,000 in February 2022, and a CGC 9.5 sold for $672,000 in October 2022, both through Goldin (Wikipedia, accessed September 27, 2026).
It sits outside the English catalog this guide ranks, a 1990s Japanese prize card rather than a numbered English printing, so every card below is priced from Cardboard Alpha's ledger instead.
The top Pikachu cards on the ledger
The rule is simple: every English card with Pikachu in its name that has at least five confirmed PSA 10 sales on Cardboard Alpha's ledger between March 1 and September 26, 2026, ranked by the median of those sales. Nine printings qualify with a median above $2,500.
Rank
Card
Printing
PSA 10 sales
Median sale
Sale range
1
Pikachu (Gold Star)
Holon Phantoms 104/110 (2006)
5
$109,809.76
$93,940 to $114,000
2
Pikachu δ
Legend Maker 93/92 (2006)
5
$14,100
$5,500 to $20,000
3
Pikachu-EX
XY Black Star Promo XY124
10
$8,750
$7,599 to $88,988
4
Pikachu
Generations RC29 (2016)
30
$7,988.50
$4,100 to $10,500
5
Pikachu
Nintendo Black Star Promo 12
32
$5,475
$777 to $7,000
6
Special Delivery Pikachu
SWSH Black Star Promo SWSH074
41
$4,050
$3,600 to $5,867.99
7
Pikachu
Black & White 115/114 (2011)
16
$3,576
$2,865 to $4,999.95
8
Pikachu & Zekrom-GX
SM Black Star Promo SM168
135
$3,099.99
$1,449.80 to $4,250
9
Pikachu with Grey Felt Hat
SVP Black Star Promo 085 (2023)
147
$2,750
$1,879.44 to $3,899.95
Every figure above is a confirmed sale on Cardboard Alpha's live ledger, never a listing price. The ledger records the sales it can confirm, not every sale in the market, and the window each card covers differs: Gold Star Pikachu's five sales all fall between April 20 and May 18, while the Grey Felt Hat's 147 fall between August 30 and September 25.
Median PSA 10 confirmed sale, ranks 2 to 9
Legend Maker Pikachu δ14,100USD
XY124 Pikachu-EX8,750USD
Generations RC29 Pikachu7,988.5USD
Nintendo Promo 12 Pikachu5,475USD
Special Delivery Pikachu4,050USD
Black & White 115 Pikachu3,576USD
Pikachu & Zekrom-GX3,099.99USD
Grey Felt Hat Pikachu2,750USD
Cardboard Alpha confirmed-sale ledger, PSA 10, cards with at least five confirmed sales from March 1 to September 26, 2026; data as of September 26, 2026. Gold Star Pikachu ($109,809.76) is left off the scale.
Gold Star Pikachu, the EX-era anchor
Pikachu Star, better known as Gold Star Pikachu, is card 104/110 in 2006's EX Holon Phantoms. It is the most valuable Pikachu on Cardboard Alpha's ledger by a factor of more than seven over the next card's median.
Its five recorded PSA 10 sales ran from $93,940 on April 20, 2026 to $114,000 on May 18, 2026. The two most recent, both recorded May 18, were $109,810 and $114,000. Its most recent PSA 9 sale, $32,330 on September 7, 2026, was the highest of 16 confirmed since March; the other 15 ran $14,100 to $22,600.
Five PSA 10 sales on Cardboard Alpha's ledger, $93,940 to $114,000, April 20 to May 18, 2026.
The open market has paid more. A separate PSA Gem Mint 10 copy sold for $148,800 at Goldin Auctions on February 16, 2026 (figoca.com, reporting the Goldin result).
Legend Maker δ and the XY124 promo
Legend Maker's Pikachu δ is numbered 93/92, one past the set's official count. Its five PSA 10 sales on the ledger climbed with each sale: $5,500 on April 5, $7,320 on May 18, $14,100 on July 6, $18,000 on July 25 and $20,000 on August 8, 2026.
That is a record of five past sales, not a forecast. Five sales over four months is also a thin sample, which is why its $14,100 median sits well below its most recent price.
Five PSA 10 sales on Cardboard Alpha's ledger, $5,500 to $20,000, April 5 to August 8, 2026.
The XY124 Pikachu-EX promo has the deeper record, ten PSA 10 sales. Six between March 6 and May 11, 2026 sold for $7,599 to $9,000, and three more from June 16 to August 2 sold for $15,000, $15,000 and $19,999.
One XY124 sale, $88,988 on August 17, 2026, is more than four times any other PSA 10 sale of the card. It is a single data point, not a price: without it, the median of the other nine sales is $8,500.
The $3,000 to $10,000 band
Five more printings clear a $3,000 median, most of them promos rather than set cards:
Generations RC29: 30 PSA 10 sales from March 30 to September 10, 2026. The 15 recorded since June 1 all sold between $8,200 and $10,500; the most recent was $8,600 on September 10.
Nintendo Black Star Promo 12: 32 PSA 10 sales from April 12 to September 6, 2026, median $5,475. All but one sold between $4,201 and $7,000; a single $777 sale on June 1 sits far below the rest.
Special Delivery Pikachu (SWSH074): 41 PSA 10 sales from June 2 to September 22, 2026, between $3,600 and $5,867.99, median $4,050.
Black & White 115/114: 16 PSA 10 sales from March 8 to August 30, 2026, median $3,576. The most recent was $3,800 on August 30.
Pikachu & Zekrom-GX (SM168): a Tag Team promo with 135 PSA 10 sales from August 22 to September 24, 2026, median $3,099.99.
Grey Felt Hat, the SVP promo
Pikachu with Grey Felt Hat is card 085 in the Scarlet & Violet Black Star Promo series. Its 147 PSA 10 sales between August 30 and September 25, 2026 are the deepest sample in the table, at a $2,750 median.
The latest ran close to that. A PSA 10 sold for $2,800.00 on September 24, 2026, with other PSA 10 sales that day and the next between $2,375 and $2,749.99. PSA 9 sales on September 23, 2026 ran from $799.99 to $1,002.53.
Its raw, near-mint TCGplayer market price read $1,048.43 on September 26, 2026. PSA 9 copies trade close to raw, while those late-September PSA 10 sales ran roughly 2.3 to 2.7 times it.
Pokemon Rumble, one sale outside the rule
The 2009 Pokemon Rumble Pikachu (7) has one confirmed PSA 10 sale on the ledger since March 1, 2026: $55,000 on June 2. One sale does not meet this guide's five-sale rule, so the card is not in the table, and the ledger's other reported PSA 10 prices for it could not be confirmed and are not counted.
Its PSA 9 copies trade often enough to read. Eleven confirmed PSA 9 sales from March 27 to August 31, 2026 ran from $2,850 to $8,000, a median of $4,160.
Base Set Pikachu, plain print and Red Cheeks
Base Set's plain Pikachu (58/102) is a Common, and its most recent confirmed Unlimited PSA 10 sale on Cardboard Alpha's ledger was $559.00 on September 14, 2026. Its 1st Edition, a different print run entirely, carries a raw TCGplayer market price of $184.03 as of September 26, 2026.
A color variant of the same card carries a real premium of its own. Some 1st Edition and Shadowless copies show Pikachu with red cheeks instead of the yellow the artwork used, an error fully corrected in the Unlimited printing (Pokemon TCG Errors and Misprints wiki, a community source, accessed September 27, 2026). The wiki's account, which it calls somewhat apocryphal, is that the US editorial team changed the color without consulting illustrator Mitsuhiro Arita.
TCGplayer lists the Red Cheeks card as its own product, with a 1st Edition market price of $429.98 read September 26, 2026, more than double the plain 1st Edition's $184.03. Cardboard Alpha's catalog carries the Red Cheeks variant but has no graded confirmed sale recorded for it yet.
What this guide does not price
No PSA or CGC population count appears anywhere above. PSA's population report could not be verified directly for this guide, so it states confirmed sale prices only, never a gem-rate or pop figure.
The ranking also covers English printings only. Pikachu Illustrator is the obvious exception, and Wikipedia lists two Japanese Pikachu Trainer tournament trophy cards at six-figure prices: a PSA 10 Silver No. 2 that sold for $444,000 in September 2023 and a PSA 8 Bronze No. 3 that sold for $300,000 in April 2023.
Every figure above describes a past sale, not a forecast for the next copy sold or submitted for grading. See the wider Pokemon catalog for how these printings sit against every other card Cardboard Alpha tracks, or use the Cardboard Alpha card screener to compare cards outside the Pikachu line.
Frequently asked questions
What is the most valuable Pikachu card ever sold?
Pikachu Illustrator, a 1990s Japanese CoroCoro illustration-contest prize with only 41 copies known to have been printed. Its PSA Gem Mint 10 copy, the only known copy at that grade, sold for $16,492,000 at Goldin Auctions on February 16, 2026.
What is the most valuable Pikachu card in Cardboard Alpha's own catalog?
The 2006 Gold Star Pikachu from EX Holon Phantoms (104/110). Its five PSA 10 sales on Cardboard Alpha's ledger between April 20 and May 18, 2026 ran from $93,940 to $114,000, and a separate PSA 10 copy sold for $148,800 at Goldin Auctions on February 16, 2026.
Is the Base Set Pikachu with red cheeks worth more than the standard version?
Yes. TCGplayer's market price for the 1st Edition Red Cheeks printing read $429.98 on September 26, 2026, more than double the $184.03 market price for the standard 1st Edition. The red cheeks appear on some 1st Edition and Shadowless copies and were fully corrected in the Unlimited printing.
Which ranked Pikachu cards have PSA 10 sales above $10,000?
Among the nine printings ranked here, on Cardboard Alpha's ledger since March 1, 2026: Gold Star Pikachu ($93,940 to $114,000), Legend Maker's Pikachu δ ($14,100 to $20,000 in July and August), the XY124 Pikachu-EX promo ($15,000 to $19,999 over the summer, plus one $88,988 sale) and Generations RC29 (top sale $10,500). Outside the five-sale rule, the Pokemon Rumble Pikachu covered below also has one PSA 10 sale of $55,000 on June 2, 2026.
How much more does a PSA 10 Pikachu with Grey Felt Hat sell for than a raw copy?
Recent PSA 10 sales on Cardboard Alpha's ledger ran $2,375 to $2,800 on September 24 and 25, 2026, roughly 2.3 to 2.7 times the $1,048.43 raw TCGplayer market price. PSA 9 sales on September 23 ($799.99 to $1,002.53) sat close to raw. These describe past sales, not a forecast for any copy submitted for grading.
Ryan Shugars is an avid Pokémon card collector who builds the market-data tooling behind Cardboard Alpha. He collects across multiple eras, tracks population reports and price movement as a matter of habit, and started building Cardboard Alpha to get a straight answer to questions the existing price guides couldn't: what's actually trading, what's just an asking price, and what a grade is really worth on a given card right now. He writes from that same collector's vantage point, close to the data, skeptical of hype, and always checking a claim against the ledger before it goes in an article.
Ryan Shugars is a collector and the builder of Cardboard Alpha's data systems, not a licensed financial advisor. Articles he writes or edits describe market history and mechanics; they are informational and are not personalized investment advice.
