Retired decorator's Pokémon cards sell for £1.5M

A retired decorator from Woking became a millionaire after selling a sealed, mint-condition Pokémon collection kept in his attic for 15 years. He learned the cards might be valuable after reading about a single card sale and brought 42 complete sets to Ewbank’s auction house, which described them as extensive, untouched and containing nearly every rarity. The sale fetched £1.56m, with global bidders driving prices well above estimates: a Legendary Collection Complete Master Set including a near-mint Charizard was expected at £15,000-£20,000 but sold for £100,000, and a set originally bought for £300 went for £75,000.

Ewbank’s called the event the UK’s most valuable trading-cards auction and suggested it could be a European record, surpassing a recent £872,000 total at another London sale. The auction house attributed the boom to nostalgia as people who grew up with Pokémon enter their 30s and 40s with disposable income, creating fierce demand for graded, complete and untouched material. Auctioneers urged anyone with old collections to have them examined, stressing how storage and condition have turned childhood items into high-value assets.