THE HERITAGE SPECIALIST ALSO SHARES HIS THOUGHTS ON THE BRIGHT FUTURE OF THE WORLD’S HIGHEST-GROSSING MEDIA FRANCHISE
By Jesse Hughey | January 20, 2026
Trading card games, particularly the Pokémon Trading Card Game, were among the hobbies to experience an unforeseen boom during the Covid-19 pandemic as nostalgic housebound millennials with disposable income and limited opportunities for socialization rediscovered the pleasures of buying, selling, and trading cards with friends and strangers alike.
But the buying and selling of Pokémon cards has endured even as pandemic restrictions have eased up and life has gone back to something resembling normal. Heritage Auctions’ December 12–13 Trading Card Games Signature® Auction took in $5.279 million, surpassing the company’s previous Trading Card Games auction benchmark of $4.01 million set in 2021 and marking a new auction record for the category. The event was led by the $550,000 sale of a PSA Gem Mint 10 First Edition Base Set Charizard, a record auction price for the card, which is both a fan favorite character and an exceedingly rare card.
Heritage Auctions Consignment Director and collector Jesus Garcia with one of his prized possessions: the first Pokémon card to feature Entei, his favorite character in the popular trading card game. Photo by Josh David Jordan.
The franchise is much bigger than cards, though. Taking into consideration retail sales of the cards, toys, video games, mobile games, box office, home video, and more, Pokémon is the world’s highest-grossing media franchise. And as investment pieces, Pokémon card prices have been beating the benchmark S&P 500, with some reaping more than 3,000% return on investment since 2004, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Heritage Auctions Trading Card Games Consignment Director Jesus Garcia has been at the center of the hobby’s growth for years, beginning well before the jump in prices seen during the pandemic. He was thrilled the results of the December auction validated his opinion that Pokémon Trading Card Game collectibles will continue to rise in value after the pandemic just as they did before the Covid boom.
“It’s really nice to see that we’ve had a big rebound in prices and that they’re this much higher,” Garcia says. “We’ve seen a lot of new buyers come into the market at levels we haven’t seen since Covid. … Prices are at all-time highs. I’m excited for 2026 to see how far the market can go, and I am looking forward to more highlights.”
Garcia holds a Pokémon Blackout Theme Deck uncut test sheet from 1999. The uncut sheet is available in Heritage’s March 20-21 Trading Card Games and Manga Signature® Auction. Photo by Josh David Jordan.
But before these cards were selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars apiece, they were available to children for around $4 for a pack of 11. Growing up in Dallas around the turn of the millennium, Garcia was square in the target age demographic for Pokémon, as well as the Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game.
“I was part of the group that was introduced to it in 1999 with the anime series,” he says. “I got home every day after school, and Pokémon was always on the CW Network. Then I got into the Game Boy games, which in turn got me into the cards, about a year after when they started popping up in school.”
Though he preferred Yu-Gi-Oh! as a trading card game, he enjoyed collecting Pokémon cards as a kid. Eventually Garcia lost interest in them for a while, a stage he jokingly calls his “rebellious period,” but he got back into them as an adult. He began working at Heritage in 2011, first as an intern and then as an operations assistant in Comics, so he had an insider’s perspective as the cards became hot commodities again during the Pokémon Go mobile game craze. He distinctly remembers the 2016 sale of a Pikachu Illustrator card for $54,970 – a record that would be broken again and again – as the moment he realized the Pokémon Trading Card Game was more than child’s play. It was big money.
Garcia got back to buying Pokémon cards around 2018–2020, and his office and home are both decorated with some of his favorites. “My favorite in my collection is a First Edition Mewtwo from the Base Set,” he says. “It’s one of my favorites because he was the first antagonist of Pokémon: The First Movie. It might not be the most valuable, but it is my most prized card.” His favorite character, though, is Entei: “It reminds me of a lion, and lions are my favorite animal, and it is one of the Legendary Pokémon.”
For all the highlights in his personal collection today, he still remembers the excitement of obtaining a Base Set Pikachu while trading with a classmate in third grade. As the cards weren’t considered valuable collectibles at the time, he didn’t bother keeping it in good condition. It’s almost quaint to think of them this way, but the cards were game pieces. He was a kid, and he played with them – no regrets. Of course, it might have been different had he lost one of those cards that now goes for five or six figures.
“I never got a Charizard,” he says, “so I never lived with the guilt of, ‘Oh, I had a Charizard and I played it!’”
But perhaps he should qualify that with “yet.” In celebration of Heritage Auctions’ Trading Card Games category having its best year yet, Garcia shares the top five items on his Pokémon wish list.
Pokémon Pikachu Illustrator
“That is the Holy Grail of the Pokémon Trading Card Game market. It was awarded through a special illustration contest publicized in CoroCoro Comics in 1998, and there is a very limited number of copies of the card. The first contest awarded 23 copies, and the following two awarded 8 copies apiece, so there was a total of 39 copies distributed. This is the only card with the pen symbol in the bottom right corner and the only one with the word “Illustrator” at the top. One sold for $625,000 through Heritage in August.”
First Edition Base Set Charizard
“In my opinion, this is the most sought-after card in the hobby. It features Charizard, who is the most popular character, even over Pikachu, the series’ mascot. It comes from the first set, and the first set is what got me introduced to the Pokémon Trading Card Game. Why is he so popular? Because he’s a cool dragon that breathes fire! And it did help that he was the main character’s strongest Pokémon and had some cool battles in the anime. PSA has certified only 125 copies in Gem Mint 10. One of those realized $550,000 through Heritage last month.”
First Edition Base Set Sealed Booster Box
“As is the case in sports card trading, individual cards aren’t the only high-value commodities. Unopened packs and boxes offer the same anticipation and excitement they did for a kid hoping to find a favorite, with the thrill of knowing it could contain an extremely valuable collectible. This base set box is the first release of a booster box for the card game in America. It goes with Charizard, as it was pretty much the introduction of the game in the United States. In 2022, Heritage sold one for $288,000.”
Pokémon Trophy Pikachu Gold No. 1 Trainer First Tournament
“To me, that’s the most historically significant Pokémon card. It’s one of the cards awarded to the first-place player at the First Official Pocket Monsters Tournament, which was held June 14 and 15, 1997, in Chiba, Japan. Without that first tournament, we wouldn’t have what we have today. According to PSA, the population of Gold No. 1 Trainers from that first tournament is eight, and one of them sold for $237,500 at Heritage’s December Trading Card Games Signature® Auction.”
Pokémon Promo Secret Super Battle No. 1 Trainer
“That’s one of my personal favorites in the entire hobby. There were seven regional tournaments in Japan in 1999, and winners were awarded this particular card. Only after they were awarded their card were they told the secret location of the final. So because there were just seven regionals, it’s estimated there are also only seven of these in the world. Heritage sold one in September 2022 for $156,000. These are so limited, today it would probably go for $300,000. Hopefully we get one soon. They do not come up often.”
