At a glance
- Paul paid $5.275 million for the card in 2021, roughly tripling his money in about five years; it was made as a prize for a 1998 illustration contest and only a few dozen copies are believed to exist.
- InvestmentNews reports the sale has turned client collections from a relationship-file anecdote into a discovery-meeting question.
- Monthly secondary-market trading volume tracked by pricing service Card Ladder rose from about $242 million in September 2024 to about $948 million in September 2026, according to figures published by CNBC and cited by InvestmentNews.
Logan Paul sold his Pikachu Illustrator card for $16.5 million at Goldin Auctions in February, a price Guinness World Records confirmed as the highest ever paid at auction for any trading card. Paul paid $5.275 million for the card in 2021, roughly tripling his money in about five years; it was made as a prize for a 1998 illustration contest and only a few dozen copies are believed to exist.
InvestmentNews reports the sale has turned client collections from a relationship-file anecdote into a discovery-meeting question. The card itself is an outlier; InvestmentNews says the market beneath it is not.
Monthly secondary-market trading volume tracked by pricing service Card Ladder rose from about $242 million in September 2024 to about $948 million in September 2026, according to figures published by CNBC and cited by InvestmentNews. InvestmentNews notes that Card Ladder is owned by Collectors, the same company that owns the industry's dominant grading firm.
Professional Sports Authenticator graded about 2 million cards in 2020 and more than 19 million in 2025. Its parent is spending $200 million over 18 months to double its footprint and hire roughly 1,000 more people. PSA president Ryan Hoge told CNBC that trading card games such as Pokémon, Magic: The Gathering and Yu-Gi-Oh! now make up half of PSA's business, more than all sports cards combined.
Advisors already in the niche treat this as a planning problem rather than a curiosity. Florida planner Thomas Ruggie built a 10-point scorecard covering documentation, insurance and exit plans. "There's been such a boom financially in the collectibles space that for some people, it's a big part of their overall net worth," Ruggie told InvestmentNews.
InvestmentNews notes that a client who has spent six figures on graded Charizards has a concentration problem, even if the cards never come anywhere near the model portfolio. Ruggie's framework starts with documentation and insurance.
The $16.5M Pikachu sale tops the Mantle record
Prices paid at auction for the hobby's headline cards
- Pikachu Illustrator sale (Feb 2026)$16.5M
- 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle (2022)$12.6M
- Pikachu Illustrator purchase (2021)$5.28M
Show as table
| Item | Value ($M) |
|---|---|
| Pikachu Illustrator sale (Feb 2026) | $16.5M |
| 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle (2022) | $12.6M |
| Pikachu Illustrator purchase (2021) | $5.28M |
Reported by the Practice management desk from InvestmentNews and CNBC (via InvestmentNews). Published . Corrections