Collectors welcomed 2026 with a supremely modern news story: the YouTuber, wrestler and influencer Logan Paul (brother of Jake Paul) announced that he was selling his world record Pikachu Illustrator Pokemon card.
Paul paid an accepted (part of the private sale was a trade) $5.3 million for the card in 2021.
It’s now listed at Goldin, an online auction site, and has attracted 25 bids to a value of $2.1 million nearly 40 days before the sale closes on February 16.
If you’ve been intrigued by all this then this beginner’s guide to Pokemon collecting will introduce you to the hobby.
This is Zebrastrika. Look out for its "volatile disposition." There are now over 1,000 types of "pocket monster" Pokemon. Image: Pokemon
What is Pokemon:
The Pokemon universe takes in a number of media properties.
For collectors the main focus thus far has been on cards, which are designed to be collected and traded in the tradition of sports cards that were originally given away with tobacco products.
Pokemon video games also support a collecting community, and have been auctioned for big prices in recent years.
Pokemon is a close relative of the Magic: the Gathering, a hard-copy and digital collecting card game involving battling wizards.
A distinctly Japanese product
The original home of Nintendo, which started life making playing cards before becoming one of the world's video-games giants.
Pokemon is Japanese in origin, and was very Japanese in its formation.
Its creators (chiefly Satoshi Tajiri and Ken Sugimori) met through a douujinshi called Game Freak, a sort of fanzine, and the influence of Japanese Manga comics and earlier generations of monster creations in the Kaiju tradition that is best known outside Japan through Godzilla.
The overall concept is fairly simple.
Pokemon are monsters and players act as a trainer who can capture Pokemon and use them in battles against other trainers.
This broad concept runs through the video and card games.
The games are for all ages and all the “fighting” is relatively non-violent - no Pokemon are harmed in the making of Pokemon.
A Pokemon timeline
March 1983 - Satoshi Tajiri starts self publishing Game Freak magazine, through which he soon meets artist Ken Sugimori.
1986 - although the magazine doesn’t last, a team from it launch a game development team of the same name, which is formalised into a business by April 1989.
1990 - Nintendo sign a deal with Game Freak to develop their Pocket Monsters project, a collecting and trading game.
This Pokemon Red video game cartridge from 1998 sold for just under $10,000 in 2021. Image courtesy of Heritage Auctions.
1995 - 1996 - after diverting their attention onto other projects, they finally finish and help lanch Pocket Monsters (in Red and Green editions initially in Japan) on the Nintendo Gameboy, releasing it in February 1996. Although, the game is considered somewhat primitive inside the industry, it goes viral with Japanese kids thanks in large part to the Manga comic CoroCoro Comic which is read by a quarter of elementary school children in the country. By September, 1 million copies of the game have been sold.
October 20, 1996 - a card game developed alongside the video game is released and the first cards are premiered.
April 1997 - the TV animated series Pocket Monsters is launched and is an immediate hit. The 38th episode includes rapidly flashing coloured images that trigger illnesses in 10s of thousands of people and send hundreds to hospitals. No-one is seriously hurt or dies though and the incident doesn’t dent Pokemon’s popularity.
September 7, 1998 - the animated show is broadcast in America for the first time, with the video and card games released quickly in its wake. This triggers Pokemania among American children who strip toy store shelves of cards faster than they can be printed and give Nintendo a 250% increase in profits for 1999, when the craze peaks with release of the first Pokemon movie.
2000 - the next generation of Pokemon is released as Pokemon Gold and Pokemon Silver.
Both video games and card sets are released regularly (see below) with a stand out release in:
2016 - Pokemon Go uses the new capabilities of mobile phones (GPS, Google maps) to give players the impression that Pokemon are roaming their real-world neighbourhoods.
Pokemon Go puts the monsters in the real world. They started 2026 with a trip to Jakarta, Indonesia. Image courtesy of Pokemon Go.
Pokemon card games
Pokemon card games are played with decks of 60 cards using a game mat (or digital version) over which two players face off, each with their own deck.
Pokemon card types
The cards show:
A Pokemon (or set of Pokemon), elemental types, attacks or abilities, and a Hit Point (the Pokemon’s life force), all on a single card.
Pokemon are either Basic or Evolution types.
The Pokemon are catalogued in the Pokedex. This a “National” list, with different regional variations kept in sub Pokodexes.
How many Pokemon are there?
There are 1,025 Pokemon species.
There are additionally 59 regional variants within these, 48 Mega Evolution Pokemons, and 32 Gigantamax cards to bring the full number to 1,164.
That’s a lot of variants for collectors to look for.
A Pikachu and an Eeve from the rule book of the Pokemon card game. Image courtesy Pokemon.
What generations and sets of Pokemon cards have there been?
Pokemon cards have been issued regularly since the mid-1990s.
In the next part of our Collector’s Guide to Pokemon Cards, we’ll take you through those issue.
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