A retired decorator from Woking has sold a hoard of Pokémon cards for £1.56m at a Surrey auction house, 15 years after he put them in his attic and forgot about them.
The 42 sets went under the hammer at Ewbank’s in Send on Wednesday 21 October. The BBC reported that the seller, who asked not to be named, had no idea the cards were valuable until he read a local newspaper story about one card selling for more than £6,000.
He took a sample to the auctioneers, who had expected the collection to make about £250,000, according to the Alton Herald. The final figure was more than six times that.
From a school playground to the saleroom
The seller said he began buying the cards in the late 1990s, when his young son started swapping them at school. He thought they looked good and might prove a sound investment.
Some of the complete sets came from a seller in Malaysia through eBay. He filed them, still sealed, in purpose-made Pokémon binders. They went into the loft when his son lost interest.
His son kept his own cards separate. “He never got to touch these, I’m glad to say,” the seller told the BBC.
One set that cost him £300 at the time sold for £75,000. The top lot was a Legendary Collection Complete Master Set, which included a near-mint Charizard card. It carried a guide price of £15,000 to £20,000 and sold for £100,000.
James Spooner, Ewbank’s head of trading cards, said the sets were all in mint condition. The Alton Herald quoted him as saying: “We couldn’t believe it.”
The auction house said “jaws hit the floor” when the collection was first brought in.
A record for the UK, and maybe Europe
Ewbank’s described the sale as the most valuable trading card auction held in the UK, and said it might also be a European record. It also called it the firm’s most successful sale in more than 30 years of trading.
The Alton Herald gave a hammer total of £1.2m, which is the price before any extra charges. The £1.56m figure is the final sale value.
The previous UK best, according to Ewbank’s, came on 9 October in London. A Stanley Gibbons sale then declared a total of £872,000.
Andrew Ewbank, who took the sale himself from the rostrum, said the collection drew bidders from around the world. He described it as extensive, untouched and complete, with almost every rarity a collector could want. He told the BBC it had been “a hell of a ride”.
He put the current boom in Pokémon down partly to nostalgia. People who were children when the franchise launched are now in their 30s and 40s, he said, and have more money to spend.
The auctioneer urged anyone who suspects they have something valuable at home to have it looked at. The seller himself offered a simple summary of his luck: the old saying about treasure in the attic, he said, was “literally true” in his case.
Sources: Alton Herald, BBC News
This story was compiled by the MDW Newsdesk with AI-assisted tools, using the reporting credited above.
