Rare Pokémon cards found in attic could fetch £25,000 at auction

A Pokémon fan who rediscovered his old playing cards during a loft clearout has been left stunned to find they could be worth up to £25,000 – enough to fund his wedding.

Andrew Braund took his collection to a friend who runs a games shop to have them valued, only thinking they would be worth a few hundred pounds.

But three of the cards, from the early 2000s, were found to be very rare and will be among the highlights of a trading card auction next week.

Pokémon - once viewed as a passing fad - is now a 30-year-old craze and some cards are highly-prized, selling for millions of pounds. 

In February, an ultra-rare Pikachu card was sold for £12m at auction in the US by YouTuber and wrestler Logan Paul.

The most valuable item in Mr Braund’s Pokémon collection is a mint condition card featuring the Skyridge Charizard Holo character – a fire-breathing dragon - with an estimated value of £8,000-12,000.

Another copy of Skyridge Charizard Holo in near-mint condition is expected to sell for £7,000-10,000, while a Reverse-Holo of the same character should make £1,600-2,200.

Mr Braund had sorted what he thought were his best cards into binders, but others – many unsorted – had been stored loosely in a tin. The Charizard cards were still in their packet.

Mr Braund, 37, a teaching assistant for children with special educational needs and disabilities, remembers the cards being bought for him by his mother in the supermarket and at the Game shop.

He said: ‘When my friend told me how much the Charizard cards might be worth, I got quite light headed.’

He is hoping the proceeds of the auction, being held by Surrey-based Ewbanks on Thursday April 16 will fund his wedding to fiancée Rachel Moseley, an academic at Bournemouth University.

The couple became engaged at last year’s Chalke Valley History Festival and will hold the wedding at Sherborne Abbey this summer.

Mr Braund said he was ‘eight or nine’ when he first got into the Pokémon craze sweeping schoolchildren at the time.

He said: ‘I was away at boarding school and it was huge. One of the things I remember was the school banning Pokémon cards – then they changed their minds and all the kids just pulled the cards back out of their pockets straightaway. The look on the teachers’ faces was priceless.’

Mr Braund, who lives with Ms Moseley in Wimborne, Dorset, was clearing some of his belongings from his parents’ loft last September when he rediscovered his old Pokémon cards.

He said: ‘I knew I had this collection somewhere and thought I’d go through it. I took them to a friend’s trading card shop and expected him to offer me around £500 for the lot.’

The three valuable cards were still in their packet, which Mr Braund had, luckily, carefully opened but then put back away.

‘It must have been one of the last sets of cards I’d ever had because they’d almost never been out of the packet. My friend said, hang on, these might be worth something.

‘I asked if I’d be ok to leave the cards with him but he said no because his insurance wouldn’t cover it.’

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Mr Braund was advised to have the cards professionally graded, which involved having to send them to the US via a special courier service costing £1,000, before they could be put up for auction.

On finding out the cards’ potential value, he said he and Ms Moseley, 38, ‘had a bit of a conversation’ and ‘with the wedding looming it kind of fell into place’ that they should use the proceeds to fund it.

Mr Braund added: ’28 years or so ago, no one knew Pokémon was going to stay around – everyone was saying it was just a fad. If it had been, these pieces of card would have been worth nothing.

‘I was just a kid who was really into this game – I couldn’t in a million years have predicted this happening.’

Other highlights of the auction by Surrey-based Ewbanks include a factory sealed display of the very first preconstructed Pokemon theme decks released alongside the Base Set in 1999. Estimated at £2,500-£3,500.

There is also a Team Rocket complete 1st Edition set of Pokémon cards pitched at £3,000-£4,000 and a near-complete 1st Edition Fossil Set which is likely to fetch £800-£1,600.

Live online bidding is available via www.ewbankauctions.co.uk