What’s the rarest Pokémon card that you own? Despite my love of the franchise, my card collection was never very impressive - my greatest offering is probably some random modern full art card, or given how much they were scalped, maybe my small collection of McDonalds cards counts for something.
Anyway, even if you are an avid collector, I think you’d still be struggling to produce something rarer than this. As reported by Dexerto, one YouTuber, smpratte, has shown off a card so elusive, that some collectors genuinely believed it didn’t exist. And of all Pokémon for this mythical piece of cardboard to feature? Magikarp.
If you like watching the sweet, sweet thrill that comes with opening packs of cards in the hope of seeing something shiny, look no further than our very own pack battle.
That’s right, no Charizard here. The Magikarp in question originates from a Pokémon Snap competition held in 1999, in which competitors submitted photos of their favourite Pokémon. From this contest, there were 10 winners, who all received 20 copies of their photo transformed into a Pokémon card. Over time, despite only 20 of each card being printed, they’d all made their way onto the market, apart from Magikarp. At least, until now.
“I’m going to try to attempt to really capture how rare it is,” smpratte said, showing the card. “I’ve owned, and or own, Illustrators, ’97 [Pikachus], ’98 [Pikachus], SSBs, TMBs, [University Magikarps], Trophy Kangaskhans […], you name it, I either have it or have sold it. This is the first time I’ve ever held a Snap Magikarp. It just cannot be overstated how insanely elusive this card is.
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“This was always the [card] that eluded everybody. A lot of people for the longest time didn’t even know if it was real,” the YouTuber continued. “I remember hearing about a sale […], ages ago, in the early 2000s, someone, a seller that doesn’t exist anymore, they had about seven or eight of these that they sold but they never named the Magikarp as one of the Snap cards that they sold back then.”
So, what’s the price tag for a pretty piece of cardboard thought to be lost to time? According to smpratte, it was sold for $136,000 after exchange. Yikes. And you thought you were ripped off by the Magikarp salesman who sold you the poor lil fish for 500 Pokédollars in Red and Blue.