For the week of September 13 to 20, Card Ladder's five biggest trading card sales totalled $11,339,471. The previous week was about $2.2 million. No week on record comes close, and every one of the five lots cleared $500,000.
| # | Card | Grade | Price | Venue | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1998 Pikachu Illustrator (CoroCoro promo) | PSA 9 | $5,000,000 | Heritage | September 18 |
| 2 | 1998 Pikachu Illustrator (CoroCoro promo) | CGC 9 | $2,806,271 | Goldin | September 19 |
| 3 | 1993 Magic: The Gathering Alpha Black Lotus | PSA 10 | $2,208,200 | Goldin | September 19 |
| 4 | 1999 First Edition Base Set booster box, sealed | - | $750,000 | Heritage | September 18 |
| 5 | 2002 Legendary Collection Charizard reverse holo #3 | PSA 10 | $575,000 | Heritage | September 18 |
The two Illustrators
The Illustrator has now sold six times in 2026. The PSA 9 at Heritage on Thursday, $5 million, is the second-highest price ever paid for the card, behind only the $16.5 million PSA 10 in February, and it is nearly double the $2.7 million a PSA 9 fetched privately on August 31. The CGC 9 at Goldin a day later, $2,806,271, is the highest price ever paid for a CGC-graded Pokemon card and sits almost exactly where the PSA 9 was three weeks ago. Two 9s, two labels, one day apart, 78 percent apart: Grade Expectations in this issue is about that gap.
The sealed box
A sealed First Edition Base Set booster box at $750,000 is the most expensive sealed Pokemon product we can find a public record of. Thirty-six packs, each with a shot at a First Edition Charizard that has now cleared a million twice this year. Sealed vintage is priced as an option on the cards inside, and the cards inside have been re-priced all summer.
The Legendary Collection Charizard
The 2002 Legendary Collection reverse holo Charizard is a reprint of the Base Set card with the set's distinctive fireworks reverse foil, and it is one of the hardest Charizards to find in a 10 because the foil shows every scratch. At $575,000 it is priced above most First Edition Base Set holos and above the Charizard Gold Star. Legendary Collection is one of our twelve vintage sets; it has read flat for most of the Index's life because almost none of its ten cards had new comps. That changes now.
What a week like this means
Four weeks ago we wrote that the Illustrator's price ladder was the reference every other trophy card is priced from. The ladder just moved up by almost a factor of two at the 9 rung, in the same week a Gold Star made $2.7 million and a sealed box made $750,000. Everything below will be re-marked over the next month. The vintage Index was flat this week because the engine had almost no new comps over the launch weekend; the re-marks from this week's results have not landed yet.
Source: SI Collectibles, September 21, 2026, via Card Ladder.
The Lead ran in The Pack Report, September 21, 2026: An $11 Million Week: Two Illustrators, $7.8 Million. Published by Rip Station.