Rare Pokémon Art Academy Mudkip Sells for Record $3.72 Million
One of the rarest Mudkip cards ever produced has sold for $3.72 million at Fanatics Collect, setting a record for the Pokémon and becoming one of the largest Pokémon card sales in history. The 2015 Japanese Pokémon XY Promo Art Academy Mudkip, featuring artwork by Daisuke Ochiai, sold September 25 in Fanatics Collect’s Premier Auction after 61 bids. The $3.72 million price includes the buyer’s premium. Fanatics Collect says the result makes it the most expensive Mudkip card ever sold and the fourth-highest Pokémon card sale of all time. The card is graded PSA Gem Mint 10 and is one of only two examples to receive that grade.
The card’s rarity begins with the unusual way it was created. Ochiai’s Mudkip was one of 10 winning designs selected through the 2015 Pokémon Art Academy Competition in Japan. According to Fanatics Collect, each winning artist received only 100 copies of a card featuring their artwork, meaning just 100 examples of the Daisuke Ochiai Mudkip were produced. Only two copies have been submitted to PSA, and both received a Gem Mint 10 grade. Fanatics Collect also gave the auctioned copy its Eye Appeal designation, placing it in the top 5% of cards within the same grade.
That combination of an unusual origin, tiny production run and elite condition pushed Mudkip into territory normally occupied by Pokémon’s most famous trophy and promotional cards. The $3.72 million result is particularly notable because Mudkip has not traditionally been associated with the very top of the Pokémon card market in the way Pikachu and Charizard have.
The sale comes less than a week after another enormous Pokémon result covered by CollectiblesNews.com. A PSA 9 Pikachu Illustrator sold for $5 million at Heritage Auctions, setting a record for a PSA 9 example and becoming the second-highest auction price Heritage said had ever been paid for a Pokémon card. Heritage’s broader Trading Card Games auction ultimately reached more than $12.18 million, with the Pikachu Illustrator leading a group of major Pokémon sales.
Earlier in September, another starter Pokémon produced a multimillion-dollar record. A 2004 EX Team Rocket Returns Torchic Gold Star graded PSA 10 sold for $2.7 million at Alt, becoming the most expensive English-language Pokémon card ever sold. Mudkip’s $3.72 million result now exceeds that price by more than $1 million, although the Art Academy Mudkip is a Japanese promotional card rather than a standard English set release.
The high-end market has also been producing records well below the multimillion-dollar level. CollectiblesNews.com recently reported that a 1996 CoroCoro Comic Promo Jigglypuff sold privately for a record $550,000 through Goldin, while a BGS Pristine 10 first-edition Slowking sold for $156,182 at Alt. Both established new highs for their respective characters.
Those results show how broad the upper end of the Pokémon market has become. The biggest prices are no longer limited to a handful of familiar Charizard and Pikachu cards. Gold Stars, early CoroCoro promos, trophy cards and extremely scarce contest releases have all produced major sales during 2026, particularly when only a handful of top-graded examples exist.
The Art Academy Mudkip may be one of the clearest examples yet. It was not pulled from a booster pack or distributed through a conventional retail product. It came from an art competition, only 100 copies of the winning design were produced, and just two have been graded by PSA. One of those two PSA 10s has now sold for $3.72 million.