Pokémon PSA 10 ‘Raincoat Pikachu’ Art Academy Card Sells for $1.037 Million at Goldin
Another exceptionally rare Pokémon Art Academy card has crossed the million-dollar mark, with a 2015 Japanese XY Promo Pikachu illustrated by Y. Fujishima selling for $1,037,000 in Goldin’s TCG Weekly Auction. The card, commonly recognized for its artwork showing Pikachu in a red raincoat beneath an orange umbrella, is graded PSA Gem Mint 10. The winning bid was $850,000 before buyer’s premium, bringing the final sale price to $1.037 million after 64 bids.
Its rarity comes from one of the more unusual distribution stories in the Pokémon hobby. The card was one of 10 winning designs from the inaugural Pokémon Art Academy promotion in Japan, which invited participants to create Pokémon artwork using the Pokémon Art Academy game for Nintendo 3DS. Each winning artist received just 100 copies featuring their own design.
That means only 100 examples of the Y. Fujishima Pikachu were originally distributed, and Goldin notes that it is unknown how many ever left the private ownership of the winning artist. Unlike cards pulled from booster packs or sold through normal retail products, the entire original supply was concentrated with the artist whose work appeared on the card.
Its $1.037 million result comes shortly after an even larger sale from the same 2015 contest. As CollectiblesNews.com reported in September, a PSA 10 Art Academy Mudkip illustrated by Daisuke Ochiai sold for $3.72 million through Fanatics Collect. Like the Pikachu, only 100 copies of the winning Mudkip design were originally produced.
The two results put the Pokémon Art Academy cards firmly among the highest-priced promotional Pokémon cards on the market. Their combination of original fan-created artwork, extremely limited distribution and very small number of publicly available copies separates them from even many traditionally rare Pokémon releases.
Illustration-related Pokémon cards have been producing extraordinary results elsewhere as well. A PSA 9 Pikachu Illustrator sold for $5 million at Heritage Auctions in September. That card was originally distributed to winners of illustration contests promoted through CoroCoro Comic in Japan, giving it a different origin but a similar connection between Pokémon artwork and extremely limited distribution.
Competition and trophy cards are also continuing to command major prices. Earlier this month, a 2014 Pokémon World Championships No. 1 Trainer Pikachu Trophy Card sold for $292,800 at Goldin. The CGC Mint 9 card was awarded at the Pokémon World Championships rather than distributed through an ordinary commercial release.
Those sales show how much of the top end of the Pokémon market is being driven by cards that collectors could never simply buy in a pack. Illustration contest winners, Art Academy promos and World Championship trophies were distributed under very specific circumstances, leaving tiny surviving populations and relatively few opportunities to buy them publicly.