A retired decorator from Woking, England, had no idea the Pokémon cards in his loft were worth anything. On October 21, 2026, his collection sold for £1.56 million, roughly $2.1 million, at Ewbank's Auctioneers in Surrey. The auction house calls it the most valuable trading card sale ever held in the UK.
How a few binders became $2.1 million
The seller, who has asked to stay anonymous, started buying cards in the late 1990s after his son got into the game. He figured they might be worth something one day and picked up complete sets on eBay for a few hundred pounds at a time. Then the binders went into the loft for about 15 years.
What sent him back up there was a local news story about another Ewbank's sale in April, where a teacher's three rare Pokémon cards brought £32,800 and paid for his wedding. He checked his own collection, and the rest is auction history.
The numbers
- Estimate: £250,000 to £270,000
- Final total: £1.56 million including buyer's fees (about £1.2 million in hammer prices)
- Commission bids before the sale even started: £825,000
- Top lot: a complete Legendary Collection master set, including a near-mint Charizard
- Other big lots: an EX Holon Phantoms master set at £91,000, and EX Deoxys and EX Team Rocket Returns master sets at £84,500 each
- Best flip: one complete set he bought from an overseas eBay seller for £300 sold for £75,000
The result beat the UK's previous record trading card auction, a sale at Stanley Gibbons in London this March that totaled just over £986,000. Ewbank's thinks it may be a European record too, though that hasn't been confirmed.
Why this collection was worth so much
It wasn't one miracle card. It was completeness and condition. Bidders kept pointing to how extensive and untouched the collection was: full master sets with nearly every rarity, kept out of play and out of the light for years. Complete sets from the e-Card and EX eras are hard to find today, and sets that have never been handled are even harder.
It's also part of a bigger 2026 story. Vintage Pokémon has been on a record run all year, from the $16.5 million Pikachu Illustrator in February to individual PSA 10 Legendary Collection cards setting new highs at auction this month.
Should you check your binders?
Most old binders aren't worth millions. But plenty are worth more than people think, especially complete sets, early holos, and cards that were sleeved and stored well. A few things to know before you dig them out:
- Don't clean, flatten or try to fix cards. You can lower their value.
- Keep sets together. A complete set is often worth more than its cards sold one by one.
- Get them looked at before you sell. Prices on older sets have moved a lot this year.
Bring them to Cards2Go
Every Cards2Go store does free appraisals, so bring the binder to our Freehold, Paramus or Langhorne location and we'll go through it with you. Want a head start? Read How Much Are My Cards Worth?, Is My Card Worth Grading? and How to Store and Protect Your Trading Cards.
