James Spooner said Pokemon cards from a retired decorator in Woking, UK sold for £1.56 million at Ewbank's on Wednesday after bidders phoned in from around the world. The sale became the auction house's most successful in more than 30 years of business.
Ewbank's auction in Surrey
Spooner, who heads trading cards at Ewbank’s, said the reaction was immediate when he saw the collection. “jaws hit the floor,” he said, adding: “When we saw what he had — all in mint condition — we couldn't believe it.”
The collection included The Legendary Collection Complete Master Set, which sold for £100,000. Ewbank's said the most intense interest came because the cards were pristine, complete and untouched, a combination that pushed the lot far beyond a casual hobby sale.
Woking loft discovery
The retiree said his son started getting cards and swapping them at school in the late 1990s, then lost interest. He kept the cards stored away in his loft, thinking they looked nice and might be a good investment. He later said he did not know they were valuable until he read about a single card fetching £6,000.
“I know people always talk about finding treasure in the attic, but in my case that is literally true,” he said. Another set he bought from a Malaysian eBay seller for £300 later sold for £75,000, showing how a small outlay can turn into a much larger auction result when a collection is complete and untouched.
Andrew Braund and the market
The sale followed a separate Ewbank's result in April this year, when Andrew Braund brought a 20-year-old collection of Pokemon cards he had kept in his parents' attic. Ewbank's took £32,800 for his three rarest cards on April 16, and Braund used the proceeds to pay for his August wedding. That outcome shows the market can reward individual cards as well as full sets, depending on condition and rarity.
The same market has also moved at the top end. In February, the Pikachu Illustrator card sold for $16,492,000 after 41 days of bidding, and Logan Paul had bought it for $5.275 million in July 2021. With more than 10 billion Pokemon cards printed last year alone and 85 billion created in total, the Woking sale stands out because this collection was stored, forgotten and then turned into a record result for Ewbank's.
