Special Pokémon Snap TCG Cards Sell for Record High Prices

A trio of special Pokémon Trading Card Game (TCG) cards, which were part of a photo contest for Pokémon Snap, just sold for record amounts.

As reported by Dicebreaker, the cards all feature images that players took in Pokémon Snap and submitted to a contest in 1999. The winners of that contest had their photos made into limited-edition Pokémon cards that were awarded to the winning contestants, making them ultra rare.

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One of the cards, which featured Squirtle and of which there are only fifteen copies, sold for an incredible $73,200 on Goldin on Nov. 19, which is the highest price ever for the Pokémon. On the same day, a Charmander sold for $79,300. Those two were from the same Pokémon Snap contest. A third card, which was a Bulbasaur from a different Pokémon Snap contest, brought in $80,520.

While those numbers are impressive and in many cases record-setting for the Pokémon on the card, they’re far from the most expensive cards in the game. According to TCGplayer Infinite, a special Illustrator Pikachu sold to YouTuber Logan Paul for $5,275,000 in 2022. There’s been some debate over the actual price of that card, though, as the second-highest selling card was a special holographic Charizard that fetched $420,000 in 2022.

Released in 1999, Pokémon Snap was a spin-off game in the titular series that allowed players to take pictures of the world’s various creatures, in some cases while pelting them with a truly criminal number of apples. I have a lot of fond memories of the game, and I do remember hearing news of all the photo contests surrounding it, so it’s neat to see that piece of the past coming up again.

The Pokémon TCG is a collectible card game in which players build decks and battle against each other. An online version of the game is available for various platforms, including Android, iOS, and PC.