How Many Pikachu Illustrator Cards Were Made? The Count, the Population and Every Sale

39 Pikachu Illustrator cards were awarded, to winners of three illustration contests run by CoroCoro Comic in 1997 and 1998: 23, then 8, then 8. At least 41 are known, because two more copies, attributed to a co-creator of the card game, were sold later, and by CGC's count of June 2026 about 59 have reached the market, unawarded copies included. The graders' population reports add up to about 94 entries as of November 9, 2026, but that is not 94 cards: a card that is regraded, or moved to another grader, can be counted twice.

The card was never sold in packs. The only copy graded PSA 10 sold at auction for $16,492,000 on February 16, 2026, recognized by Guinness World Records as the record for any trading card at auction. In 2026 alone, 12 copies sold at public auctions we could confirm, for $34.0 million in total, from $344,040 for a PSA 5 to that record.

Pokémon Illustrator

How many Pikachu Illustrator cards were made?

No print run was ever published, so nobody knows how many were printed. The numbers that can be traced come from the magazine pages that announced the contests and their winners, and from the graders' population reports.

How the card was given out: three CoroCoro contests

Shogakukan's monthly CoroCoro Comic, the Japanese magazine that gave away the first Pokémon card promos, ran three illustration contests for the card game. Readers mailed in a drawing of a Pokémon, and the best entries won the card that certified them as an official Pokémon Card Illustrator.

• Best Award: the winning drawing was printed as a real card with the artist's name: Poliwrath, Snorlax and Mr. Mime from the first contest, Mewtwo from the second. Each winner received 20 copies of their own card, and the three first-contest winners also received one Illustrator each. They did not receive 20 Illustrators, a mix-up repeated in many answers online.
• Excellence Award: the Illustrator card alone, called the certification card in the contest rules. In the second and third contests, some Excellence winners were chosen for their drawing and others for the attacks they invented.
• Delivery: for the first contest, CoroCoro editors and two staff of the card production room at Creatures, the company that develops the game, Koichi Oyama and Takumi Akabane, visited the three Best Award winners with their cards.
• No winner in the third contest: the August 1998 issue says no entry was good enough for the Best Award, so no new card came out of it.

The second contest's results page lists the card only for its seven Excellence winners. Its Best Award winner is counted as the 39th Illustrator by analogy with the first contest, which is why the count is 38 in print and 39 by convention. A winner's letter is known: a Creatures, Inc. letter dated July 1, 1998, sold in June 2026 with its card, which PSA labels "Awarded".

Why you read 39, 41 or 59

The number grew as collectors found sources. Fan wikis said 4 in 2011, and forum posts and the press gave 6 to 9 in 2013. In February 2014, a Japanese collector photographed the original contest pages at the National Diet Library, and 39 became the accepted count.

• 41: two more copies were later sold by a private seller whom auction listings name as Yuichi Konno, one of the people who wrote the rules of the card game. Auction listings and CGC have used this figure since 2022.
• 42 or more: collectors tracked three Illustrator sales in 2020 by a seller they believe to be Konno; he has not confirmed it.
• About 59: in June 2026, CGC wrote that about 20 copies that were never awarded had reached the market. A June 2026 auction listing went further and said most copies in the hobby were never awarded.

How those extra copies left the printer is not documented anywhere public. What matters for a buyer: an Illustrator's value rests on authenticity and grade, and the graders accept unawarded copies as genuine cards.

How many are graded

PSA's population page for the card, read on November 9, 2026, lists 58 copies from Authentic to PSA 9: 15 PSA 9, 6 PSA 8.5, 13 PSA 8, 1 PSA 7.5, 7 PSA 7, 2 PSA 6, 2 PSA 5, 2 PSA 4 and 10 Authentic. It does not show the PSA 10, which exists: it is the copy that sold for $16,492,000. CGC counted 23 copies in June 2026 and listed 22 on November 9, 2026.

PSA's count went from 10 copies in 2016 (still 10 in 2019) to 19 in December 2020, 35 in December 2023, 53 in January 2026 and 58 by November 2026. Three things push the population entries above the 39 awarded cards:

• Unawarded copies, about 20 by CGC's count.
• Crossovers: a card cracked out of one grader's slab and graded by another can stay in the first grader's count. Collectors have tracked CGC copies moved to TAG and PSA, and a BGS copy moved to CGC.
• Resubmissions: a card regraded by the same company can appear twice until the old certificate is canceled.

So the honest answer to how many Illustrators are graded is "about 94 entries for somewhere between 41 and 59 cards". In 2024, collectors who traced the copies one by one estimated about 55 distinct cards behind some 65 entries. For how the graders compare, see PSA vs CGC vs BGS vs TAG.

Is there only one 10?

At PSA, yes: one copy, certificate 23000982, the card Logan Paul owned. A well-known Illustrator dealer wrote in 2016 that this 10 was a regrade that took several attempts, and collectors say it was a 9 before.

At CGC, no: its census lists five Gem Mint 10 copies on November 9, 2026, and CGC wrote in June 2026 that six copies had graded above 9.5. CGC graded one copy 9.5, certified under the pedigree name "The Swirllustrator" at its owner's request, which sold for $672,000 at auction on October 29, 2022; since CGC has graded only one 9.5, the $1,703,100 private sale of a CGC 9.5 in June 2026 was most likely the same card. A CGC 10 sold for $495,000 at auction on September 23, 2023, and one sold in China on February 18, 2026 for RMB 14,500,000, about $2.09 million by CGC's conversion.

Collectors also report two CGC 10 copies crossed over to TAG, where they graded 10 and 9. So the PSA 10 is one of a kind at PSA, but not the only Illustrator in a 10 holder.

Every public sale, 2016 to 2026

The prices below are what buyers paid, buyer's premium included, for the sales confirmed by the auction house or the press reporting it. A PSA 9 went from $54,970 in November 2016 to $840,000 in June 2022, then to $5,000,000 on September 18, 2026, a record for the grade and, for a few days, the second-highest price paid at auction for any Pokémon card, until a PSA 10 Raincoat Pikachu sold for $8,400,000 later in September 2026.

The February 2022 PSA 7 was reported at $900,000 at the time; the auction house's own record shows $720,000, the figure used here. The October 22, 2026 PSA 9 is the price and date shown by the selling platform, which does not say whether a buyer's premium applies.

Private deals, and sales we could not confirm at the source, as reported by the buyer, the grader, sales trackers or the press:

What a Pikachu Illustrator is worth, by grade

There is no list price: each copy sells on its own, a few times a year. The latest public sale in each grade is the best guide:

Prices jumped in 2026: a PSA 9 sold for $625,000 on August 8, 2025, then for $1,406,250 on March 27, 2026, $5,000,000 on September 18, 2026 and $3,237,954 on October 22, 2026. The cheapest copy sold at public auction in 2026 was a PSA 5, at $344,040 on May 17, 2026.

Two copies of the same grade can sell far apart. Several 2026 copies carried a sticker from a third-party grade review service on their slab: the $5,000,000 PSA 9, the $727,120 PSA 8.5, the $843,750 PSA 8.5 and the $1,079,700 Authentic. PSA's own price guide for the card, read on November 9, 2026, still showed $4,000,000 for a PSA 10, $840,000 for a PSA 9 and $480,000 for a PSA 8, below the 2026 sales.

The Logan Paul card: $5,275,000 in 2021, $16,492,000 in 2026

• July 22, 2021: Logan Paul bought the PSA 10 from a collector in Dubai for $5,275,000: $4,000,000 in cash plus a PSA 9 Illustrator valued at $1,275,000, which he had bought in June 2021.
• April 2, 2022: Guinness World Records handed him the certificate for the most expensive Pokémon card sold in a private sale, at WrestleMania 38, where he walked out wearing the card on a necklace.
• January 5 to February 16, 2026: he put it up for auction with the diamond necklace. Bidding closed at a $13,300,000 hammer after 97 bids; with the 24% buyer's premium, the total was $16,492,000.
• The buyer was AJ Scaramucci. Guinness World Records recognized the sale as the most expensive trading card ever sold at auction.

The full story of the record sales is in the most expensive Pokémon cards ever sold.

Is it the rarest Pokémon card?

It is the most expensive, not the scarcest. Several early prize cards were given out in smaller numbers:

What sets the Illustrator apart is that it is one card, not a set of placings, with a Pikachu drawn by Atsuko Nishida, the artist behind Pikachu's original design, and a long trail of record sales. Our list of the 100 rarest Pokémon cards ranks them all by copies and price, and CoroCoro Pokémon cards covers every promo the magazine gave out.

What is printed on the card

• ILLUSTRATOR in the banner where a Trainer card says TRAINER, and the name ポケモンイラストレーター, Pokémon Illustrator.
• The artwork: Pikachu with a giant pen and a brush, next to a drawing of Charmander, in a holofoil box. Atsuko Nishida is credited at the bottom left.
• The text, translated: "At the Pokémon Card Game Illustration Contest, your illustration was recognized as excellent. We therefore recognize you as an Official Certified Pokémon Card Illustrator and honor your achievement."
• A pen nib in place of a set symbol, a two-star rarity mark and no card number. The back is the original Japanese back of the time.

No official reprint exists. The "Incorrect Illustrator" and "Corrected Illustrator" names seen in listings belong to a different card, the CoroCoro Pikachu promo of 1996 to 1998, whose artist credit was corrected. Pikachu promos from later illustration contests also turn up in searches for the card; they are modern promos, not the Illustrator.

How to spot a fake

Counterfeits exist, and some reached graders. From the tells CGC published after catching one in 2023:

• The fake's font is smaller and its pen-nib symbol larger.
• The s and the A of "Illus. Atsuko" sit too close together.
• The colors are duller and the holo pattern differs; the artwork sits lower, so Pikachu's brush does not reach the top of the art box.
• Under ultraviolet light, the genuine foil reflects much of the light; the fake looks darker.

A raw Illustrator offered for a few hundred or a few thousand dollars is a fake or a proxy. Buy only a copy graded by a major grader, check its certificate number on the grader's site, and read our guide to spotting fake Pokémon cards.

FAQ

How many Pikachu Illustrator cards are there?

39 were awarded in 1997 and 1998 and at least 41 are known. CGC put the number on the market at about 59 in June 2026, unawarded copies included. The graders' population reports add up to about 94 entries as of November 9, 2026, but some cards are counted twice.

How many PSA 10 Pikachu Illustrators are there?

One, certificate 23000982, which sold for $16,492,000 on February 16, 2026. CGC lists five Gem Mint 10 copies as of November 9, 2026.

How many PSA 9 Pikachu Illustrators are there?

15 on PSA's population page, read on November 9, 2026. The last one sold at public auction went for $3,237,954 on October 22, 2026; the highest price, $5,000,000, was paid on September 18, 2026.

How was the Pikachu Illustrator given out?

As a prize in three CoroCoro Comic illustration contests, announced in the November 1997, May 1998 and June 1998 issues. It was never sold in packs.

Who bought the PSA 10 Pikachu Illustrator?

AJ Scaramucci bought it at auction for $16,492,000 on February 16, 2026. Logan Paul had owned it since July 2021.

How much is a Pikachu Illustrator worth?

From $344,040 for a PSA 5 (May 17, 2026) to $5,000,000 for a PSA 9 (September 18, 2026) at public auction in 2026, and $16,492,000 for the only PSA 10 (February 16, 2026).

Is the Pikachu Illustrator the rarest Pokémon card?

It is the most expensive, but not the scarcest: the 1997 Trophy Pikachu cards were given out four per placing, and the 1999 Secret Super Battle and Tropical Mega Battle trophy cards about nine per placing.

Why is the Pikachu Illustrator so expensive?

It was a prize for a handful of readers, it is a single card rather than a set, it shows Pikachu by the artist who designed him, and its record sales made it the most famous Pokémon card. For the wider picture, see why Pokémon cards are so expensive.