A collection of rare Pokémon trading cards stored in an attic for 15 years has sold for £1.56 million (approximately $2.1 million) at a UK auction. The sale, held by Ewbank’s Auctioneers in Surrey on October 21, 2026, reportedly set a new British record for a trading-card auction, with one complete set fetching £100,000 before fees.
The collection belonged to an anonymous retired painter and decorator from Woking, England, who began purchasing Pokémon cards in the late 1990s after his son became interested in collecting and trading them at school. What started as a potential investment eventually became a collection of rare, complete card sets that remained untouched for more than a decade.
According to the BBC, the owner did not realize how valuable his collection had become until he read a local newspaper article about a single Pokémon card selling for more than £6,000. He subsequently approached Ewbank’s for a valuation, bringing along cards that had been stored in specially designed binders.
The auction house discovered that the collection contained 42 complete sets, many in exceptional condition. The owner ultimately retained one set and offered the remaining 41 for sale.
James Spooner, Ewbank’s head of trading cards, described the discovery as unexpected, explaining that staff were astonished by both the collection’s condition and the owner’s lack of awareness of its potential value.
The auction, titled Pokémon: A Decade of Masters (1999–2009), substantially exceeded expectations. Initial valuations suggested the collection could fetch approximately £250,000 to £270,000. Instead, the final sale total reached £1.56 million, including buyer’s premium, with a hammer total of approximately £1.2 million.
The most valuable individual lot was a Legendary Collection Complete Master Set, which sold for £100,000 before fees. Originally estimated at £15,000 to £20,000, the set included all 110 cards from the expansion, 110 reverse holographic cards featuring the distinctive Firework pattern, and four box toppers. Its contents included a near-mint Charizard card.
Another significant lot was a Skyridge Complete Master Set, which achieved a £75,000 hammer price against an estimate of £20,000 to £40,000. The owner had reportedly purchased the set for approximately £300 from a seller in Malaysia through eBay. Its auction price represented 250 times his original purchase cost, before accounting for fees and other expenses.
Other notable results included an EX Holon Phantoms Complete Master Set that reached £91,000 including buyer’s premium. EX Team Rocket Returns and EX Deoxys master sets each achieved £84,500 including fees.
Ewbank’s described the event as its most successful auction in more than 30 years of operation. The auction house also claimed that the £1.56 million total surpassed the previous UK record for a trading-card auction, which it attributed to a Stanley Gibbons sale in London earlier in 2026.
The company suggested that the result could also represent a European trading-card auction record, although that wider claim has not been independently confirmed.
International demand contributed to the unusually strong results. Andrew Ewbank, who personally conducted the auction, said bidders participated from around the world and highlighted the collection’s completeness, condition and range of rare cards.
The anonymous seller originally began buying Pokémon cards because he believed they might become valuable. Rather than allowing his son to play with the investment collection, he kept those cards separate and eventually placed them in storage when his son’s interest in Pokémon declined.
The auction demonstrates the substantial prices that complete, well-preserved Pokémon Trading Card Game collections can command among collectors. However, the exceptional condition and rarity of the sets involved make the £1.56 million result unrepresentative of the value of ordinary Pokémon card collections.
