A 2015 Japanese Art Academy Mudkip promo card graded PSA 10 sold for $4,880,000 in Goldin’s 2026 Pokémon 30th Anniversary Auction, which closed late on Oct. 25 and early on Oct. 26, Eastern time. A 1997 Gold 1st Place Trophy Pikachu graded PSA 8 followed at $3,080,500, according to Goldin’s lot records.
Both prices include Goldin’s 22% buyer’s premium. The Mudkip’s winning bid was $4,000,000, and the Trophy Pikachu’s was $2,525,000. Those two lots were the only ones in the sale to pass $1 million, but several other cards reached six figures.
The top 10 results
The table below lists the 10 highest prices in the auction. Each figure comes from Goldin’s own lot data, read on Nov. 3, 2026, and includes the buyer’s premium. Lot numbers are Goldin’s.
| Lot | Item | Grade | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | 2015 Japanese XY Promo Art Academy Mudkip (Daisuke Ochiai) | PSA 10 | $4,880,000 |
| 1 | 1997 Gold 1st Place 1st Tournament Trophy Pikachu | PSA 8 | $3,080,500 |
| 11 | 2015 Japanese XY Promo Art Academy Gourgeist (Rina) | PSA 10 | $976,000 |
| 12 | 2015 Japanese XY Promo Art Academy Sableye (Iwaiya) | PSA 10 | $976,000 |
| 18 | 2007 POP Series 5 Gold Star Umbreon | PSA 10 | $738,100 |
| 3 | 2004 EX Team Rocket Returns Gold Star Mudkip | PSA 10 | $610,000 |
| 45 | 1996 Japanese Base Set No Rarity Symbol Holo Mewtwo | PSA 10 | $603,900 |
| 19 | 2007 POP Series 5 Gold Star Espeon | PSA 10 | $573,400 |
| 250 | 2002 Legendary Collection Reverse Holo Pikachu | PSA 10 | $481,900 |
| 14 | 2002 Legendary Collection Reverse Holo Charizard | PSA 10 | $463,600 |
Three of the top four lots came from the same 2015 promotion. Goldin’s descriptions say these cards were 10 winners of the first Art Academy contest, in which players submitted artwork made in the Pokémon Art Academy game for the Nintendo 3DS.
Why the Art Academy cards mattered
According to Goldin, each winning artist received “just 100 copies” of their card, and it is unknown how many ever left the artists’ hands. The Mudkip lot title lists a PSA population of three, and the listing says all three copies PSA has recorded carry the GEM MT 10 grade.
Five Art Academy promos graded PSA 10 sold in this auction. Along with the Mudkip, Gourgeist and Sableye, a Pikachu illustrated by Y. Fujishima brought $274,500 and a Goomy by Mio Muroi brought $122,000. Added together, those five lots come to $7,228,500.
That is roughly a quarter of the whole sale. We reached that share by dividing the $7,228,500 by our auction-wide total, which is explained below. The Mudkip on its own drew 73 bids, the most of any lot in the sale, and its listing showed 33,282 views when we checked.
The Mudkip was also one of the last lots to finish. Goldin’s data show its final bid at 1:26 a.m. Eastern on Oct. 26 and the lot closing 30 minutes later, at 1:56 a.m. The listing had opened with a minimum bid of $25,000.
A trophy card from the first tournament
The Trophy Pikachu, lot 1, has a different history. Goldin says it was awarded to a first-place winner at the first official Pokémon TCG tournament, held at Makuhari Messe in Chiba, Japan, in June 1997. The listing says it is one of eight copies in PSA’s census.
Its bidding ended earlier than the Mudkip’s. The lot closed at 10:30 p.m. Eastern on Oct. 25, and its data list the most recent bid on Oct. 23. In its Mudkip listing, Goldin noted that PSA had graded 56 Pikachu Illustrator cards at the time of writing, seven times the eight recorded for this trophy card.
That Illustrator comparison gives a sense of scale. On Feb. 16, 2026, a PSA 10 Pikachu Illustrator sold for $16,492,000 at Goldin, and Guinness World Records recognized it as the most expensive Pokémon card sold at auction. The October top lot sold for less than a third of that price.
The Gold Star cards
Below the promo cards, seven of the top 25 lots were English-language Gold Star cards. The Umbreon and Espeon from 2007’s POP Series 5 closed just over a minute apart, for $738,100 and $573,400. Goldin says fewer than 7% of the more than 850 copies of each in PSA’s census have reached a 10.
A 2004 Gold Star Mudkip from EX Team Rocket Returns, lot 3, added $610,000. Combined with the Art Academy card, the two Mudkip lots brought in $5,490,000. Sealed product was on offer too: a 2004 EX Team Rocket Returns booster box of 36 packs sold for $384,300.
The whole auction in numbers
Goldin’s lot records list 366 lots in the auction, all in the Pokémon category, numbered 1 through 366. Of those, 358 sold and eight closed unsold with no bids. Five of the unsold lots were 2026 Japanese 30th Celebration cards graded by TAG.
We added up the results ourselves. The winning bids on the 358 sold lots total $23,401,456. Applying the 22% buyer’s premium listed on every lot gives about $28.55 million. That is in line with trade site ICv2, which reported the sale at “over 28 million.”
Most of the money came from a small group of lots. By our count, 53 lots sold for $100,000 or more with the premium, together accounting for about 80% of the total. The top two alone made up about 28%. The median sold lot, however, went for $14,640, and the cheapest sold for $305.
For readers wondering how these prices compare with the hobby’s best-known rarities, our guide to the rarest Pokémon card and its price covers the Pikachu Illustrator and other cards often named in that conversation.
Goldin’s figures in this report reflect its lot records as read on Nov. 3, 2026. Each listing notes that population counts in its description were accurate when the lot was posted and may since have changed.
Featured image: A Pokémon trading card vending machine at Montreal’s Central Station (illustrative). Photo: One of Many Tims / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)
