‘I spent £80 on new Pokémon card release and price of one left me floored’

Pokémon Mega Evolutions trading cards released in the UK over the weekend, and after spending £80 on packs, Social News reporter Zahna Eklund was left floored by what they pulled

Pokémon cards have exploded in popularity in recent years, and getting your hands on packs at a reasonable price can be difficult. Not only are there genuine fans playing the trading card game, or collectors wanting to put together binders full of their favorite cards, there are also scalpers scooping up as many packs as possible to sell them for a hefty profit, as the cards are in extremely high demand.

If you want to find Pokémon cards at retail prices, you’ll have to get lucky and find them in shops like WHSmiths, Smyths, and supermarkets like Asda and Tesco. Over the weekend, these shops started stocking the latest series of cards, Mega Evolutions, and people have been clamoring to get their hands on some.

So, as a lifelong Pokémon fan who collected the original series of cards back in the early 2000s, I was over the moon to be one of the people who scored a whole host of products as soon as they dropped.

Before the products dropped in shops, way back on July 15 (my 30th birthday, no less), the official Pokémon Center website dropped the pre-orders for the Mega Evolutions products. During that pre-order window, I managed to get my hands on an Elite Trainer Box and a Booster Bundle for a total of £78.93.

Three months of waiting later, and the cards arrived on my doorstep over the weekend – and what I got left me floored.

The most expensive cards in this set are the gold Mega Lucario, which is currently priced at $776 (£580), and the gold Mega Gardevoir, which you could sell for $550 (£411).

It won’t come as much of a surprise that I wasn’t lucky enough to pull either of these, but I did get some nice cards from the 15 packs which I opened. And although I’m a collector and not in it for the money, if I were to sell them, I’d easily double the almost £80 that I spent.

Anyone who collects Pokémon cards will know that the full art cards, also known as illustration rares (IRs) and special illustration rares (SIRs), are the goal. These are the cards that feature a full-size art of the Pokémon, instead of just a small box in the top half of the card. Not every full art card is worth big money, but they are the nicest to look at.

In my haul, I pulled full art cards of Litleo, Shroodle, Steelix, and Venusaur.

Of these, the Venusaur would earn me the most money, as it is currently priced at $22 (£16). However, it has the potential to earn over $143 (£107) if I get it professionally graded and it comes back as a perfect 10.

Similarly, the Steelix card is worth $20 (£15) ungraded, but the Litleo would only fetch me $6.50 (£4.87), and the Shroodle is worth $4.30 (£3.22).

I also pulled a number of EX cards, most of which are worth around $2 (£1.50) each. These are not full art cards, but they will feature slightly more impressive artwork than the standard cards, with the Pokémon looking like they’re jumping from the card.

But the prized possession in my collection came before I even opened a single pack of cards.

When you order an Elite Trainer Box from the Pokémon Center, you get two promotional cards included. In the box I bought, these were both cards of Alakazam. One card is a regular full-art card, and the other is exactly the same but features an official “Pokémon Center” stamp at the bottom.

This stamped card alone is currently worth $110 (£82), making it significantly more valuable than any of the cards I actually pulled from the packs. The non-stamped version is worth around $24 (£18), which still tops the cards I pulled.

My collection of cards is a National Pokedex, meaning I’m collecting one card for every Pokémon out there. Since I now have two of the same Alakazam card, my plan is to sell the stamped version at my local card shop to reinvest in the hobby, either by picking up some more packs to open or buying some individual cards I really want.

Mega Evolutions was only released in the UK this weekend, but plans for the next set, Phantasmal Flames, have already been announced. This set will release in November, and Pokémon Center pre-orders have already sold out.

For that set, I didn’t go quite as crazy with my spending, but I did manage to get my hands on a Booster Bundle of six packs for £23.94 – and I’ll be excitedly tearing into that next month.