Retired Woking decorator's attic Pokémon cards sell for £1.56 million at auction
The collection had been stored in the owner's attic for about 15 years
A retired decorator from Woking has sold a collection of Pokémon cards, which sat in his attic for about 15 years, for £1.56 million at auction in Surrey.
The collection went under the hammer at Ewbank's, just outside Woking, on 21st October.
Ewbank's said it was the UK's best ever trading card auction.
YouTubers, collectors and investors bid up to £100,000 for a single lot.
The total beat the previous best, set in March in London, when a sale at Stanley Gibbons took just over £986,000 including buyer's premium.
Ewbank's believes it may also be a European record, although this is unconfirmed.
The single-owner collection, titled Pokémon: A Decade of Masters (1999-2009), was also the auction house's most successful sale in over 30 years in business.
It is the biggest payday for the seller, who does not want to be identified.
The top lot was the Legendary Collection Complete Master Set.
It included all 110 cards from the set, the 110 Reverse Holo 'Firework' cards and the four Box Toppers, with the Charizard card in near-mint condition.
It had been estimated at £15,000 to £20,000 but went for a hammer price of £100,000.
Another set, the Sky Ridge Charizard set, was estimated at £20,000 to £40,000 and took a hammer price of £75,000.
The collector had no idea the cards might have significant value until he read a story in his local newspaper about Ewbank's.
The story reported the auction house taking over £6,000 for a single card.
That came from an April sale of three cards from teacher Andrew Braund's 20-year-old collection, which made £32,800 and paid for his August wedding.
The retired decorator checked his own cards and found several of the same type.
He took a sample of his collection to Ewbank's to have them assessed.
James Spooner, Head of Trading Cards at Ewbank's, said: "When we saw what he had - all in mint condition - we couldn't believe it, or the fact that he had no idea what they were worth."
He said: "When we then discovered that he had 42 such sets, our jaws hit the floor. We got to sell 41 of them, and he kept one."
The collector said he began buying cards when his son was young.
He said: "When my son was young, in the late 1990s, he started getting cards and swapping them at school. I thought they looked nice and wondered whether they might be a good investment."
He said: "I was lucky enough to find someone in Malaysia who sold complete sets, and I bought a couple of things from them on eBay. They then asked me if I would be interested in buying a complete master set of Pokémon cards as they had about two or three master sets for each issue."
He said: "I thought that it would be cheaper to buy the full set rather than keep buying sealed packs of random cards in hope that when you opened them you could complete a set. The first set I bought cost me around £300. It's the Sky Ridge Charizard set."
The cards were placed in bespoke Pokémon binders while still sealed and in mint condition.
They were stored in the attic after the collector's son lost interest in Pokémon.
The collector said: "He had his own cards, but he never got to touch these, I'm glad to say. I know people always talk about finding treasure in the attic, but in my case that is literally true. I had no idea what I had until the team at Ewbank's explained it to me."
Ewbank's has held dedicated auctions for trading cards for five years, with sales totalling more than £1.1 million.
Mr Spooner said: "Even with that, this is easily the most valuable collection we have handled so far - we thought it might go as high as £270,000, then the pre-sale bids started coming in and we realised we were on to something much bigger. The day before the sale we already had £825,000 in commission bids."
Andrew Ewbank, who runs the business set up by his late father Chris, conducted the sale from the rostrum himself.
At the end of the auction, he thanked bidders and told them he was going for a lie down.
He later said: "The build-up to this sale has been phenomenal, and on the day it did not disappoint. We had bidders from all over the world and more bidders in the saleroom itself at any time since before the COVID pandemic. The buzz was incredible, especially because the collectors could not believe how good this collection was - extensive, untouched, complete, and with just about every rarity you could hope for."
He said: "This is the biggest total Ewbank's have taken for a single sale ever. That record was held previously by the Robertson Collection of items from the Studio of Francis Bacon - including oil portraits, dog sketches, mutilated face studies, and personal papers - which grossed over £1 million in 2007."