Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.\u201cThis is the most iconic Pok\u00e9mon card\u00a0of all time,\u201d says Roy Raftery, holding up a small, brightly coloured trading card depicting a golden, fire-breathing dragon. He is standing in a\u00a0meeting room of London auction house Stanley Gibbons Baldwin\u2019s. \u201cCharizard,\u201d it reads. \u201cEvolves from Charmelon; Pok\u00e9mon Power: Energy Burn.\u201dIt\u2019s part of the Pok\u00e9mon Trading Card\u00a0Game, first launched in Japan in 1996\u00a0and across the globe three years later. \u201cCharizard was the Pok\u00e9mon that had the\u00a0most HP [hit points] and did the most damage,\u201d says Raftery, a trading-card and\u00a0video-game specialist.\u00a0Today, if the card is a mint-condition, first-edition Charizard, it could fetch six figures. In 2022, one sold for $420,000 at\u00a0trading-card marketplace PWCC (now Fanatics Collect). \u201cIn the past year, they\u2019ve been going for around $200,000,\u201d says Peter Petipas, a pop-culture specialist at New Jersey-based auction house Goldin.\u00a0The Pok\u00e9mon universe was first conceived by Japanese video-game designer Satoshi Tajiri, who based the game on the idea of collecting bugs, his childhood hobby. Working alongside illustrator Ken Sugimori, he produced a pair of video games (Pok\u00e9mon Red and Blue) in which the player must collect all 151 species of the \u201cPocket Monsters\u201d, from the yellow mouse-like Pikachu, who has the power to create lightning storms, to the blue, frog-like Bulbasaur. Released on the Nintendo Game Boy in 1996, the games were a surprise hit that sparked a wave of \u201cPok\u00e9mania\u201d.\u00a0\u201cIn 1999, it was the thing to do,\u201d recalls Raftery. London-based collector Daniel Quinn, 32, says: \u201cI remember my mum taking me to HMV in Birmingham to buy me and my\u00a0brother Pok\u00e9mon Red and Blue; I used to buy Pok\u00e9mon cards with my lunch money.\u201d\u00a0Three decades on, Pok\u00e9mon holds the top\u00a0spot as the world\u2019s highest-grossing media franchise. \u201cYou can\u2019t go anywhere without seeing Pikachu or Charizard,\u201d says Petipas. The empire spans everything from plushies and T-shirts from\u00a0Target and H&M to\u00a0Tiffany necklaces and\u00a0Baccarat crystal ornaments. David Zwirner showed paintings of Pok\u00e9mon by\u00a0Katherine Bernhardt in his Hong Kong gallery, and\u00a0there was a furore at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam in\u00a02023 when a new range of merchandise was offered with\u00a0a special-edition card of Pikachu, done in the style of the Dutch artist\u2019s Self\u00a0Portrait with Grey Felt Hat.\u00a0Both Raftery and Petipas attribute the new surge in interest to the launch of the augmented reality mobile game Pok\u00e9mon Go in 2016. \u201cPretty much everyone on the planet decided they wanted to be a Pok\u00e9mon Master and prices shot up,\u201d says Petipas, citing another \u201cgiant spike\u201d during the early Covid lockdowns.\u00a0You can\u2019t go anywhere without seeing Pikachu or CharizardBut what really \u201csent it to the moon\u201d, says Petipas, was the American wrestler and influencer Logan Paul doing a \u201cbox break\u201d (or opening a sealed box of cards) live on YouTube in October 2020. Paul has 23.6mn subscribers on YouTube, is the former WWE United States Champion and co-founder of the energy drink Prime. He is also the owner of the \u201cmost expensive Pok\u00e9mon trading card sold in a private sale\u201d, as classified by Guinness World Records in 2022, the Pikachu \u201cIllustrator\u201d. \u201cThe\u00a0rarest card of all\u201d, confirms Raftery, it was\u00a0sent to just 39 children who had won a\u00a0competition to design their own card in\u00a01998. Paul\u2019s version is the only one with a\u00a0perfect 10 grading from authenticating body PSA (Professional Sports Authenticator). In an Instagram post, Paul\u00a0wore the card in\u00a0a custom diamond pendant, complete with a gem-studded Pok\u00e9 Ball, writing, \u201cMy\u00a01\/1 PSA 10 Pikachu Illustrator that I\u00a0purchased for $5,275,000.\u201d\u00a0\u201cInfluencers like Logan Paul have glorified buying really expensive graded cards like they\u2019re a stock option,\u201d says Quinn. \u201cIt just puts nostalgia goggles on for\u00a0everyone and sends the demand crazy.\u201d\u00a0A winning collection, however, can be\u00a0far more humble. Quinn buys new sets,\u00a0which are typically released by The Pok\u00e9mon Company six times a year. Sold in\u00a0sealed packs of 10 for around \u00a33.99, the\u00a0cards inside vary from \u201ccommon\u201d (marked with a circle) to \u201crare\u201d (a star), depending on the number printed. \u201cEven modern sets have cards in them that are worth \u00a32,000,\u201d explains Raftery.\u00a0Quinn also seeks out second-hand cards, mostly from specialist site Troll and Toad but sometimes from eBay. \u201cThe most valuable card I have is probably a Crystal Lugia that I picked up as a kid, which goes\u00a0for anywhere from \u00a3800 to thousands, but my favourites are Marshtomp and Meowth,\u201d he adds of the mud fish and\u00a0Persian-cat characters.\u00a0Japanese cards have their own cachet. They are released more frequently and \u201ca lot of people consider the \u2018quality\u2019 to be much better\u201d, says Ryan Brayshaw, who runs Kado Collectables, a site that streamlines buying Japanese cards. \u201cA\u00a0lot of exclusive cards are printed in Japan only,\u201d he adds, pointing to the Masked Royal SR, given to winners of the \u201cJapan sealed games\u201d tournament in 2017 and limited to 100 copies. He\u00a0sold his for\u00a0\u00a339,000 in 2023.But prices can be volatile. \u201cIt really is a rollercoaster,\u201d says Raftery. Since 2021, card production has increased, causing the value of some cards to drop, he notes. Fakes (easily identified by thinner card) abound too. It\u2019s wise to be wary when rifling through collections. I recently read that an ungraded \u201cSecret Rare\u201d Umbreon VMax had sold for more than $1,000, and I was sure I\u2019d seen the bunny-like\u00a0black Pok\u00e9mon among the cards\u00a0strewn about my house by my 11-year-old son. \u201cYep, but it\u2019s a fake,\u201d he tells me. \u201cFreddie in my class traded it to me.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.\u201cThis is the most iconic Pok\u00e9mon card\u00a0of all time,\u201d says Roy Raftery, holding up a small, brightly coloured trading card depicting a golden, fire-breathing dragon. He<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":270522,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-270521","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-culture"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=270521"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270521\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":270523,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270521\/revisions\/270523"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/270522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=270521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=270521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=270521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}