I called it hearsay because there’s very little proof of this ever happening. There’s nothing I could find online referencing this sale until around 2008. If this was a sale which occurred in 2000, that’s 8 years of absolutely nobody mentioning it that I could find. If there’s anything you’re able to dig up before then I’d love to know about it, as otherwise it looks like something someone pulled out of thin air one day.
The way I see it is that companies like Pojo would have been all over a sale of that magnitude but their website mentions nothing about any sale like this: even their price guide which was active online from 1999 until it was last updated in 2002 mentions the 1997 No 1. 2. and 3. trainers but in terms of the Illustrator states “These cards will be added as soon as information becomes available.”
If a sale did happen, fantastic! I’d love to read more about it. But from my perspective as an outsider trawling through old internet posts: it very much feels like hearsay.
If this sale is 100% something which really existed then I totally agree with you that I am misinformed as my own searches have pulled up a whole load of nothing. Your post here is one of many I have read referencing this sale, but is also one of many I’ve read which make no attempt to reveal more information about the sale itself. Please don’t take that as me disbelieving you, I’m just someone who likes to be able to back things up with facts.
If this was in response to my post specifically, I’ve not done any cherry picking myself, I’ve just used data I could find from PokéGym (like this “There were only 12 given out. One sold for $10’000 on ebay!!” comment from 2008) and our very own Giant Auction Thread. If you search for Illustrator you’ll find 20+ pages of results dating back to 2014 - the first 12 pages of which cover the period between 2014 and 2017, and the only reason I stopped at 2017 is because it appears there was a lot of drama surrounding one of the 2017 sales and a lot of relevant posts have since been deleted (which made searching less fun) - that itself related to an eBay sale, not a YJA sale which I believe was the $12,500 copy.