I accidentally stumbled upon this treasure trove earlier today: pokegym.net/gallery/browseimages.php?c=173 - it’s PokeGym’s Trophy Promos gallery which hasn’t had much activity since 2011.
In 2008 the Illustrator image was added with a note that a copy had recently sold for $10,000 and it was believed that only between 6 and 12 copies of existed (something which appears to have remained the same until around 2014 or so). In 2009 a picture of the English No. 1 Trainer was added with the claim that those usually sell around the $7,500 mark.
It seems as though fewer than 20 Pokémon cards were valued over $1,000 at that point (even the 30 PSA 10 1st Ed. Base Charizards which had been graded were $700 in 2009), so for the English trophies to readily sell for $7,500 must have meant that the people buying them believed they were well worth that amount at the time.
I don’t know what activity there was in the years following 2008, but several forum posts imply that the $10,000 value stayed the same up to at least early 2011, however in 2013 the Illustrator was a $100,000 card (graded, mind you), and of course public sales for English trophies are nowhere to be seen.
I’m wondering:
Was there still a relatively small gap between the Illustrator and English No. 1 Trainers when that sale occurred in 2013 or was the 2013 sale completely unexpected?
If a 2004 English trophy card were to appear for sale today how would it compare to the recent $225,000 Illustrator sales we’ve seen?
How would a 2004 English trophy card compare to a 1997/98 Japanese trophy?
There’s really not a comparison to be made here. English trophies are highly prized but the Illustrator is different in many ways and the price reflects that. Early trophies are also valued much more highly than recent trophies.
Edit: There were also extremely few Illustrators over here in the western world at the time (2011).
Is that because fewer people know they exist or is it more a case that trophy collectors tend to focus specifically on Japanese cards?
I’m curious what sort of value would be expected if a Worlds 2004 No. 1 Trainer card appeared for sale now - would it be similar to the $7,500 figure from 2009 or would we be looking at prices closer to the 1997/98 Japanese trophy cards?
The english pikas will always be behind the japanese trophies. The English are actually re-designs of the japanese trophies.
Also the japanese were the original Trophy Cards. They were only released for 3 years. The English had the same art for 10 years.
The japanese look better as well. I own all of the english and japanese pika trophies, and the amount of inquiries for Japanese vs English aren’t even in the same universe. Thats not to say english has zero demand, they are some of the rarest cards in the hobby. The japanese are just wholesale more desirable.
The Japanese Trophy Pikas look a million times better in my opinion. They capture the original spirit and childhood innocence of Pokémon. The English Trophy Pikas don’t move me in even close to the same way.