More than a year after its release, the "Pikachu with Grey Felt Hat" promo is still the most popular Pokémon card on the market.
And it’s not particularly close.
Released as part of a collaboration between Pokémon and the Van Gogh Museum in September 2023, the card was created to help introduce new audiences to Vincent van Gogh’s work.
According to the museum, the collaboration had a “shared link with Japanese art and culture,” with van Gogh often using Japanese prints as inspiration for his work.
A number of Pokémon x Van Gogh Museum products were released, but it was the promo card, which put a Pikachu spin on van Gogh’s “Self-Portrait with Grey Felt Hat,” that immediately won over collectors and flippers alike.
Included for free with purchases made at the museum and online, the promo card exploded in price on the secondary market, with sales as high as $1,650 for one of the first PSA 10 copies.
Nearly 14 months after its release, the Pikachu promo card has maintained its grip on collectors as the most popular Pokémon card on the secondary market, and prices are climbing.
Among the Pokémon cards tracked by data tool Market Movers over the last 365 days, the "Pikachu with Grey Felt Hat" accounts for three of the top six cards between its PSA 10, PSA 9 and raw examples.
By far the most popular Pokémon card tracked by Market Movers over the last year, the Pikachu promo in a PSA 10 has sold more than 4,700 times with a current price of around $330. The second most popular card over that same period has been the "Pikachu with Grey Felt Hat" PSA 9, which has sold more than 3,400 times.
Market Movers has also logged more than 1,600 sales for raw examples of the promo card over the last 365 days, which ranks sixth among tracked Pokémon cards.
In addition to its high sales volume, prices for the Pikachu promo have surged in the weeks following its one-year anniversary.
After a number of $1,000-plus sales in October 2023, prices for PSA 10s collapsed in 2024 as the market was flooded with copies. Prices would trend around $200 from April to August — the lowest sale logged by Market Movers has been $68 — but have experienced a shift in recent weeks.
According to Market Movers, prices for the Pikachu PSA 10 are up 43% over the last 30 days across nearly 400 sales. Currently trending around $330, the card has jumped about $100 over just the last month.
That trend has carried to the other popular examples as well, with the PSA 9 up 67% and raw examples up 48% over the last month.
While it’s not uncommon for cards to see price boosts around anniversaries or during the holiday season, the surge for the "Pikachu with Grey Felt Hat" has come as the market continues to be flooded with PSA 10 copies.
According to third-party grading tracker GemRate, the Pikachu promo has raced up the grading charts since release, and is already PSA’s third-most graded Pokémon card of all time with nearly 58,000 total examples. The Pikachu with Grey Felt Hat started 2024 with under 7,500 PSA 10s, but has jumped to more than30,000 since, including an additional 2,000 since September.
Prices for cards typically decline as the supply increases — the Pikachu promo did exactly that to start 2024 — but the recent surge has bucked that trend as interest has remained extraordinary.
An ordinary trajectory might deliver a course correction to start 2025, but the Pikachu promo card has been anything but ordinary since it was created.
Ben Burrows is a reporter and editor for cllct.