Goldin's 2026 Pokemon 30th Anniversary auction opened for pre-bidding on October 6 and closes on Saturday, October 25 at 10 p.m. Eastern, with thirty-minute extended bidding. Its headliner is a card the hobby has talked about for years and never seen sold: the 1997 Pokemon Japanese Promo Gold 1st Place 1st Tournament #1 Trophy Pikachu, graded PSA 8, the only example in PSA's census.
Where the bidding stands
On October 10 the lot stood at $2,225,000 before Goldin's 22 percent buyer's premium, which is $2,714,500 all in, after 29 bids. The previous record for any Trophy Pikachu was $1,769,000, paid in May 2026 at Goldin for a 1998 Bronze 3rd Place 3rd Tournament card in PSA 10. The Gold passed that in pre-bidding, before the auction had properly opened.
What the card is
The first official Pokemon TCG tournament was held in June 1997 at Makuhari Messe Event Hall in Chiba. The winner received a Gold Trophy Pikachu, the runners-up Silver and Bronze. The design was repeated for later tournaments, which is why Bronze and Silver copies surface occasionally and why the May sale could set a record at $1.77 million. A Gold 1st Place from the first tournament is a different object: one card, one winner, one slab in the census.
The grade ladder, inverted
The Bronze that holds the old record is a PSA 10. This Gold is a PSA 8 and is already 25 percent higher. On a card with a population of one, the grade stops being a discount and becomes a description; nobody is waiting for a better copy. We made the same point about the Illustrator ladder in August and the Pristine Rayquaza in September: the scarcer the top rung, the less the grader's number moves the price.
The rest of the board, October 10
| Lot | Grade | Bid before premium |
|---|---|---|
| 2003 Skyridge Gengar #H9 | BGS 10 | $122,000 |
| 2002 Legendary Collection Charizard | PSA 10 | $110,000 |
| 2000 Black Star Eevee League promo | PSA 10 | $110,000 |
| 2005 EX Deoxys booster box, sealed | $110,000 | |
| 2006 Gold Star Mewtwo | PSA 10 | $105,000 |
| 2004 EX Team Rocket Returns booster box, sealed | $95,000 | |
| 2000 Black Star Venusaur promo | PSA 10 | $91,000 |
Two of those sit inside our vintage basket. A PSA 10 Skyridge Gengar sold for $150,000 on eBay on the week of August 24; the BGS 10 here is a different label on the same card, and Skyridge is up 1.4 percent in this week's Index. EX Deoxys, home of the Rayquaza Gold Star, is up 5.5 percent this week; a sealed box at $110,000 is the other way to own the set.
What to watch
Extended bidding on October 25 is where the Trophy Pikachu number gets set, and the all-in figure to beat for the hobby's second-biggest sale of the year is the $8.4 million Art Academy Pikachu from September. That is a long way off. What this lot will do, whatever it closes at, is reprice every other tournament promo in the census, which is a short list and a quiet one until now.
Sources: Polkastarter, October 10, 2026; Star City Games, October 8, 2026; ICv2, October 7, 2026.
The Lead ran in The Pack Report, October 14, 2026: A $2.2 Million Trophy Pikachu, With Eleven Days to Go. Published by Rip Station.