A rare Pokémon trading card has sold for a record $16,492,000 including buyer’s premium at an online auction in New Jersey, becoming the most expensive Pocket Monster card ever to change hands at a public sale, Japan’s Kyodo News has reported.

The Pokémon Illustrator card, featuring Pikachu, carries a grading of 10 from a leading hobby authenticator, the highest possible score. Only 39 copies of the cared were awarded to winners of a 1998 illustration contest organised by the Japanese magazine CoroCoro Comic, making it one of the scarcest items in the franchise’s history, and thus highly collectable.

The card was consigned to Goldin Auctions by the American social media personality Logan Paul, who acquired it in 2021 for $5.27mn. That private transaction earned Paul a Guinness World Record for the most expensive Pokémon card sold in a private sale.

At the most recent auction, the winning bidder, whose identity was not disclosed when the sale ended, secured the card along with the diamond necklace from which it is suspended. The buyer later appeared at a livestream event hosted on Paul’s personal YouTube channel to collect the item.

The sale of the card now highlights the continued strength of demand for high-end trading cards - a market that has drawn increasing interest from wealthy collectors and online personalities alike in recent years with a number of prominent influencers broadcasting live the opening of sealed Pokémon card packs in search of rare editions that can command substantial premiums on the secondary market.