When Logan Paul’s PSA 10 1998 Japanese Promo Pikachu Illustrator sold for $16.49 million on Feb. 16, it did more than set a new Pokémon record. It reset the record books across the entire trading card marketplace. For generations, the highest prices belonged to baseball’s oldest and rarest cards, featuring legends like Honus Wagner or Mickey Mantle. More recently, basketball icons like Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant were featured on the hobby’s biggest chase cards. But now, a little electric mouse had defeated them all.
At $16.49 million, the Pikachu Illustrator is the single most expensive trading card ever sold. In fact, if you combined the price of the two most expensive Magic: The Gathering cards ever — and then tripled that number — that value would only just scrape past that stunning sum. So let’s take a look at the 10 most expensive trading cards ever.
Note: The Professional Sports Authenticator (PSA) and Sportscard Guaranty Corporation (SGC) are the two leading third-party card grading services used to authenticate and grade various kinds of trading cards on a scale from 1 to 10 in terms of overall condition.
Honorable Mentions:
The One Ring — $2 million (2023)
Every Magic: The Gathering set has ultra-rare chase cards, but Wizards of the Coast took things a step further with 2023’s The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth by printing a single foil version of The One Ring card printed in the Black Speech of Sauron using Tengwar letterforms. Retail worker Brook Trafton pulled the card from a pack in Toronto and after fielding multiple offers, sold it to Post Malone for $2 million.
Alpha Black Lotus (PSA 10) — $3 million (2024)
One of the most useful Magic: The Gathering cards remains the most expensive ever. Somewhere between 1,008 and 1,100 of these were printed as part of the very first Magic set released in August 1993. Only around 105 have been graded by the PSA, with only a handful receiving a perfect grade of 10. Adam Cai of Pristine Collectibles sold one to a mystery buyer in 2024 for $3 million.
7
1909-11 T206 Honus Wagner (SGC 3) — $6.6 million (2021)
Honus Wagner is a legendary name in the sports trading card space because of this exact card. (Fewer than 50 of them exist!) The Hall of Famer played 21 baseball seasons from 1897 to 1917, most of them with the Pittsburgh Pirates, and he is widely regarded as the best shortstop in the history of the MLB. This charming card has a cute little cigarette ad on the back (it was designed and issued by the American Tobacco Company). Robert Edward Auctions sold this particular Wagner for $6,606,296 in the summer of 2021.
Collector/dealer Mike Aronstein discovered this card on Long Island in 1973, and it became one of (if not the) first Wagner sold at auction to Fred McKie of New Jersey for $1,100. A few sales later, it was eventually graded VGC 3 and sold at auction for $1.2 million in 2012. There are better Wagners out there, but few fetched as high a price as this one.
6
1914 Baltimore News Babe Ruth (SGC 3) — $7.2 million (2023)
Another Robert Edward Auctions record-breaker, this card features a 19-year-old Babe Ruth in his first appearance on a trading card playing for his hometown minor league team in Baltimore. Only 10 copies of this card are known to exist, and this is said to be the second-best of them all — which explains why it went for $7.2 million in 2023.
5
1909-11 T206 Honus Wagner (SGC 2) — $7.25 million (2022)
In August 2022, Goldin Auctions sold the most expensive Wagner ever for $7.25 million, beating out a $6.6 million sale from Robert Edward Auctions from a year prior despite having a lower grade. There are widespread rumors that production on the card was halted because the revered shortstop didn’t want to promote cigarette use to kids, even though he used tobacco and appeared in advertisements for similar products. Other theories posit that Wagner negotiated for more money to have his likeness featured, leading to the production halt that ultimately resulted in high scarcity for the card more than a century later.
4
2006-07 Upper Deck Exquisite Dual Logoman Autograph (Michael Jordan / LeBron James) — $10 million (2025)
The “Dual NBA Logo Autographs” series was an interesting experiment: between 2004 and 2009, Upper Deck produced one-off cards featuring patches from the jerseys of two different NBA stars and had them sign it. (So it’s blurring the lines between trading cards and other kinds of sports memorabilia.) Michael Jordan appeared on eight of these cards, and those eight cards have gone on to become some of the most expensive basketball cards of all time. The latest sale featuring Michael Jordan and LeBron James — two of the all-time greatest players — fetched a price of $10 million in late 2025. It was bought by the WonderShyne Index syndicate formed by Shark Tank investor Kevin O’Leary, prominent collector Matt “Shyne” Allen, and Paul Warshaw.
3
1952 Topps Mickey Mantle (SGC 9.5) — $12.6 million (2022)
Mickey Mantle spent his entire career with the New York Yankees from 1951 to 1968 and was a seven-time World Series champion. Graded a 9.5 out of 10, this is regarded as the “finest known example” of Topps’ rare 1952 printing of a Mickey Mantle card. When it sold for $12.6 million in August 2022, it became the most expensive trading card ever sold at the time, more than doubling the previous Mantle record and briefly reclaiming the top spot in the hobby’s history.
2
2007-08 Upper Deck Exquisite Dual Logoman Autograph (Michael Jordan / Kobe Bryant) — $12.93 million (2025)
The WonderShyne Index made history in August 2025 with the purchase of a Dual Logoman featuring Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan through Heritage Auctions for $12.932 million. That figure narrowly took the sales record that Mickey Mantle held for a few years. Bryant appeared on 11 Dual Logoman cards, and this is the only one that pairs him with Jordan. If not for Pikachu, Kobe and MJ would still be at the top.
Originally awarded to winners of a 1997–1998 CoroCoro Comic illustration contest in Japan, the Pikachu Illustrator is widely regarded as the rarest and most prestigious Pokémon card ever produced. When Logan Paul purchased a PSA 9 Pikachu Illustrator in June 2021 for $1.275 million, it became the most expensive Pokémon card ever sold. But a month later, he traded it to a private collector in Dubai along with $4 million for an even better PSA 10 version of the card. Reports are inconsistent, but only around 41 of these cards were ever printed, and there’s only one that’s been graded a 10 by the PSA.
When Logan Paul sold it through Goldin Auctions for $16.49 million — roughly triple what he paid for it — in February 2026, it became the most expensive trading card ever sold, surpassing every baseball, basketball, and Magic: The Gathering card before it. It’s now cemented as a world record that’ll be hard to beat.
