The high end of the Pokemon card market has been producing some ridiculous sales lately, but this one is interesting for a different reason.
Six PSA 10 LV.X cards sold through Fanatics Collect for a combined $2.196 million, with every card selling for at least $216,000.
The biggest sale was a 2008 Garchomp LV.X #97 from Majestic Dawn, which reached $900,000. Gliscor LV.X followed at $312,000, while Infernape 4 LV.X and Mewtwo LV.X each sold for $264,000. Gengar LV.X reached $240,000 and an Empoleon LV.X Black Star Promo finished at $216,000.
These are not trophy cards from the earliest years of Pokemon. They are cards from the Diamond & Pearl and Platinum era, and until recently, this part of the hobby rarely received the same attention as vintage Pokemon or the biggest modern chase cards.
That appears to be changing quickly.
Garchomp LV.X Sold for $900,000
The Garchomp sale is easily the biggest result of the group.
Garchomp LV.X #97 comes from 2008’s Majestic Dawn and has a PSA 10 population of just seven. The card attracted 35 bids before selling for $900,000 with buyer’s premium.
For comparison, a PSA 10 sold for $5,100 on eBay in January 2023.
That comparison needs some context. A card with only seven PSA 10 copies does not have anything close to a liquid market, and more than three years passed between those two sales. I would not look at the result and assume every Garchomp LV.X suddenly increased by the same percentage.
What the sale does show is how much collectors are currently willing to pay when one of these extremely low population PSA 10s finally becomes available.
Garchomp also has something working in its favor that some of the other LV.X cards do not. It is one of the defining Pokemon of the Diamond & Pearl era, particularly because of its association with Cynthia.
Combine that demand with only seven PSA 10 copies and you get a card where a few determined bidders can completely reset the previous market.
It Wasn’t Just Garchomp
If Garchomp were the only card that produced a huge result, I would be much more cautious about reading anything into it.
It wasn’t.
Gliscor LV.X #141 from Legends Awakened sold for $312,000. A PSA 10 copy of the same card sold for $90,000 through Fanatics in August. There are only 14 PSA 10 copies.
Infernape 4 LV.X #108 from Rising Rivals also has a PSA 10 population of 14 and sold for $264,000.
Mewtwo LV.X #144 from Legends Awakened reached the same $264,000 price. Its PSA 10 population is only 18.
Gengar LV.X #97 from Arceus sold for $240,000. That card actually has the largest PSA 10 population of the group at 46, which makes the result particularly interesting. A PSA 10 had sold for $66,000 in June.
Then there is Empoleon.
The Diamond & Pearl Black Star Promo Empoleon LV.X #DP11 sold for $216,000 despite being the lowest sale of the six. PSA has graded only five copies as a 10, making it the lowest population card in the entire group.
Six different cards from the same general era all clearing $200,000 at the same auction is much harder to dismiss as one strange result.
PSA 10 Is the Real Story
This is also where the headline numbers can become misleading.
These sales do not mean every LV.X card sitting in a binder suddenly became enormously valuable.
The extreme prices are concentrated at the very top of the condition scale.
The PSA 10 populations for these six cards range from five to 46. For Garchomp, Empoleon, Gliscor and Infernape, we are talking about populations low enough that years can pass without enough sales to establish anything resembling a normal market price.
That creates a very different market from the modern cards we usually track on PokeForecast.
When hundreds of copies of a modern card sell every month, buyers have plenty of comparable sales to work with. If one copy sells for an unusually high price, another sale can quickly bring the market back toward its normal range.
That does not happen when only seven PSA 10 copies exist.
If two serious collectors both want the same Garchomp and another PSA 10 might not appear for months or years, the previous sale becomes much less important. The auction ends wherever those two buyers stop bidding.
That appears to be a major part of what we are seeing here.
The Diamond & Pearl Era Is Getting Expensive
The bigger question is whether this is the beginning of a broader move into Diamond & Pearl era cards.
Collectors who opened these sets as kids are now roughly the age where nostalgia starts colliding with disposable income. We have seen that cycle before in Pokemon.
For years, much of the biggest money in the hobby concentrated around the earliest cards. Base Set Charizard, trophy cards and other vintage Pokemon naturally dominated the high end.
Modern collecting then created its own expensive cards, particularly around major alternate arts and low pull rate chase cards.
The period in between has not always received the same attention.
LV.X cards are now approaching 20 years old. Many have relatively small graded populations, and Gem Mint copies can be significantly harder to find than the raw population would suggest.
That combination is beginning to matter.
My Read
I would not take these six sales and start buying every LV.X card expecting the same thing to happen.
The numbers are too extreme and the PSA 10 populations are too small for that.
What I do think matters is that this happened across six different cards at the same time.
Garchomp selling for $900,000 is an incredible result by itself. But Gliscor reaching $312,000, Mewtwo and Infernape reaching $264,000, Gengar hitting $240,000 and Empoleon selling for $216,000 make the story much more interesting.
Collectors were not chasing one Pokemon. They were chasing the best examples from an entire era.
We have spent a lot of time this year watching trophy cards and vintage Pokemon break records. Now serious money appears to be moving further into the generations that came afterward.
That is something I would keep watching.
The people who grew up opening Diamond & Pearl packs are not kids anymore, and some of the cards they chased back then are proving much harder to find in perfect condition than anyone probably cared about 15 years ago.
Six cards selling for $2.196 million is a pretty strong reminder of what can happen when nostalgia finally meets scarcity.