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A Pokemon fan who sold a rare card for a fraction of its value was able to recoup it after collectors informed him it was potentially worth thousands of dollars.
In a TikTok earlier this week, user LeighCeezy took their childhood collection of Pokemon TCG cards to a local store in an attempt to earn some money. They walked away with around $24 and seemed pretty pleased with their haul—until commenters under the video told them that one of their cards was worth substantially more than that by itself.
That card is Gold Star Espeon POP Series 5, a card that was only available through events and products associated with Pokemon Organized Play, a series of in-person events that ran from 2003 until a name change in 2010. Series 5 was the final promotional card set released through the events and was also one of the last times that Japanese promotional cards were released in English. Add to that the relative rarity of Espeon and its Dark-type counterpart Umbreon, and you can see why this card might have some impressive value 17 years after its initial release.
Having been made aware of the potential value of his card, LeighCeezy returned to the store, who gave him back the card, as documented in a follow-up video. In that video, he says that the Espeon was purchased for just $1.50 as part of that initial $24 sale. It's almost hard to state how much of an undervaluation that was, but a quick look on eBay suggests that in the past three months, 12 versions of the card have been sold at prices ranging from $830 all the way up to $3,250. That variation seems to hinge on the quality of the card and the intensity of the bidding war on each listing, but suffice to say that LeighCeezy was underpaid on his Espeon by anything from 55,000% to around 216,000%.
The card doesn't seem to have been resold yet, but thankfully, this particular story seems to be on course for a happy ending. If nothing else, it's a helpful reminder to check the value of your collectible belongings before selling them - back in February, a rare NES copy of Zelda was listed on eBay for around $20,000 before going for more than ten times that after collectors told the seller its true value.
Trying to get into the collecting game? Here's our list of the best card games to try out.
