PUBLISHED ONDecember 16, 2025 6:54 AMBYCandice CaiHe owns a card purportedly worth over $1 million — equivalent to a piece of private property in Singapore — but he isn't about to sell it just yet.
At the recently concluded Singapore Card Show, held at the Singapore Expo over two days from Dec 13 to 14, one collectible in particular stole the limelight — a Japanese Pikachu Illustrator Promo card.
The card — owned by Singaporean card collector, Chew Zhan Lun, 33 — is considered one of the "holy grails" in the Pokemon card-collecting world due to its rarity.
Chew, who is the co-founder of card trading platform CTRL Collectibles, told media at the event that he had rejected a US$1 million (S$1.3 million) offer just last week by an individual to purchase the card.
Speaking to AsiaOne on Tuesday (Dec 16), Chew shared that he had bought the card for "around $600,000" from a private collector.
According to Sports Illustrated, the cards were awarded to winners of a comic illustration contest in Japan in 1997 and 1998, with only 39 copies of it believed to exist.
Its value has also doubled in less than two years, with a card graded an "8.5" in condition by card-grading company Professional Sports Authenticator (PSA) fetching US$610,000 in early December on Goldin, a US-based collectibles marketplace and auction house.
The price is more than double the US$300,000 transacted over a year ago for another Pokemon Illustrator card with the same grading, reported Sports Illustrated.
To get a sense of how expensive the rarest card in mint condition can be, American internet personality Logan Paul announced in 2022 that he had bought a PSA grade 10 Pikachu Illustrator card for US$5.28 million — earning it the Guinness World Record for the most expensive Pokemon trading card sold at a private sale.
According to a video explaining the card's value on Paul's YouTube channel, there are only eight cards believed to have been graded a "Mint 9" by PSA, while he holds the only card thus far graded a "perfect PSA 10".
Chew is believed to be holding one of the eight "Mint 9" cards in the world.
While he'd told Shin Min that he intends to hold on to the card for now, believing that it will increase in value, he told AsiaOne that he would let it go if presented with an "irresistible offer".
"To be very honest, as much as I love this card, I might decide to let it go if someone offers me an irresistible offer! Can't be too greedy," he quipped.
At the Singapore Card Show, over 10 people had approached Chew to ask him the price of the card out of curiosity, Shin Min reported.
Chew also shared with AsiaOne that displaying the card in a such a public arena made him "super nervous".
"I only went to the toilet once a day because I wanted to be around to take care of it," he said of the collectible, which took centre stage at CTRL Collectible's booth at the event.
Chew had said that his interest in Pokemon card trading started from childhood, as he recalled fond memories of his parents rewarding him with a card whenever he did well in school. He then stopped collecting "for a long time", he told Shin Min.
However, his passion was reignited after buying his first PSA-graded card at a shop in Jalan Besar he'd chanced upon last year, before the boom in Pokemon card trading.
He shared that he owns over 300 cards valued from $50 to over a million, and he has invested more than $1 million in his collection.
As for what draws hobbyists to card collecting?
According to Shin Min, the organiser of the Singapore Card Show, Yao Junwei (transliteration), explained that card collecting is closely tied to the stock market and cryptocurrency trading.
When times are good, collectors will use their spare cash to invest in cards that they love, he said.
Yao, 36, added that local card collectors are mainly office workers between the ages of 25 and 40.
With next year being the 30th anniversary of Pokemon, Yao stated that he hopes to hold an event every quarter to encourage more collectors to exhibit their prized collections.
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candicecai@asiaone.com
