A rare Pokémon Trading Card Game card has sold for $8.4 million at auction, making it the second-most expensive Pokémon card ever publicly sold. The 2015 Japanese Art Academy Pikachu, illustrated by Y. Fujishima, achieved this record price during Fanatics Collect’s latest Weekly Sunday Auction. This sale places it just behind the $16.49 million Logan Paul paid for his PSA 10 Illustrator Pikachu.
The Art Academy Pikachu card was a prize from a competition held in late 2014 and early 2015, where participants used the Nintendo 3DS game Pokémon Art Academy to create original Pokémon illustrations. Five Japanese winners in the Pikachu category each received 100 copies of a promotional Pokémon TCG card featuring their artwork. These cards never had a conventional retail release, contributing to their extreme rarity.
Despite the limited distribution, the Fujishima Pikachu has a notable PSA 10 population, with 57 examples recorded in Gem Mint condition. However, its previous sales history did not foreshadow its recent monumental price. A different PSA 10 copy sold for $135,000 in June, and a prior sale through Fanatics Collect in July 2025 fetched only $17,400, with no previous Fanatics sale topping $20,000.
This remarkable sale places the Art Academy Pikachu in elite company. Logan Paul's PSA 10 Illustrator Pikachu set a Guinness World Record for the most expensive trading card when it sold for $16.492 million earlier this year, after Paul acquired it for $5.275 million in 2021. At $8.4 million, the Art Academy Pikachu sale significantly surpasses that previous transaction and stands as the second-highest public sale for a Pokémon card.
The Pokémon TCG secondary market has seen extraordinary activity recently, with rare trophy cards and low-population cards repeatedly breaking previous sales records throughout 2026. The $8.4 million sale of the Art Academy Pikachu, while exceptionally high, continues this trend of soaring prices for highly sought-after Pokémon collectibles.