There are expensive Pokémon cards, there are grails, and then there are sales that make even seasoned collectors stop scrolling and check whether somebody accidentally added an extra zero to an auction result. The high-end Pokémon TCG market has spent much of 2026 clobbering record sales prices, particularly when low-population PSA 10 cards reach public auction, but the latest batch from Alt still manages to feel like a seismic shift. . Gold Stars have been especially combustible lately, with five examples recently posting record prices and Rayquaza spending the summer launching its own auction records into the stratosphere. Just days ago, a PSA 10 Lugia and CGC Pristine 10 Typhlosion from Neo Genesis combined for nearly $700,000, offering yet another reminder of how aggressive the upper echelon of the Pokémon market has become. Even against that backdrop, however, a Gem Mint Torchic Gold Star selling for seven figures would have sounded like a fever dream not that long ago. Instead, the Generation Three Fire-type starter has now produced one of the most extraordinary public Pokémon card sales ever recorded, while five more cards from the same auction combined for enough money to buy a stunning mansion in most of the country.
Alt’s Aug. 28-Sept. 10 auction closed with a PSA 10 Torchic Gold Star selling for $2.7 million, a result the auction house described as the most expensive English-language Pokémon card sale to date. That card alone would have been plenty to carry the headlines, but the rest of the highest-priced PTCG results were scarcely more restrained. A PSA 10 Charizard Gold Star sold for $393,000, a PSA 10 Team Aqua’s Kyogre EX reached $348,000, a PSA 10 Snorlax Lv.X landed at $253,680, a PSA 10 First Edition Base Set Chansey finished at $238,597, and a PSA 10 Team Magma’s Groudon EX brought another $181,314. Those five cards combined for $1,414,591, pushing the six-card total to an absurd $4,114,591. More importantly for collectors watching individual markets rather than just gawking at the commas, every one of those five supporting sales established a new benchmark for its respective card and grade. Some merely nudged their previous high, while others took the old record, stuffed it into a Poké Ball, and launched it to the top of Mt. Silver.
Previous Record Sale: $25,400 in December 2020
Torchic Gold Star has never needed much help establishing its credentials. 2004’s Team Rocket Returns expansion introduced Gold Star cards to the English Pokémon TCG, with Torchic joined by Treecko and Mudkip as the set’s three shiny chase cards, and the tiny Fire-type has long been the condition-rarity monster of that trio. PSA currently lists only 19 copies in a Gem Mint 10, which is an extraordinarily small population for a card coveted by collectors trying to complete either the full Gold Star set or the starter trio. Even so, $2.7 million is a rather difficult figure to process. Alt called the result the most expensive English Pokémon card ever sold, and it also represents a spectacular escalation for a card whose previous publicly visible PSA 10 transactions lived in an entirely different financial universe. The sale is even stranger because Torchic is not Charizard, Pikachu, or one of the trophy cards that traditionally dominate the hobby’s biggest-money conversations. It is an adorably tiny orange chick from Generation Three. Scarcity, however, does not care about mascot hierarchy, and a population of 19 means buyers cannot simply wait for another Gem Mint copy to show up next weekend. This one sure did show up, and the bidding frenzy surrounding it turned Torchic into a multimillion-dollar Fire Blast.
Previous Record Sale: $384,000 in September 2026
If Torchic provided the auction’s nuclear detonation, Charizard Gold Star supplied something closer to confirmation. The PSA 10 copy of 2006’s Dragon Frontiers Gold Star Charizard reached $393,000, edging past a $384,000 Fanatics Collect sale from only a few days earlier. That is an increase of just $9,000, or roughly 2.3%, which almost feels quaint next to the other massive jumps from this auction. Still, there is something meaningful about consecutive sales holding in the high-$300,000 range rather than one isolated result briefly escaping containment. Gold Star Charizard has long been one of the defining grails of the EX era, pairing the hobby’s most bankable Pokémon with the Shiny Charizard coloration and one of the most beloved card treatments the TCG has ever produced. PSA’s Gem Mint population is also under 100, keeping supply tight enough that every public appearance matters. Recent Gold Star sales have shown that collectors are increasingly willing to treat the best cards from the mid-2000s like true trophies, and Charizard hardly needed another argument. At $393,000, the latest copy simply raised an already ridiculous ceiling a little bit higher.
Previous Record Sale: $3,800 in April 2026
This is the sale that might command the most double takes when it comes to price increase. Team Aqua’s Kyogre EX from 2015’s Double Crisis is a beloved full-art card from one of the XY era’s strangest little expansions, but $348,000 is not a normal step forward from its previous market. Sports Card Investor’s tracked PSA 10 history showed a $3,800 sale in April, which would make the Alt result more than 90 times higher. With numbers that extreme, context certainly matters. PSA lists only 11 Gem Mint 10 copies, so this is not a card with enough top-grade transactions to produce a smooth, dependable market curve, and a thin population can create violent price spikes when two determined collectors collide. Still, even with every appropriate caveat attached, $348,000 is a staggering new public benchmark. Double Crisis was built around the Team Aqua and Team Magma rivalry, and its two centerpiece full arts have become increasingly prominent collector targets, but Kyogre has now skipped several financial weight classes at once. A card does not need to be from Base Set, the e-Reader era, or the Gold Star years to become a six-figure monster when Gem Mint supply can almost be counted on two hands.
Previous Record Sale: $156,000 in July 2026
Snorlax, unsurprisingly, woke up hungry again. A PSA 10 copy of Snorlax Lv.X from 2009’s Rising Rivals sold for $253,680, establishing another record only a couple of months after a different copy demolished the old benchmark at $156,000. The latest result adds $97,680 to that record, an increase of roughly 63%, and makes the $15,000 PSA 10 sale that stood as the public high in August 2025 look almost quaint by comparison. There are only 25 PSA 10 copies in the population report, and Rising Rivals is exactly the sort of late-Diamond-and-Pearl-era set whose premium cards can become ferociously difficult to find in flawless condition. Snorlax Lv.X is also card 111/111, giving it the pleasing final-numbered-card distinction that collectors tend to love, while its bold artwork makes the card instantly recognizable even before the increasingly unrelaxed prices enter the conversation. The card has gone from a five-figure rarity to a quarter-million-dollar grail in barely more than a year. Apparently, Leftovers are no longer going to cover the bill for this Snorlax chase card.
Previous Record Sale: $165,000 in July 2026
Chansey may not command Base Set Charizard’s mascot premium, but condition rarity has turned this First Edition Base Set holo into one of the set’s most formidable high-grade chases. A PSA 10 copy sold for $238,597, improving on the previous $165,000 record from July by $73,597, or roughly 44.6%. That latest result also continues a remarkably tidy climb after another PSA 10 sold for $159,000 in June, giving Chansey three increasingly expensive six-figure benchmarks in only a few months. The appeal isn’t difficult to fathom. First Edition Base Set holos sit at the foundation of English Pokémon card collecting, and Chansey is notoriously unforgiving in top condition thanks to its expansive holofoil area and the print, scratching, and handling issues that plague cards from the era. PSA’s Gem Mint population remains extremely small relative to the enormous number of Base Set cards submitted over the years, which means every PSA 10 appearance carries real weight. At nearly $240,000, Chansey has moved well beyond being a quirky Base Set condition rarity and firmly into true grail territory.
Previous Record Sale: $48,000 in August 2026
Team Aqua’s Kyogre was not the only Double Crisis heavyweight to go completely off the rails in this Alt auction. Its Team Magma counterpart, Groudon EX, sold for $181,314 in a PSA 10, obliterating the previous $48,000 high from August by $133,314, or roughly 278%. Groudon and Kyogre were designed as the two marquee cards of the set, and collectors clearly treated them that way here, with both full-art Pokémon posting enormous new benchmarks in the same sale. Groudon’s artwork leans heavily into the Team Magma theme, surrounding the Legendary Pokémon with Maxie and his crew in one of the more distinctive full-art compositions of the XY era, while its Gem Mint scarcity gives high-end collectors precious few opportunities to chase a top-grade copy. That combination helped turn what was already a desirable card into a six-figure monster. More importantly, Groudon’s result makes the Kyogre sale look less like an isolated outlier and more like part of a broader repricing of Double Crisis at the absolute highest end of the market.
Taken together, these six sales feel less like one explosive auction night and more like a concentrated snapshot of where the upper end of Pokémon collecting sits in 2026. The obvious headliner is Torchic Gold Star and its skyscraping $2.7 million price tag, which is a number large enough to redraw expectations for what an English Gold Star can do when one of the rarest PSA 10 copies appears publicly. Yet the supporting cast may be just as instructive. Charizard Gold Star immediately defended a nearly $400,000 valuation, Snorlax added almost $100,000 to a record that was itself only two months old, Chansey continued a three-sale march upward, Groudon joined Kyogre in sending Double Crisis prices into another stratosphere, while Kyogre itself demonstrated just how little traditional price history can matter when a POP-11 PSA 10 meets determined bidders. None of that means every comparable card suddenly inherits the newest record price, of course, and one bonkers auction should never be treated as a universal measuring stick. What this sale does show, however, is just how aggressively collectors are chasing truly scarce cards in top condition across several very different eras of the Pokémon TCG. Gold Stars, First Edition Base Set holos, Lv.X cards, and XY-era full arts all commanded enormous sums here, with several smashing records that had been set only a few months earlier. That might be the most illustrative part: these were not decade-old benchmarks finally being dragged into 2026; in several cases, bidders blew straight past prices that were themselves practically brand new. Whether this kind of pace can continue is another question entirely, but for one auction, at least, the record book did not merely need a few revisions. Somebody may as well start writing a new one.
