How much are your old Pokemon cards worth?!

Parents remember all those pesky cards that you were nagged into purchasing that your kids loved playing with...well karma has come right back around in your favor and you can now cash in on them all and make quite a mint.

Let's have a look see on what some of these poke-cards are going for shall we:






It has to do with the fact that since they are the “source” card for all translated versions, non-Japanese collectors have a particular obsession with obtaining cards that have not yet or will never be released in their own country. This can be seen with promotional cards released only in Japan, which often go for high prices overseas like the 15th Anniversary Full Art Pikachu, the newer Battle Festa Pikachu, and the older CoroCoro Shining Mew. 

How are Japanese cards priced? Even though cards from Japan can’t be used in tournaments outside of the country, foreign collectors should know that they’re still used for tournament play inside of Japan. That’s why playable cards have much higher resale values. The problem for non-Japanese collectors bidding on auctions is that since they aren’t part of the competitive Japanese Pokémon card player community, it can be difficult to know when you’re looking at a deal or not. However, there is an easy way to tell how much a Japanese standard format card should be worth. (Standard format means the cards that can be used in current tournaments.) There are an endless number of Western websites that sell English language Pokémon cards and the prices on those sites can give you a general idea of how much the Japanese cards are worth if you go by this simple pricing rule: English Pokémon EX Card Price x 50–66% = Japanese Pokémon EX Card Price and English Trainer Card Price x 150–200% = Japanese Trainer Card Price (This is especially true for Full Art cards and Gold cards).

The reason for the difference in prices is because the Japanese Pokémon community has relatively less collectors and more players, which leads to a higher demand on Trainer cards and playable Pokémon staple cards (cards that are used in nearly every deck) for deckbuilding, whereas the pull rates for EX cards are much better than in English booster backs. Japanese Pokémon Booster Packs: 

The number of cards in a Japanese booster pack = 5 Number of booster packs in a Japanese booster box = 20 Standard pull rate for RR/SR/UR cards in a Japanese booster box = 2–4 How does this compare with English Pokémon card? Number of cards in an English booster pack = 10 Number of booster packs in an English booster box = 36 Standard pull rate for exR/SR/UR cards an English booster box = 2–8 What are the differences in rarity between Japanese and English cards? Japanese Card Common (C): 

Regular common cards Uncommon (U): Regular uncommon cards Rare (R): Holographic cards Rare Rare (RR): Regular art EX Pokémon Super Rare (SR): Full Art Pokémon and Trainers Ultra Rare (UR): Gold items and Pokémon English Cards Common (C): Exist in non-holographic and reverse holographic Uncommon (U): Regular uncommon cards Rare (R): Regular rare cards Holo Rare (HR): Holographic rare cards Ex Rare (exR): Regular Art EX Pokémon Ultra Rare (UR): Full Art Pokémon and trainers Special Rare (SR): Gold items and Pokémon What about Pokemon promotional cards? A special group of Japanese cards fall under the promotional category and are given out at tournaments, as magazine freebies, at Pokémon events, or as gifts when buying Pokémon merchandise at one of the Pokémon Centers. Rarely are they valuable due to broad distribution and uselessness for players. There are some exceptions, though, that hardly ever make it outside of Japan, either because of their value to players, like the Muscle Band card which was given out at the Battle Festa 2013 to players that did very well and has since reached a top price of up to $50 USD.

Sounds to us like it's a great time to pull out the calculators and plan you next family vacation, if you know what we mean!

Thank you for reading and be sure to check out our other articles!