A Woking decorator's 42 Pokémon master sets sold for £1.56 million at Ewbank's, six times the estimate, with the Legendary Collection set at £100,000

Ewbank's Auctioneers in Send, Surrey, sold a single-owner collection of 42 complete Pokémon master sets on Wednesday, October 21, for £1.56 million, more than six times the £250,000 estimate, per the Farnham Herald (October 22). The hammer total was £1.2 million, a record for the house; the £1.56 million figure reads as the total with buyer's premium, though the Herald does not say so. Dexerto, citing the BBC, puts the sale at about $2.1 million and calls it the most valuable trading card auction held in the UK; Ewbank's says it beat the record set at Stanley Gibbons in London on October 9, about $1.17 million.

The top lot was a Legendary Collection Complete Master Set with a near-mint Charizard, estimated at £15,000 to £20,000 and sold for £100,000, per the Herald. Talker.news (October 22) describes the set as the 110 cards, the 110 reverse holo "firework" cards and four box toppers, which is the full Legendary Collection as collectors define a master set. Another set, bought for about £300 in the 1990s, sold for £75,000. The seller's first set included a Sky Ridge Charizard that Ewbank's valued at £20,000 to £40,000; the Herald does not report it as a separate sale.

Where the sets came from

The seller is an anonymous retired painter and decorator from Woking who started buying in the late 1990s, when his son was trading cards at school, per the Herald. He bought complete sets from a seller in Malaysia he found on eBay, the first for about £300, and kept building until he had 42 master sets in binders. When his son lost interest, the binders went into the attic and stayed there about 15 years. He found out what they were worth after reading a newspaper story about a single card selling for more than £6,000 and taking a sample to Ewbank's.

James Spooner, Ewbank's head of trading cards, told the Herald "our jaws hit the floor." Talker.news reports the sale was titled "Pokémon: A Decade of Masters (1999–2009)" and that Ewbank's held £825,000 in commission bids the day before the sale, more than three times the top estimate before a single live bid. The two accounts differ on one count: talker.news says 41 of the 42 sets sold and the owner kept one, while Dexerto says all 42 sold.

Why a set beat its estimate by five to six times

The estimate was written for sets, and the market paid for condition. Ewbank's described the collection as mint, per the Herald, and these were cards bought complete and stored in binders rather than played. A graded single from the Legendary Collection now sells in six figures (this week's reverse holo results are in The Tape), and a master set that has never been broken up offers a buyer every one of those candidates at once, ungraded. The £100,000 price is what a bidder would pay for the option to grade, against a £15,000 to £20,000 estimate that treated the set as a set.

The second number is the UK record. Stanley Gibbons set it on October 9 at about $1.17 million; Ewbank's passed it twelve days later with £1.56 million, about $2.1 million, per Dexerto. Two UK houses have now cleared seven figures on Pokémon in one month, a tier below the single-card sales at Alt, Fanatics Collect and Goldin, but a market of its own.

The third is the £300 to £75,000 line, a 250-fold gain on one set that was bought complete, stored and left alone.

What it means for the market

• Complete master sets from the Wizards and early Nintendo era are being priced as a category rather than as the sum of their singles, and the estimates at UK houses have not caught up: six-times results on a £250,000 catalogue are a sign the house priced the sets on old comps.
• A mint, binder-stored set is a grading play for the buyer; if graded singles from the Legendary Collection set surface, their results will show whether £100,000 was a discount or a premium.
• The UK record moved twice in October, so UK houses now belong on the list of sales we track, in sterling and with their own buyer's premium rules.

What to watch next

• Goldin's Pokémon 30th Anniversary auction closes October 25, with the PSA 8 Gold Trophy Pikachu as its lead lot (Auction Watch).
• Logan Paul opens 72 Legendary Collection packs on YouTube on October 29 at 6 PM ET, per Collectibles News (October 13), the same set that made £100,000 as a master set here.
• Ewbank's next trading card sale has no date in the sources yet.

Figures are as reported by the sources below on the dates shown. This is market data and commentary, not investment advice.

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Sources

• Farnham Herald, Woking decorator's Pokémon cards sell for £1.56 million after 15 years in attic, smashing £250,000 estimate, Oct 22, 2026
• talker.news, Man becomes a millionaire after Pokémon cards in his attic sell, Oct 22, 2026
• Dexerto, Man sells son's forgotten Pokemon cards for $2M after keeping them in attic for 15 years, Oct 22, 2026
• Collectibles News, Logan Paul plans $1.2 million Pokémon night with 72 Legendary Collection packs, Oct 13, 2026