The 10 Most Valuable Pikachu Cards

A Gold Star Pikachu — the EX era's shiny treatment, marked by the gold star beside the name and seeded at roughly one per booster box. Masakazu Fukuda drew the shiny Pikachu mid-leap. Gold Stars are the headline grails of the mid-2000s, and this one puts the franchise mascot at that rarity tier.

The 'Van Gogh Pikachu.' Made for the 2023 Pokémon x Van Gogh Museum collaboration (the museum's 50th anniversary), it reimagines Pikachu in the style of Van Gogh's 1887 'Self-Portrait with Grey Felt Hat,' illustrated by Naoyo Kimura. You could only earn it by completing a 'Pokémon Adventure' walk through the Amsterdam museum, or as a bonus with collaboration merch — and demand got so intense the museum had to scale back distribution. Even with a large print run, it has stayed one of the most-traded Pokémon cards on the secondary market ever since.

A promo tied to Pokémon Rumble, the 2009 WiiWare brawler, distributed alongside the game rather than in any booster set. That odd, game-bundled origin makes it far scarcer than its plain look suggests.

Special Delivery Pikachu shows Pikachu as a mail carrier, a full-art promo released only through the Pokémon Center. Its online drops sold out in moments, turning a free-with-purchase card into a hard-to-find favorite of the Sword & Shield era.

The Special Illustration Rare Pikachu ex from Surging Sparks — the chase card of one of the best-selling modern sets. Its full-scene artwork builds a whole moment around Pikachu rather than a simple portrait, which made it the set's most-wanted single.

A nod to the original Surfing Pikachu — a Pikachu that could learn Surf, handed out only through special event distributions in the 1990s. This Rising Rivals secret rare revived that legend with Toshinao Aoki's surfing artwork, a deliberate nostalgia pull for players who remember the original.

Ken Sugimori — Pikachu's original designer — illustrated this Legendary Collection Pikachu, the reverse-holo-era reprint of the classic. It's a chance to own a Pikachu drawn by the artist who created the character.