It’s notorious for a few reasons, and unsurprisingly, it’s the usual story of scalpers ruining it for Pokémon trainers and collectors, causing chaos to the point that the museum stopped giving out the card. Scalpers even hassled visitors, asking to sell them the Pikachu card for cheap so they can resell it on the secondary market.

Even a small handful of Van Gogh Museum staffers got the sack for misconduct and reportedly stealing a box of Pikachu with Grey Felt Hat cards. In the words of Serebii.net’s very own Joe Merrick: “This makes me so sad and is why we can’t have nice things”.

At the time, this card was going anywhere from $100 to over $1500 on eBay, but thanks to a new re-print and distribution of the promo card via Pokémon Center online orders, things settled down. Well, as far as scalping goes.

It’s no longer available, which means we’re seeing a real climb on this card in the last 12 months. Looking over at value data on TCGPlayer, we were looking at $139 for this card in near mint condition in October 2024, and it’s (more or less) been a straight climb ever since.

It plateaued between March and July this year at around $330, but then started shooting up to over $680 right now. If you want a Pokémon TCG chase card that looks the price, out of print and a safe investment, I’d still snap up Pikachu in Grey Felt Hat today. I even own this one myself, and I’m holding onto it for as long as I can.

Christian Wait is a contributing freelancer for IGN covering everything collectable and deals.

*Raw is the term used for trading cards that haven’t been graded, which are now hitting $1,000 at a grade 10 across PSA, Ace, Tag, CGC, and more.