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The full episode, in writing.
If you spent your childhood peering at Pokémon cards, you probably heard rumors about secret rares, misprints worth a fortune, and maybe—just maybe—a scandal that turned the world’s most innocent hobby upside down. But what if I told you the biggest Pokémon card scandal started with a million-dollar box, a celebrity, and a room full of G.I. Joe cards?
It all started with a box. Not just any box, but a sealed case of six first-edition Base Set booster boxes, the kind released in the U.S. in January 1999. For context, each of those boxes could contain a holographic Charizard card, which, in mint condition, has sold for as much as $420,000—more than the price of an average house. An entire sealed case? Theoretically, that's up to $2.5 million in Charizards alone.
In 2022, influencer Logan Paul paid $3.5 million for one of these cases. He’d already made headlines in 2021 by opening a $1 million booster box live on stream and pulling two holographic Charizards—cards that would each sell for $750,000 in mint condition. This new purchase, however, raised eyebrows fast. The same case had reportedly sold for $71,900 earlier—an amount suspiciously low for something that, if real, should have fetched hundreds of thousands per box.
Collectors and experts online noticed other red flags. The box had a mismatched barcode, the packaging looked too pristine, and the sale had gone through eBay, a place notorious for scams on rare collectibles. Paul decided to stream the opening of the case, inviting an authenticator who, at first, deemed the boxes “indisputably official.” But as the cardboard flaps came back, the truth was impossible to ignore. Instead of Pokémon booster packs, the boxes were stuffed with G.I. Joe trading cards.
The revelation that a $3.5 million Pokémon investment was actually a pile of common military cards sent shockwaves through the hobby. For years, collectors had worried about resealed packs and fakes, but this was the largest confirmed scam in the Pokémon card market’s history. The scale was so large because the boom in card values had made sealed first edition Base Set boxes some of the most expensive collectibles in pop culture. In 2018, a single unopened box had sold for $56,000. By 2022, another went for $408,000, and a complete set of first edition Base Set cards brought in $107,010 at auction.
The shadow of fraud isn’t the only thing haunting Pokémon cards. The game’s original Base Set included a misprinted “pre-release Raichu” card, which was never meant to exist. Only eight to eleven of these cards were created by mistake during a Jungle expansion print run, and for years, Wizards of the Coast denied they existed at all. In 2006, an employee finally confirmed the rumor.
Collectors have always valued cards with errors, oddities, and stories behind their creation. Some of the earliest Pokémon cards were accidentally printed with the back of a Magic: The Gathering card. These hybrid cards are now among the most sought-after errors, with just a handful known to exist.
But nothing compares to the legend—and market value—of the “Pikachu Illustrator.” Only 41 of these cards were ever printed, awarded in 1997 and 1998 to winners of illustration contests run by CoroCoro Comic in Japan. In July 2021, one copy sold to Logan Paul for $5,275,000, making it the most expensive Pokémon card ever sold.
The Pokémon Trading Card Game has seen booms and busts. After its U.S. launch in 1999, the market crashed within a year, leading Wizards of the Coast to lay off 100 employees. Yet the passion for trading, collecting, and speculating on cardboard never faded. In 2019, the market saw another surge, driven in part by influencers like Paul opening boxes worth hundreds of thousands of dollars live on YouTube. The hype was so intense that the 2020 market boom saw packs selling out instantly, with some unopened 1st Edition boxes valued at over $400,000.
The Charizard card, in particular, is the ultimate symbol of this frenzy. Early on, it sold for $375, then dropped to $100 during the crash, only to climb to $55,650 in 2017 and $420,000 in 2022. Celebrities have scrambled to own one: rapper Logic reportedly paid $226,000, while Paul wore his own Charizard on a diamond necklace during a boxing match.
But all this has made the hobby a magnet for fakes, scams, and accusations. Resealed packs—where valuable cards are swapped out for commons—have become so common that even TikTok and YouTube channels dedicated to live card openings have been accused by viewers of staging their pulls or selling counterfeit cards. Some sellers have been caught sending nothing at all.
The Pokémon Company and card grading services like PSA and Beckett have tried to combat fraud by certifying cards and boxes, but even experts have been fooled, as the G.I. Joe scandal proved. Grading a card as “Gem Mint 10” or “Pristine 10” can multiply its value tenfold, leading some sellers to tamper with cards or forge grading labels.
Meanwhile, the appetite for rare cards and sealed boxes keeps climbing. In February 2022, a sheet of uncut first edition Pokémon cards sold for $171,600, and another uncut test print fetched $250,000 a year later. Even a Machamp card from the Base Set CD-ROM Starter Set, usually one of the least valuable holos, sold for over $1,000 in mint condition due to its unique distribution.
But here’s the question that keeps the community buzzing: if even a $3.5 million case can be faked, and expert authenticators can be fooled on camera, how many supposed treasures in the world’s vaults are actually elaborate counterfeits? And how much cardboard fortune is still waiting to be lost—or found—in attics, closets, and old toy stores around the world?