October card sales pass $1 billion on millions of small sales

Card Ladder counted more than $1 billion in card sales in October, the first month its tracker has ever passed that line, SI Collectibles reported Monday.

Pokémon led the way. Goldin's Pokémon 30th Anniversary auction sold a PSA 10 2015 Japanese Art Academy Mudkip by Daisuke Ochiai for $4,880,000, the biggest sale of the month, while two more PSA 10s from the same Art Academy promo run, Sableye and Gourgeist, brought $976,000 apiece. Three cards from a 2015 drawing contest sold for more than $6.8 million between them in one auction. Goldin's Mudkip was the third to pass $1 million in five weeks, after another PSA 10 of the same card sold for $3,720,000 at Fanatics on Sept. 25 and a 2004 Gold Star Mudkip sold for $1,020,000 in PSA 10 five days before that.

It would be easy to hand the record to the grails. But the biggest sports sale Card Ladder has confirmed, Shohei Ohtani's 2025 Topps The Game Dynasty Black Logoman Auto 1/1 at $3,240,000 in PSA 9 on Fanatics Premier, comes to about $8 million with the Mudkip, less than 1% of October. Throw in the $4.2 million Kobe Bryant Flawless Logoman that Secure Collectibles reported as a private sale and the three still don't reach 2%. The billion came from everybody else.

Collectors can still get a Gold Star Umbreon for about $70, as long as it's the raw 2021 Celebrations reprint, while the 2007 original sold for $72,000 in PSA 9 at Fanatics on Oct. 25 and $738,100 in PSA 10 at Goldin. You could buy a thousand reprints for that PSA 9 and still have $2,000 left over.

Pokémon's 30th Celebration set, out Sept. 16, sold nearly half a million times in October in the sales data we track, singles and sealed together, at an average of about $20 and around five times as often as Pitch Black, the last main Mega Evolution set. I'd judge Delta Reign, out Nov. 6, by how many of its cards sell rather than by what its chase cards bring.