Rare Pokémon cards nearly thrown in skip by granddad in clear out valued at £20k

A box set of rare Pokémon cards which were almost tossed into a skip have been valued at around £20,000.

The Pokémon Fourth Print Base Set Booster Box – which is still sealed – was only ever released in the UK, and was purchased in 1999 at a shop in Chester by a man for £100 as a present for his granddaughter.

The 81-year-old man told the BBC it was ‘crazy’ that the cards could be ‘worth so much now’.

The box has now gone up for auction at Derby’s Hansons Auctioneers (on October 17th), where valuers said the man had no idea of the thousands the cards were worth.

His daughter said he almost threw the box of cards away in a clear-out of the house as they were making room to fit a hospital bed for his terminally-ill wife.

She said: “During the clear-out, the cards were taken out of the cupboard. Dad planned to throw them away.

“A few did end up in the skip but I said, ‘blimey, Dad, some of these might be worth a bit’.”

Although some of the cards were already thrown away she said the family then decided to sell the rest, which was when ‘the extent of the collection was realised’. All five of her children were given a sealed box of the collection by their grandad, she said.

As she continued: “My daughter got into Pokémon when she was young and started collecting the cards with my dad in the late 1990s. She was his first and, at the time, only grandchild.

“It was their thing. They went on trips to Chester together at weekends to get the cards from a hobby shop.

“My dad is a collector and gets obsessed.” She also said some had sold for around £50,000.

“‘Gotta catch ’em all’ is the Pokémon catchphrase and Dad really had caught ’em all,” she jokingly said.

She went on to say that the money would be split among family members and that: “It’s made life a bit easier for all of us, especially dad.”

And she said the funds will also help her daughter who is now studying to be a paramedic, and that this sealed box of Pokémon cards was the ‘in-case of emergencies’ item.

Adding: “Again, no point in struggling when this can help. As dad would say, ‘there are no pockets in shrouds’.”

David Wilson-Turner, head of the toy department at Hansons auction house, said: “What distinguishes [this] from others, and makes it scarce, is that it was only released in the UK.

“The 102 cards inside, contained in 36 sealed booster packs, bear a definitive date stamp stating 1999-2000. Other base set cards are stamped 1999.”

The box also comes with the unique arched ‘Wizards of the Coast’ logos, only found on 4th Print boxes.