The only CGC Pristine 10 Gold Star Rayquaza in the world, has just sold for $1,020,000, making it the most expensive English language Pokemon card ever sold (but not the most expensive card ever sold of all time). From the 2005 EX Deoxys expansion, the sale number is staggering on its own, but the context surrounding it is what elevates this sale from a remarkable auction result into a genuine landmark moment for the Pokemon collecting hobby.
This is a population one card, meaning it is the only copy in the entire world to receive a CGC Pristine 10 grade. Every other copy of Gold Star Rayquaza that has ever been submitted to CGC for grading came back with something less than perfect. This one did not, and there will never be another one like it.
“I was the owner of the card, it absolutely deserves this title, I’ve owned 6/47 PSA 10 English Gold Star rays and none of them comes close to this CGC pristine 10. It was a bitter sweet moment, great to break the record, but a sad moment we let go such a centerpiece of our collection.” –/u/JessePeng93
The previous record holder was a PSA 10 1st Edition Base Set Charizard that sold for $954,800. This, up until now, was also the title holder for #2 on the list of most expensive Pokemon cards ever sold. The #1 spot, and still champion, is a Japanese PSA 10 Illustrator Pikachu from 1998 that sold for $16,492,000 which likely won’t be dethrone any time soon.
To understand how big of a deal this is, you need to understand what Gold Star cards actually are and why the collecting community treats them with the kind of reverence usually reserved for things like original paintings and ancient artifacts. Gold Star Pokemon were introduced during the EX era of the trading card game, running from 2004 through 2007, and they are defined by two things that make them almost uniquely difficult to find in top condition.
The first is that they feature shiny versions of the Pokemon rendered in artwork that extends beyond the borders of the card’s illustration window, giving them a visual drama that most cards in the hobby simply cannot match. The second is that they were pulled at an estimated rate of roughly one per every two booster boxes, which even at the time made them genuinely rare, and two decades of time have made finding one in pristine condition increasingly close to impossible.
As you can see above, the card features the legendary sky dragon in its shiny black coloring, coiling upward through the atmosphere in Masakazu Fukuda’s illustration, and it has consistently commanded premiums over other Gold Stars because Rayquaza as a Pokemon carries a cultural weight that very few creatures in the franchise can match. It is a legendary in the truest sense of the word, and that status has followed the card through every phase of the hobby’s growth. Throughout 2026 alone, even heavily worn copies of Gold Star Rayquaza have been selling for prices that would have seemed disconnected from reality just a few years ago, with lower graded examples regularly reaching five figures at auction.
What makes the CGC Pristine 10 grade so significant on top of all of that is the specific standard it represents. A Pristine 10 from CGC is not simply a perfect card. It is a card that has been evaluated against criteria so demanding that the vast majority of cards submitted in genuinely excellent condition still fall short of the designation.
Centering, surface quality, edges, corners, and print quality all have to align at a level that accounts for why, out of every Gold Star Rayquaza that has ever been graded across every submission in the hobby’s history, exactly one has ever come back with this label on it. The person who owned this card was holding something that by definition cannot be replicated or replaced, and the buyer who paid $1,020,000 for it now owns the single most perfectly preserved example of arguably the most beloved card in the entire EX era.
The record it broke, most expensive English Pokemon card ever sold, is the kind of title that gets passed around in this hobby with increasing frequency as the market continues to grow, but a CGC Pristine 10 population one copy of Gold Star Rayquaza crossing the million dollar threshold feels like a different category of moment entirely. This was not a card that happened to be in the right auction at the right time. This was the undisputed king of its corner of the hobby, existing in a condition that will never exist again, selling for exactly what it was worth.
