Pokémon card collector buys £18k master set in Surrey auction

A Pokémon card collector who bought an £18,000 set of cards said he “had to make his eight-year-old self happy”, and that he would have been willing to spend more.

Joshua Nero, 29, from Ealing, west London, bought a set of 196 cards from an auction of a Woking man’s collection which fetched £1.56 million in total when it went under the hammer on Wednesday.

Nero, who says he has been collecting cards for about 20 years, added that buying the set shows the “life-changing” value that Pokémon cards have nowadays.

He told BBC Radio Surrey: “For what it is, it was quite cheap.”

He added: “I had to make my eight-year-old self happy. These cards are from what I remember most growing up and they are quite hard to get hold of.

“I look at my portfolio and do sometimes take a moment to think that it’s life-changing money.

“I could sell everything now, buy a house and live a very comfortable life, but there’s that part of me that thinks about how I grew up with this.”

Pokémon is a Japanese franchise best known for its trading cards, video games and animated television series.

Nero, who attended the auction in Surrey with his wife and a friend, bought a master set of the Majestic Dawn set of cards.