Logan Paul’s rare “Pikachu Illustrator” card sold on February 16, 2026 for $16,492,000, setting a Guinness World Record as the most expensive trading card ever sold at auction. The buyer was AJ Scaramucci, son of financier Anthony Scaramucci, after a bidding contest that pushed the price into eight figures.
The card’s rarity is central to the result. According to the source material, only 39 copies were produced as prizes for a Japanese contest in the 1990s, and Paul’s copy is reportedly the only one in the world with a perfect PSA 10 grade. Paul bought the card in 2021 for $5.28 million. After fees, the source says his profit was believed to be roughly $8 million to $11 million.
A New Wallet Placed High-End Polymarket Bets Before the Sale
The record price did not end the story. Blockchain analysts identified a wallet created only days before the auction closed. That wallet placed nearly $190,000 in bets on Polymarket, wagering that the card would sell for more than $10 million, $12 million, and $15 million. Once the final sale price landed near $16.5 million, the wallet made more than $300,000 in profit.
That sequence quickly led to insider trading concerns. The issue is not just that someone predicted a high result, but that the timing of the bets and the precision of the price ranges raised questions about whether the trader had access to non-public information tied to the bidding. The source does not identify the wallet owner and does not say whether regulators have opened a case.
The Card Was Already Tied to an NFT Fractionalization Dispute
This was not the first controversy surrounding the card. In 2022, the source says Paul sold fractional shares of it as NFTs through Liquid Marketplace. When the platform went offline, investors were left unable to access their funds, which led to a lawsuit in Canada.
Paul later said he personally paid to restore the site and bought back the fractional shares at their original price to help users. That history has kept the card connected to a wider debate over tokenized ownership, platform risk, and how physical collectibles are marketed in digital form.
Physical Trophy Assets Keep Setting New Records
The source also notes that NFT values have fallen by 50% recently, while elite physical collectibles continue to post record sales. This auction points to the same split: ultra-rare assets with strong provenance and grading still attract major buyers. At the same time, once a high-profile physical sale intersects with prediction markets and NFT-based fractional ownership, scrutiny around trading behavior becomes much harder to avoid.