A PSA 10 Shining Magikarp sold for $1,131,095 on November 6, about 23 times what the same grade brought in July 2024.

The same week, LEGO's biggest resale market spent six days offline after a cyber incident, McDonald's put Pokémon cards back in Happy Meals, and Collectibles.com ranked the Y2K toys that are actually worth something.

What we're covering:

🐟 A Magikarp just sold for $1.13 million
🧱 BrickLink went dark for six days
🧸 Collectibles.com on the Y2K toys worth real money
👑 Logan Paul says his $16.5 million record is gone
🔥 Heatseekers: Top upcoming releases

Let's get into it

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Magikarp is best known for Splash, a move that does nothing at all. On November 6, a PSA 10 Shining Magikarp sold on Alt for $1,131,095 after 34 bids, the most anyone has paid for a Magikarp card.

This isn't the Neo Revelation card most collectors grew up with. It's a Japanese Fan Club promo that players could only get by earning 600 points between 2001 and 2002, and PSA has graded 19 copies at a 10.

That's about 23 times the 2024 price in a little over two years, and more than $800,000 above Alt's own estimate. The Magikarp also follows the same rule as the gold Bionicle mask at the top of this week's Collectibles.com list. Both were prizes you had to earn in the early 2000s, which is why there are so few of them.

Wednesday's Gemmed card was a Gengar from 2026 Pokemon Mega Evolution Perfect Order (#50), graded PSA 10, and it sold for $265 on eBay on November 2. The typical first guess was $200, and 74% of players got within 5%. It makes a useful contrast with this week's Magikarp, since the same PSA 10 grade on a card printed this year came in at a few hundred dollars. How close would your guess have been?

Gemmed is a free daily game where you look at a graded card and guess what it actually sold for, across Pokémon, basketball, baseball, football, soccer, and Magic. You get six guesses, every miss tells you whether to go higher or lower, and landing within 5% wins.

BrickLink, the LEGO-owned marketplace where collectors buy and sell used sets, minifigures and individual parts, spent most of this week offline.

According to BrickLink, the exposed data may include usernames and IP addresses, while passwords, postal addresses and financial information were not disclosed. The bigger cost fell on sellers.

Thousands of independent storefronts couldn't update stock or message buyers for nearly a week at the start of the holiday season, and Brick Fanatics reports that some are already moving to other platforms. It's the third time in five years the site has gone down this way, after cyber incidents in 2022 and 2023.

Collectibles.com ranked the ten most collectible Y2K toys, from Polly Pocket to a solid gold Bionicle mask, along with the detail that separates a valuable copy from a common one.

Its argument is that nostalgia opens the bin, but condition, rarity and provenance decide what's worth selling.

Fast-food cards are back this week, too. McDonald's Pokémon Happy Meals returned Tuesday with two cards per box, and Burger King's Magic promo boxes from Italy are listed on eBay for $75 to $150 or more.

The full story is at Collectibles.com.

Logan Paul's PSA 10 Pikachu Illustrator has been the most expensive trading card ever sold since it brought $16,492,000 at Goldin in February. In a pack opening that circulated this week, Paul told viewers he thinks his record has been beaten, adding, "It's not my news to break."

Nobody has said which card it was or what it brought. The likeliest candidate is a PSA 10 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle, one of only three graded a 10, because podcaster Patrick Bet-David claimed late last month that one had sold privately for $50 million. Ken Goldin publicly called that claim false, and the highest public price for any 1952 Mantle is still the $12.6 million Heritage got for an SGC 9.5 in 2022.

Until a buyer, seller or grading company confirms a sale, the record stays with the Pikachu at $16.49 million.

The world of collectibles is wide and deep, and there's a constant stream of new releases. Here are some of the big ones that are coming up:

The most valuable Y2K pieces in this issue share one trait, which is that they were hard to get at the time. The Shining Magikarp went only to Fan Club players who saved up 600 points, and the gold Bionicle mask went only to contest winners.

This week's Happy Meal cards are the opposite, made for anyone who orders lunch, and past McDonald's Pokémon cards sell for between 30 cents and about $6. That doesn't make this year's promo any less fun to open. It does suggest that if the pattern holds, the 2026 cards worth real money in twenty years will be the ones that were hard to get this year.

See you next week!