What’s the value for a complete Pichu set?
@pichufan You’ve been investigating these lately and also made PSA graphs, so I’m sure you have an opinion on this ^ 
Greetz,
Quuador
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The only raw price point I’m aware of is from April 2019 when I picked up my Pucchigumi Pichu. I paid $1,000, knowing that it had a minor factory defect which would prevent it from getting a PSA 10.
In terms of graded cards, I’m aware of 5 sales since December 2019:
- December 2019: Pokémon Fan winner Pichu PSA 10 for $1,000 (it sold 40 minutes after it appeared on eBay)
The next 3 were all from @velitheturtle . I can’t fully remember which cards the first two were, or even if I have the right prices, but I don’t think I’m off by much:
- January 2019: I can’t remember which card it was, but one PSA 10 sold for $1,450 (I think)
- March 2019: Again, not sure which one but it was a PSA 8 which sold for $1,280 (I think)
- April 2019: Elementary School First Grade winner Pichu PSA 10 mislabelled as Elementary School Fifth Grade winner Arceus for $1,800
Finally there was the set I picked up which included 8 PSA 10s, 3 PSA 9s and 2 PSA 8s which I paid $14,000 for (although I factored in that I’d have to pay £3,000 in import fees, brining the total in my mind to just under $18,000). I don’t think my purchase is a good price point though as the seller was only wanting to sell to me on the basis that I’d appreciate the cards as a set and likely never let them go - I actually gave them a $9,000 offer for the 6 cards I needed from the set initially which they flatly refused as they didn’t want the set to be split up.
As another graded price point, I believe @aetsen may have sold a PSA 10 Elementary School Third Grade Arceus back in 2018 for around $2,500 (it features Pikachu on a surfboard, so it could be argued that that’s the most desirable card in the set to most people.
Based on what I’ve learned recently I’m pretty sure the only cards from the 2009 contest which appeared did so as full sets. Where the most number of graded copies of a single card in the set is 6, it’s pretty safe to assume that any card with lower than 6 copies graded has that many available raw somewhere.
I also know of at least 1 complete raw set in the hands of an E4 member and I’d hazard a guess that there are also a handful of complete raw sets out there in the hands of collectors who were around in 2009-2011 (some of which no doubt haven’t seen the light of day since then, either).
Finally, you may have to rethink your definition of “complete” as I’m pretty certain that each of the runner-ups received a jumbo card with their winning artwork on (which means 35 jumbo Arceus cards and 30 jumbo Pichu cards which would also technically be part of the set). I don’t know if any of those have surfaced; I certainly haven’t seen any myself.
This is a good time to shamelessly plug my recently posted blog article about the contest: pichu.blog/2009-design-contest.
**Edit:**I don’t know how it works for the 2009 contest as there simply aren’t enough sale figures to go by, but it’s worth noting that with the 2010 contest cards people are paying significantly more for PSA 10s than PSA 9s (PSA 10s are fetching as high as $1,999 whilst PSA 9s are going for as low as $165). All I can really say on that note is that if a raw card appeared today for under $500 I’d buy it immediately, regardless of condition.
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