Retired decorator's Pokémon cards sell for £1.5m

A retired decorator from Woking has become a millionaire after selling a collection of Pokémon cards for £1.56m at auction, following 15 years of sitting forgotten in his attic.

The seller, who asked not to be identified, said he had no idea the cards were worth anything until he read in his local newspaper that a single card had fetched more than £6,000. "I know people always talk about finding treasure in the attic, but in my case that is literally true," he said.

His interest in the cards began in the late 1990s, when his son started collecting and swapping them at school. "I thought they looked nice and wondered whether they might be a good investment," he said. "He had his own cards, but he never got to touch these, I'm glad to say." He bought complete sets from a seller in Malaysia on eBay and filed them into bespoke binders while still sealed.

The 42 sets went under the hammer at Ewbank's in Surrey on Wednesday. The auction house said "jaws hit the floor" when the cards were presented, and called it the most valuable trading cards auction ever held in the UK — possibly a European record. James Spooner, its head of trading cards, said: "When we saw what he had — all in mint condition — we couldn't believe it."

The top lot, the Legendary Collection Complete Master Set including a near-mint Charizard, had been estimated at £15,000 to £20,000 but sold for £100,000. Andrew Ewbank, who ran the sale himself, said bidders had come from all over the world. It was the auction house's most successful sale in more than 30 years of business, beating the previous record of £872,000 set at a Stanley Gibbons sale in London on 9 October.