SINGAPORE – The Pikachu Illustrator, which depicts the iconic electric mouse wielding a pen and paintbrush, is the crown jewel of Mr Chew Zhan Lun’s Pokemon card collection, with only 39 copies believed to have been officially distributed.
The cards were awarded almost three decades ago to the winners of a Japanese drawing contest.
Today, such cards which have withstood the test of time hold tremendous value. Mr Chew, 33, acquired one of them from a private collector for US$600,000 (S$761,200) in 2025.
He recently rejected a $1.3 million offer for the card – which would have given him a more than 70 per cent profit.
Mr Chew, who is the co-founder of the CTRL Collectibles card marketplace, currently owns more than 300 trading cards, including those of the K-pop and Yu-Gi-Oh! variety, which he stores in a vault in Orchard Road.
He started working as an insurance agent while studying banking and finance at Nanyang Technological University. He left the industry in 2019 and became a sole trader, benefiting from the Covid-19 stock market boom.
He and his wife are fur parents to a corgi, Sushi.
A: It was not an easy decision. I spent almost two days thinking it through and talking it over with my wife.
Selling would have meant a good profit, but given how scarce the card is, I wasn’t confident that I could buy another one back at a similar level in the future. In the end, holding it made more sense for me at that time.
(The Straits Times has verified the authenticity of the offer Mr Chew received for the Pikachu Illustrator, which is graded nine out of a maximum score of 10 under an authentication system.
The only known Pikachu Illustrator with a perfect score is owned by World Wrestling Entertainment star and influencer Logan Paul, who has put the card he purchased for nearly US$5.3 million in 2021 up for auction.)
A: I started in May 2024 with a casual $100 purchase of a 2023 Crown Zenith Pikachu card, while walking past a shop in Jalan Besar. I showed the card to a friend, knowing he was a Pokemon fan, and quickly discovered he was a serious collector. Through him, I learnt what drives value and how the market works.
I began forming a thesis. When people make significant money, they tend to flex it. First through necessities like homes and cars, then through luxury goods. But there is a limit to how many houses or cars one needs. Watches have also already gone through their boom, and lifestyle habits are changing as young people are no longer going out.
Pokemon cards stood out as a new form of digital-age status – highly visual, scarce and easily shared online. What began as a hobby naturally evolved into an alternative asset collection.
A: Don’t throw all your eggs into one basket. If a Pokemon card can go up by five to 10 times in value over a few months, it can easily come down within the same period of time.
View the cards as an alternative asset, and allocate less than 10 per cent of your investment portfolio to them. I buy only cards I genuinely like, knowing that if I don’t make a profit, I would still enjoy the collection.
A: I have mainly allocated to properties, cash and selective equity hedges. Properties, located locally and in overseas markets such as Dubai, provide longer-term stability and inflation protection. Cash gives me flexibility in uncertain markets. I use equity hedges cautiously to manage downside risk.
A: Trend is friend, never fight against it. You might not be the earliest to get in, but never be the last to get out.
A: Rotating the majority of my trading profits from the stock market into our current home. Nothing beats the peace of mind from knowing that my family has a stable roof over our heads.
A: I once bought a monkey non-fungible token (NFT) despite having zero understanding of cryptocurrencies or NFTs, mostly because it looked interesting and friends were talking about it. I took a loss. In hindsight, it was a useful reminder to put money only into things I properly understand.
A: My father was the sole breadwinner and my mother took care of my sister and me. We had enough to get by, but spending was always something we thought about. That stuck with me. Even now, I am very conscious about value – I would never pay more than $3 for a can of Coke. My wife sometimes jokes that I am a cheapskate. For me, it is not about the price, but about paying for value.
A: Waking up without an alarm, spending some time with Sushi, and seeing other people’s cards get sold on my platform. Then taking an evening walk with Sushi before enjoying dinner with my wife.
A: I have learnt that beyond a certain point, additional money doesn’t fundamentally change how you live. I would focus on preserving it and using it thoughtfully rather than letting it alter my priorities.
A: The first thing I would do is get a sales job to rebuild my capital. I have always believed that sales roles reward effort and results more directly than most other jobs, which makes them a practical way to recover and move forward.
Once I have a sufficient base, I would look for opportunities where my research and experience give me an edge, and rebuild my net worth.
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