He turned down a $1.3m offer for rare Pokemon card

Co-founder of card marketplace believes Pokemon cards are a new form of digital-age status

- Annabelle Liang Correspondent

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 mar ketplace, 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.