With most Pokémon, the worry is a fake. With Pikachu, the bigger worry is often a real card that’s been doctored. PSA’s 2025 Fraud Report ranks Pikachu third among the most-counterfeited subjects in trading cards, behind Charizard and Michael Jordan, but first for alterations: real cards trimmed, recolored or restamped to pass as something better. The cards below are where each problem turns up most.
| Card | Set and number | Main risk |
|---|---|---|
| Pikachu With Grey Felt Hat (“Van Gogh Pikachu”) | SV Promo 085 (2023) | Counterfeits. #5 most-faked card of any kind at PSA. |
| Pikachu | Base Set 58/102 (1999) | Real cards altered: fake 1st Edition stamps, painted red cheeks |
| Pikachu Illustrator | 1998 Japanese promo | High-end forgeries |
| Pikachu ex / Pikachu VMAX | Surging Sparks 238/191 (2024), Vivid Voltage 188/185 (2020) | Counterfeits and “proxies” |
| Japanese promos | McDonald’s 020/M-P, Shibuya’s 002/S-P, Mega Tokyo’s 098/XY-P | Counterfeits and altered cards |
Pikachu With Grey Felt Hat, SVP 085 (the Van Gogh promo)
This is the Pikachu that gets faked most. PSA ranked it fifth among all the counterfeits it received in 2025, across every sport and card game. It was given out at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam (until scalping made the museum stop in October 2023), with Pokémon Center orders in 2023, and in early 2024 by stores in the Netherlands and Belgium with €30 purchases. Distribution was a mess, and raw copies roughly tripled in price between mid-2025 and now.
The usual modern-card test doesn’t work here. The real card has no texture, so running a finger across it tells you nothing. Color is the better tell. The real card has warm, muted oil-painting tones, and a replica photographed by Validoe had neon-yellow fur and bright cyan brush strokes. Then look at the white attack and copyright text, which is crisp on a real card and tends to bleed into the background on fakes. The copyright line should be sharp and correctly aligned, with the é in “Pokémon”. The black star PROMO symbol and the “085” should be clean too, where LegitApp has seen soft, doubled printing on fakes. On the back, you’re looking for deep blue with darker flecks in the swirl above the Poké Ball, not a flat or matte blue.
Graded copies get faked too, and buyers have ended up in eBay disputes over fake “PSA 10” Van Gogh slabs. Rattle Pokemon walks through one:
“Sealed” copies, still in their clear plastic wrapper, sell at a premium. The wrapper proves nothing. Replica bags exist, and a card can be slipped back into one. Judge the card through the plastic like any other, and compare the wrapper with photos of a copy PSA has graded as sealed.
Base Set Pikachu 58/102 (1999)
This card is rarely faked from scratch. The money is in dressing up a cheap real one. An Unlimited Pikachu sells for about $5 raw and a 1st Edition with red cheeks for over $300, so the two tricks are adding a fake 1st Edition stamp and painting the cheeks red.
Both fall apart on two facts. Red cheeks only exist on 1st Edition and Shadowless prints (and some E3 promos), because Wizards switched the cheeks to yellow partway through the early print runs. And every 1st Edition card is shadowless, while Unlimited cards have a drop shadow along the right and bottom of the art box. A Pikachu with a drop shadow and either red cheeks or a 1st Edition stamp has been altered. So has a red-cheeked Pikachu with a “1999-2000” copyright, which marks a later print.
On a shadowless card with red cheeks, look at the cheeks under a loupe. Real red is printed into the card like the rest of the art. Marker or paint sits on top. And real 1st Edition stamps come thick, thin and in a few odd variants, so the stamp’s thickness alone won’t tell you much.
Two official reprints of the same art also get listed as Base Set: Base Set 2 (87/130, 2000) and XY Evolutions (35/108, 2016). Both are real cards worth a few dollars, and both have a set symbol, which the original Base Set card doesn’t.
Pikachu Illustrator
This is the most valuable Pokémon card there is. Logan Paul’s PSA 10 sold for $16.49 million at Goldin in February 2026. I wouldn’t buy one raw, and any “Illustrator” offered outside a major auction house is a replica. The fakes at the top end are still worth knowing about, because they show how good forgeries have become.
CGC caught one at grading in 2023. According to its counterfeit alert, the fake’s font was smaller, its set symbol larger, and the “s” and “A” in “Illus Atsuko” sat too close together. Its colors were duller and the holo pattern was different. Under UV light its foil looked much darker than the real card’s.
In January 2025 PokéBeach reported that uncut sheets of Illustrator and Pikachu Trophy cards, offered by reputable sellers and possibly sold for millions, were likely forged. At least one sheet carried 2024 watermarks, and the printer’s serial number matched the one behind other disputed prototype cards.
Pikachu ex 238/191 and Pikachu VMAX 188/185
The Surging Sparks special illustration rare (238/191) and the Vivid Voltage rainbow “Chonkachu” (188/185) are the modern Pikachus most worth faking, and both are sold openly as “proxies” on Etsy. Unlike the Van Gogh card, both are textured, which makes texture the best check.
Real cards have fine etched ridges, like a fingerprint, that change direction where the artwork changes. Fakes are either smooth or have one repeating pattern stamped over the whole card, so drag a fingertip diagonally across it and feel whether the ridges follow the art. Tilt it as well. Real foil shifts in layers, and a rainbow rare’s colors should be clean rather than brownish, yellow or orange. The two fakes of 238/191 in the Ungraded fake card database also got the holo, typeface, copyright line, back and card stock wrong.
The regular Pikachu VMAX is 044/185, and it was never printed in rainbow or gold. A “rainbow” or “gold” 044/185 is a novelty. Also ignore guides that say any card over 300 HP is fake: Pikachu VMAX itself has 310.
Japanese Pikachu promos
Cheap cards get faked too. McDonald’s Japan handed out the 2025 Happy Set Pikachu (020/M-P) by the hundreds of thousands, and it sells for around $26, yet PSA still received 51 fakes of it in 2025. Some were just the Pikachu image glued onto another card, which shows as a lifted layer at the edges.
Three other Japanese promos are in PSA’s top ten most-altered cards: Shibuya’s Pikachu (002/S-P, the most-altered card of all), Mega Tokyo’s Pikachu (098/XY-P) and Munch Pikachu (288/SM-P). With these the risk is trimming. Measure the card, look along the edges for an uneven cut or a missing bevel, and check under a loupe for ink running past the printed edge. The Japanese cards guide covers the back, core and set codes.
Gold and metal Pikachus
Only two official gold or metal versions of the Base Set Pikachu exist: the 23k gold-plated Burger King card from 1999, which came in a Poké Ball, and the metal card from the 2021 Celebrations Ultra-Premium Collection. Neither came out of a booster pack. Any other “gold metal Pikachu VMAX” or “gold Pikachu GX” is an unlicensed novelty. The gold cards page has the full list of what’s real.
Graded Pikachus
Beyond the usual slab checks, a graded Base Set Pikachu’s label should say “Red Cheeks” or “Yellow Cheeks”, and the cheeks in the case should match it. How to spot a fake PSA slab covers the case, the label and the cert lookup.
Buying a Pikachu
Pikachu “proxies” and customs are sold openly on Etsy, including glitter-holo and jumbo Van Gogh Pikachus and the rainbow Pikachu VMAX, and gold “fan art” Pikachus are all over eBay. Any of them can be resold without the disclaimer. The Illustrator forgeries went through high-end private sales.
A price well under these figures is where I’d start asking questions:
| Card | Typical raw price | Be suspicious under |
|---|---|---|
| Pikachu With Grey Felt Hat SVP 085 | ~$1,000–1,075 | ~$500 |
| Base Set 58/102, 1st Edition red cheeks | ~$320 | ~$150 |
| Base Set 58/102, 1st Edition yellow cheeks | ~$200 | ~$100 |
| Pikachu ex 238/191 | ~$275 | ~$140 |
| Pikachu VMAX 188/185 | ~$135 | ~$70 |
| Mega Tokyo’s Pikachu 098/XY-P | ~$560 | ~$300 |
| Pikachu Illustrator | Only sells graded, at auction | Anything outside a major auction house |
Pikachu FAQ
What is the most faked Pikachu card?
The Van Gogh Museum promo, Pikachu With Grey Felt Hat (SVP 085). It was the fifth most-counterfeited card of any kind in PSA’s 2025 data.
Are red cheeks Pikachu cards real?
Yes. Early 1st Edition and Shadowless prints of Base Set Pikachu have red cheeks, as do some E3 promos. Unlimited prints only came with yellow cheeks, so red cheeks on a card with a drop shadow have been painted on.
Does the texture test work on the Van Gogh Pikachu?
No, because the real card is smooth. Go by the color, the sharpness of the text, the PROMO star and the back.
Is my gold metal Pikachu real?
Only if it’s the 1999 Burger King gold-plated card or the 2021 Celebrations Ultra-Premium Collection metal card. Anything else is a novelty.
Is the Evolutions Pikachu a fake Base Set Pikachu?
No. Evolutions 35/108 and Base Set 2 87/130 are official reprints of the same art. They have set symbols, the original doesn’t, and they’re worth a few dollars.
Do people fake cheap Pikachu cards too?
Yes. PSA received 51 fakes of the 2025 McDonald’s Japan Pikachu, a card that sells for around $26.