Pokémon cards found in an attic could sell for sky-high £270,000

A retired decorator has been told the Pokémon cards he kept in his attic could sell for £270,000.

Auctioneers said their jaws 'hit the floor' when they laid eyes on the 42 sets of collectables - 'all in mint condition'.

After hearing reports of a single card selling for £6,000 the man, from Woking, who did not want to be named, took a sample of several of his own cards to Ewbank's Auctions' house in Surrey.

His sets were described as 'highly valuable' – with the house's head of trading cards James Spooner estimating they could sell for more than a quarter of a million pounds later this month.

Mr Spooner said: 'When we saw what he had - all in mint condition - we couldn't believe it, or the fact that he had no idea what they were worth. When we then discovered that he had 42 such sets, our jaws hit the floor.'

The collector added: 'When my son was young, in the late 1990s, he started getting cards and swapping them at school. I thought they looked nice and wondered whether they might be a good investment.

'I was lucky enough to find someone in Malaysia who sold complete sets, and I bought a couple of things from them on eBay. They then asked me if I would be interested in buying a complete master set of Pokémon cards as they had about two or three master sets for each issue.

'I thought that it would be cheaper to buy the full set rather than keep buying sealed packs of random cards in hope that when you opened them you could complete a set.

'The first set I bought cost me around £300. It's the Sky Ridge Charizard set and Ewbank's have estimated it for the sale at £20,000 to £40,000.'

Ewbank's has been staging dedicated auctions for trading cards for five years – racking up sales totalling more than £1.1million.

But Mr Spooner said: 'Even with that, this is easily the most valuable collection we have handled so far, and it could go as high as around £270,000 hammer.'

The cards, which were all carefully inserted in the bespoke Pokémon binders while still sealed and in 'mint condition', come to auction as new having been stored in the attic after the owner's son lost interest in Pokémon.

The collector added: 'He had his own cards, but he never got to touch these, I'm glad to say.

'I know people always talk about finding treasure in the attic, but in my case that is literally true. I had no idea what I had until the team at Ewbank's explained it to me.'

In April this year, teacher Andrew Braund approached Ewbank's with a 20-year-old collection of Pokémon cards he had kept in his parents' attic.

He consigned the three rarest cards to Ewbank's who took £32,800 for them on April 16, with Mr Braund using the proceeds to pay for his August wedding.

Bidding is currently live on the recently discovered collection, titled Pokémon: A Decade of Masters (1999-2009), which will be offered on October 21.