RIMOWA's Pokemon Collab Hits eBay for Thousands of Dollars

RIMOWA has been making aluminum suitcases in Cologne, Germany since 1898. In the intervening 127 years the brand has become a status symbol in its own right, the kind of luggage that gets recognized at baggage claim and photographed in airport selfies. Collaborations are not new territory for RIMOWA, but this one is a little different. Rather than slapping a logo on a suitcase, the brand leaned into customization, releasing accessories that let existing RIMOWA owners deck out what they already have.

The collection centers on three leather luggage charms featuring Pikachu, Charmander, and Charizard, each depicted playing with a RIMOWA suitcase. The charms are hand-finished Italian leather with embossed designs, and each is paired with one of RIMOWA’s seasonal colorways.

The wheel set, priced identically to the charms, swaps out your standard RIMOWA rollers for Pokeball-inspired red and white wheels with the brand’s Cologne Cathedral monogram engraved in the hub. Rounding out the lineup is a sticker pack featuring Pikachu, Bulbasaur, Charmander, and Squirtle, themed around the original Kanto starters from Pokemon Red and Green.

This was framed as a 30th anniversary celebration tied to the original 1996 Japanese games, which is a detail that matters for the collector angle. The entire collection was conceived as Japan-original, meaning it was never intended to exist outside the Japanese market.

Getting one required either being in Japan on June 2 or knowing someone who was. RIMOWA ran a lottery from 11 AM to 1 PM at six stores across Japan, covering Omotesando, Ginza, Nagoya Sakae, Osaka Shinsaibashi, Kobe, and Fukuoka. Each customer was limited to one unit per item. After the lottery closed at 1 PM, any remaining inventory sold first-come first-served in-store until it was gone, with online sales opening simultaneously at 4 PM on RIMOWA Japan’s website. Given the demand, the online window was not open for long.

For international buyers, a handful of proxy purchasing services picked it up, but even those routes add cost on top of an already premium retail price.

The charms are the clear standouts. Individual leather charms have sold for over $1,000 on the secondary market, which works out to roughly 3.5x the $273 retail price. After eBay’s 13% fee structure, a $1,000 sale clears about $870 in profit before shipping, or around $597 over retail. That is a meaningful flip on what is essentially a luggage accessory.

The Pokeball wheel set and sticker pack have each moved around $500. The wheels at 1.8x retail after fees leave you with roughly $435 cleared, a solid return on a $273 outlay. The sticker pack at $500 on a $49 retail is the wildest ratio in the collection at more than 10x retail, though volume on those sales will likely be lower given the novelty factor.

More sales should continue rolling in as units purchased through proxy services reach buyers and listings multiply. The secondary market on this collection is still early.

Three things lined up for this. RIMOWA’s collector appeal is real, with an established secondary market for their limited accessories and collabs. Pokemon’s 30th anniversary has been a franchise-wide celebration all year, and the collector base is enormous and globally distributed. And Japan exclusivity turned a limited drop into an effectively inaccessible one for most of the world. Anyone outside Japan had to pay a premium to a proxy service before the item even hit the secondary market, which set a price floor well above retail from day one. All three of those forces working together is the whole story.