Pokémon princess, 20, with £90 MILLION collection poses for glamorous photoshoot as she denies being 'fake AI' and reveals how she gathered so many valuable cards

Jolina Gisèle isn't exactly your typical Pokémon card collector. 

Dressed head to toe in black and posing in front of a helicopter, the so-called 'Pokémon Princess' looks more like she belongs on a catwalk than dragging around binders of collectible cards. 

But it's these cards that shot her to fame in March, after she revealed her hoard to the world. 

Stored in a Swiss vault, 20-year-old Jolina claims the collection is made up of 60,000 cards and is worth £90million. 

Amongst her treasure trove, she claims to have ultra-rare cards including the shadowless Charizard which can sell for a whopping £740,000. 

The collection also includes 180 Mews and Mewtwos, 208 Charizards and 260 Pikachus as well as two highly prized 'illustrator' editions.

The sheer size and value of the collection drew in countless sceptics, who believed she was simply an AI construct, or perhaps an ambassador for the brand. 

But, speaking to Tatler for the magazine's September edition, she attempted to dispel these rumours. 

Jolina claims to have gotten hooked on the Pokémon trading card game when she was a young girl in rural Switzerland. 

She said: 'I liked that kids from all different ages came together and they traded the cards. The cooler, older kids, and me in the first grade.

'Friendships formed. The boys always had football cards, but for us girls, there was never a thing that created such unity.'

Her father Urs, a discrete man who did not show his face to Tatler and only identified himself as an AI security entrepreneur and trained engineer, said he was more than happy to indulge his daughter. 

He said: 'I was working a lot and then coming home and nobody wanted to talk about mathematics or physics. Pokémon was something which brought us together.' 

The pair initially clashed over what to do with the cards, Jolina said: 'For me, it was more the passion of Pokémon itself, and then for my dad it was the collecting. 

'Then over time, of course, collecting became important for me as well. My dad taught me that I shouldn’t play with the cards too much to keep the condition good.'

Until the mid-2010s, the collection was fairly modest but after that the father and daughter started seeking out increasingly unusual and precious cards on eBay. 

Jolina admitted that she and her mother were worried that the obsession had gone too far: 'At some point, I thought that my dad might have overdone it a bit. My mother and I were a bit scared that we spent so much money on the cards. 

'So many packages came in each day. All of a sudden my dad was addicted to shopping for Pokémon cards.'

Urs added: 'Every Swiss franc we didn’t need went into Pokémon. Everywhere in the house was Pokémon; you could open doors and the cards were there.'

Jolina said she and the family now want to sell the collection off in its entirety: 'It’s just not as fun as it used to be because it’s so out of reach now. It’s not in our cupboards any more.

'It’s just too much work that we’ve put into it. The really special thing is that we have every single card and that took so much time, effort and dedication. It would be such a shame to break it apart.' 

Little is known about Jolina, as she lived an elusive life before going public. 

There is little record of her on the internet, and it is not even known if her actual name is Jolina Gisèle. 

Since the pandemic, the market for vintage Pokémon cards has grown exponentially and the value of the collection is likely to be dramatically higher than it was a decade ago.

Currently, Essex brothers Owen and Conner Grey hold the Guinness World Record for the largest collection with 43,339 Pokémon cards.