The Pokémon TCG’s 30th Celebration set is causing all sorts of entertaining consternation in the wake of its excellent pull-rates. As scalpers and resellers start falling apart, future releases and reprints of the set look likely to be more easily available for regular customers, meaning enthusiasts and younger players will finally be able to get their hands on the cards they want to keep the most. This means that, rather than multiple cards selling for prices in the high hundreds as with recent sets like Ascended Heroes, 30th Celebration has already settled to sub-$100 prices for most of its top cards (outside of the classic collection), and those’ll keep coming down.
The trend for the last couple of years, including the end of Scarlet & Violet and the current run of Mega Evolution sets, has been for scalpers to scoop everything up immediately, thus boosting the resale market to ridiculous places in a set’s first month on sale. Some of those inflated prices stick, like with Ascended Heroes, Destined Rivals, and Prismatic Evolutions, but others eventually settle to slightly more sensible places such as with Perfect Order, Chaos Rising, and Pitch Black. So, as ever, if you’re looking to buy singles, either for a collection or a show-off deck, always wait at least a month before paying, maybe two. We’re talking a difference of literally hundreds of dollars.
Everything’s half off
What makes 30th Celebration so fascinating is that it’s dropped to those same sorts of prices within just days, and it looks like they’ll keep coming down. The most expensive card in the main set is the Mew ex Special Illustration Rare, and that’s “only” $152 at the time of writing. Given that most recent sets have seen their top card at well over $1000 within the first couple of weeks at least, this is a dramatic difference.
There’s a twist when it comes to the Classic Collection, a subset of 30 cards featuring all-time favorites with a new “30th” stamp. They’re proving tougher to pull than people were expecting, and as such are seeing higher prices. The Crystal Lugia is currently riding high at $280, impressively beating the holo Charizard of legend at $185. But again, after the Magikarp at $107, the other 27 are all below $100 already (including Gengar Prime!), with some like poor old Misty from Base set at just $10. Meanwhile, the splendid Buzzwole GX manages just five bucks!
There is an exception to these lower prices, however: the infamous RGB Mews. These are three cards that have gone entirely unmentioned in all official documentation, and have yet to even be acknowledged as real by The Pokémon Company, making them entertainingly mysterious, and all the more so thanks to their scratchy, knock-off-looking design. They’re also extremely rare—so much so that pull-rates on the three cards, one red, one blue, one green, have yet to be calculated. (There’s a rumor that the PTCG Live digital version of the card pulls one in 10,000.) However, a fair few of the oddities have already been sold on eBay, and the average price is around $4,000.
With all that said, we’re putting together the top 15 highest-priced cards nice and early after this set’s release, because most are already pretty affordable. Still, I do suggest waiting a couple more weeks before buying any, because I feel confident these prices will come down by perhaps another half. This ranking combines both the main set and the Classic Collection, because they’re all in the same packs, and therefore we’re bumping this up to 15 entries from the usual 10.
15: Shining Celebi – Classic Collection
Originally from 2002’s Neo Destiny, Shining Celebi maintains enough affection to currently be going for $46.
14: Pikachu & Zekrom GX – Classic Collection
There’s only one Tag Team card in the Classic Collection, and rather boringly they opted for Pikachu & Zekrom GX. It could have been Latias & Latios GX! (Which currently sells for $4,500.) Or a Rainbow Rare Mewtwo & Mew GX! ($450). Given all the Pikachus already in the packs, it was an odd choice to reprise this one from Sun & Moon’s Team Up back in 2019. The original sells for $53 at the moment, and this new version is fetching…$53. Spooky.
13: Sylveon ex SIR
What a glorious explosion of color from artist You Iribi. Everyone’s favorite trans icon, Sylveon, is selling for $65.
12: Mewtwo ex Future Rare
These Future Rare cards were originally selling for $3,000 ahead of the set’s official launch, and were hyped by “investors” as the big money. So it’s rather hilarious that the Mewtwo Future Rare is currently only getting around $72.
11: Gengar Prime – Classic Collection
This card, the Gengar Prime from 2010 Heartgold & Soulsilver set Triumphant, still hits hard. If you pulled one of those originals you’d be sitting on $570 (and $14,400 in a PSA 10), but this new version sells just now for $79.
10: Pikachu ex Daytime
There are two Pikachu ex Special Illustration Rares in the set, which is a touch confusing. One is set in the daytime, the other at night, and the latter is proving more popular. Both are completely wonderful, of course, thanks to gorgeous art from Kantaro, packing in as many pocket monsters as possible onto a small card. Pull this and you could sell it for $81.
9: Mewtwo ex SIR
In any other set of the last two years, a Mewtwo this stunning would easily be selling for $300 or more, so it’s incredible to see this masterpiece by Yano Keiji at only $85. If any card is going to hold its value, I’d say it’s this one, likely to be worth a couple of hundred in a couple of years. But far better as a trophy in a binder.
8: Jirachi ex SIR
The truism that says “make a Pokémon card’s background detailed enough and it’ll gather riches” proves true yet again. (It’s a truism now that I’ve said it, at least.) Akira Egawa, the absolute master of these incredibly detailed pieces of art, does it again with Jirachi, and the card is selling for $101.
7: Mew ex Future Rare
Future Rare Mew ex might be going for $103, but that still remains far lower than the $3,000 people had been hyping. Gosh, anyone who actually paid that over the last couple of weeks must be unable to get out of bed. Also, it’s incredibly stupid-looking.
6: Pikachu ex Night
You can see why the nighttime version is more popular, can’t you? The same artist packs in even more creatures this time, including Snorlax, Zapdos, Meowth and Umbreon, among so many others. It’s a fan-favorite festival. $103 is still far too much to pay for it, but given it’s Pikachu, there’s a chance the price won’t fall far lower in the immediate future, although that depends on how many more flood the market.
5: Magikarp – Classic Collection
I kind of love that TPC picked Shinji Kanda’s Magikarp from all the cards he’s created. They could have gone for the wildly popular Giratina V, but instead the dumb ol’ fish got a well-deserved place in the Classic Collection. This was originally part of 2023’s Paldea Evolved set, and the original sells for a mighty $370. This stamped version falls a long way behind at $107.
4: Gengar ex SIR
This is so awesome. What a lovely piece of cartoon art, with incredible background work and a cheeky Gengar up to no good. Artist Choriso is very new to Pokémon card art, with only four cards illustrated so far, and incredibly this is her first full art ever. What a way to make an entrance. The card’s market value is currently $126.
3: Mew ex SIR
Here’s the top card outside of the Classic Collection, and you can see why. Mew is the star of the 30th Celebration, despite Pikachu appearing in every pack, and this astonishing art by Kuroimori deserves to be proving so popular. They’ve given us some of the best full arts in recent years, like the Surging Sparks Feebas, and Paldean Fates’ Gardevoir. Right now, you can buy this Mew for around $150.
2: Charizard Base Set – Classic Collection
Well, this is a bit boring, isn’t it? It’s perhaps unrealistic that TPC would have left the one card to rule them all out of yet another collection of classic cards, but it still feels overdone. At this point you could fill a binder page just with versions of this identical card, although you’d have to be fairly rich. A Base Set shadowless version goes for $2,250 raw, with the Legendary Collection reprint at $900. Base Set 2’s version can get around $500, XY Evolution’s is $103, the 25th anniversary Classic Collection is $160, and on and on and on. This one, right now, is fetching $185, and while it’ll likely drop in the next couple of months, I expect it’ll be back up around that in years to come.
1: Crystal Lugia – Classic Collection
Bless the Crystal Lugia for being more wanted than yawnsome Charizard. And how. It’s currently priced at $280, by a stretch the most expensive card in the regular cards, although considerably cheaper than the $4,500 you’d need to pay for an original from 2003’s Aquapolis.
#0: RGB Mew
We can’t leave these out. There’s no real data on the mysterious (and utterly hideous) so-called RGB Mews, because they’re proving incredibly rare. Perhaps 1 in 10,000, maybe even rarer than that, but they’re not showing up in the pull-rate data from all the usual suspects because their sample sizes tend to be limited to 5,000 packs. However, they are selling on eBay, and I’ve found a bunch of confirmed sales, mostly at around $4,000. It’ll be interesting to see what happens with these, but they could go on to be some of the most expensive cards in the franchise’s history in ten years’ time. Alas, you’ve genuinely got a better chance of being struck by lightning in your lifetime that pulling one from a pack.
