Garchomp ex Special Illustration Rare #245

A very pretty card, certainly, but one that might surprise you ranking this highly given its artistic competition. However, this is a case of a card that people are desperate to get into decks right now, and that’s why it’s fetching almost $26 in its most fancy form.

This Stage 2 ex is a machine, dealing out 160 damage for just one Energy, and at the same time able to rescue another three Energies from the discard pile to power up your bench. If that bench contains other Garchomp exes, its a great chance to get them ready to switch in and deal out Sonic Dive, which has you re-discard two Energies to do 120 damage to any of your opponent’s Pokémon, whether benched or active. You can see the loop.

My local card shop (LCS) usually plays it so cool about any cards it might want to buy, so it can offer as low a price as possible, but even they fell over themselves to buy all our Garchomp ex cards before we’d even offered.