Price Trends: Pokémon Cards Climbing in Price - 10/15/2024
By Peter Day •
We want you to have the best information available when you price cards on the TCGplayer Marketplace. So to help you get the most from your inventory, we’ve put together a downloadable CSV report of Pokémon cards that have dramatically increased in Market Price in the past 30 days.
(Note: This report only considers Near Mint copies of cards with at least five sales between September 14 and October 13, 2024.)
Here are ten highlights from that report. First, we have the five cards that gained the most value in the past 30 days after starting with a Market Price of $20 or less.
Top 5 Price Increases—PKMN Cards $20 or Less
- Set: Obsidian Flames
- Increase: +$4.88
- Current Market Price: $16.07
Pidgeot ex has been a cornerstone of Charizard decks since last year, but it recently found another home in the Terapagos deck that arose after the release of Stellar Crown on September 13. Terapagos plays Rare Candy anyway to set up Dusknoir, a card with a ridiculous Ability that can drop 130 damage on any opposing Pokémon without attacking. Adding Pidgey and Pidgeot ex gives this deck another target for Rare Candy and makes setting up Dusknoir even easier.
While the impact of this metagame shift has been minor on normal versions of Pidgeot ex, it shows up more obviously on this Special Illustration Rare version. Obsidian Flames is over a year old, so while the set’s pull rates were pretty generous, scarcity is finally setting in for this high-rarity card.
#4 Dodrio
- Set: Prize Pack Series Cards
- Increase: +$5.30
- Current Market Price: $8.01
Speculators have been targeting this card with a vengeance ever since it released in Prize Pack Series Five. Prize Packs contain reprints of recent Pokémon cards with the Play! Pokémon logo and are normally only available as organized play rewards, so they’re fairly scarce.
Still, whoever is buying up Dodrio is taking a serious risk. The normal version of the card costs less than a dime, with both players and collectors taking a pass. It’s not clear who’s going to be willing to pay over $5 for a stamped version of an unpopular Pokémon that sees next to no competitive play.
- Set: Shrouded Fable
- Increase: +$6.03
- Current Market Price: $25.27
Shrouded Fable mostly flopped with collectors, but Hyper Rare Metal Energy has managed to beat the odds and keep rising. Since nearly every Pokémon deck runs basic Energy cards, there’s a decently high floor for the demand from collector-players for high-rarity Energy cards that match the other high-rarity cards in Standard, even when all the other cards in a set are lackluster. This explains why Hyper Rare Darkness Energy was one of the few other Shrouded Fable cards that managed to gain value after the set released.
#2 Iron Bundle - 066 (Pokemon Center Exclusive)
- Set: Scarlet & Violet Promo Cards
- Increase: +$7.85
- Current Market Price: $16.82
A mild buyout on September 22 (when the average number of copies per buyer raised to 2.0) was all it took to send this card doubling in price.
Iron Bundle has been a staple tech card in Standard for a while, so there’s always been a small but consistent source of demand for rare versions of it. And this version is rarer than most. Even compared to other Pokémon Center Exclusive cards like Mimikyu, which are only available in the Pokémon Center-exclusive versions of Elite Trainer Boxes for a given set, Iron Bundle is twice as rare. That’s because Paradox Rift had two different ETBs: an Iron Valiant version with Iron Bundle, and a Roaring Moon version with Scream Tail.
- Set: Shrouded Fable
- Increase: +$13.24
- Current Market Price: $28.84
Players had high expectations for Dusknoir when it released in the beginning of August, and it has surpassed them. With just one of its noodle-fingered hands, Dusknoir has cut the length of the average Pokémon game in half by giving players a way to give up Prize cards and Knock Out opposing Pokémon without using their one attack per turn. The normal version of Dusknoir is still under $1, but this Illustration Rare version has done nothing but climb since it hit its floor of $16 in mid-September, and it is now the third most expensive card in Shrouded Fable.
Next, these are the five cards that gained the most value in the past 30 days after starting with a Market Price over $20.
Top 5 Price Increases—PKMN Cards Over $20
#5 Mew ex
- Set: Prize Pack Series Cards
- Increase: +$35.99
- Current Market Price: $72.21
Unlike Dodrio, this Prize Pack Series card has a proven track record with players and collectors, and its rise looks mostly organic. Mew ex has been popping up in all sorts of competitive decks for over a year, and since most decks only run one copy, players feel tempted to make that copy as shiny as possible. This isn’t the shiniest option of all—that honor belongs to the Special Illustration Rare version from Paldean Fates—but as a Prize Pack Series card, it might be the rarest.
- Set: Burning Shadows
- Increase: +$42.00
- Current Market Price: $459.65
There isn’t much we can learn from this price increase. A single buyer purchased four Near Mint copies of Rainbow Rare Charizard-GX on October 5th, precipitating a spike that represented only a small fraction of the card’s total value. It’s still about $40 short of its all-time high of $495.90 in July 2021.
- Set: Scarlet & Violet—151
- Increase: +$46.49
- Current Market Price: $169.34
There’s more to unpack here. Scarlet & Violet—151 is the most popular set of the Scarlet & Violet Series so far, and Special Illustration Rare Charizard ex is the set’s #1 chase card, so there has been plenty of demand from both collectors and speculators for months. Despite this, before October the card’s price never drifted far from a range between $100 and $140. Sales peaked during Cyber Weekend last year, and there was a massive buyout on May 8 when the average number of copies per buyer rose to 10.8, but neither day sent Charizard ex as high as it’s gone in the past two weeks.
It looks like the supply of 151 has simply dried up. There aren’t enough sellers willing to part with what might be the most important card of the era, now that 151 Booster Bundles are around 2x MSRP. The scarcity is affecting all the high-rarity cards from 151, many of which have hit all-time highs this month.
#2 Latias & Latios GX (Alternate Full Art)
- Set: Team Up
- Increase: +$54.17
- Current Market Price: $902.26
The biggest card of the Sun & Moon Series just broke $900 for the first time, continuing a trend we saw last month of high-profile modern cards entering a third growth phase after previously peaking in 2021 and 2023. At time of writing, the lowest Near Mint copy is listed at over $965, and there haven’t been any new NM sales in over a week. We’ll have to see which side of the market blinks first.
#1 Umbreon VMAX (Alternate Art Secret)
- Set: Evolving Skies
- Increase: +$122.71
- Current Market Price: $983.57
Moonbreon is riding the same wave as Latias & Latios-GX, though unlike them Moonbreon still hasn’t broken its previous high of $1,014.20. There are also twice as many listings available for Umbreon VMAX, which reflects the difference in how many more cards The Pokémon Company International printed during the Scarlet & Violet Series compared to the Sun & Moon Series.
By selling these cards online, you can reach a broad audience of customers who are willing to pay what these cards are truly worth. Download the October 2024 Price Trends Report to review every Pokémon card that went up in value this month. Then list those cards on TCGplayer so your inventory can do more for your business.
Download the Pokémon Price Trends Report
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