Data Study Pokémon Card Prices After Release: How Far 80 Chase Cards Fell

Pokémon card prices drop after release, and the drop runs deeper and longer than most buyers expect. We followed the ten most expensive cards from eight sets, from the month each set launched through September 2026. Six months in, the typical chase card sold for 66% of its release-month price. The low point came around month eight, at 59%. Only 14 of the 80 cards are worth more today than at launch, and 11 of those come from just two sets.

Data as of September 26, 2026. 80 chase cards, 8 sets released November 2024 to November 2025. 30th Celebration is too new to include.

Key takeaways

• Six months after release, the median chase card sold for 66% of its release-month price, and the typical low came in month eight at 59%. Today 66 of the 80 still sell below launch.
• The market slid again this summer. From July to late September the median chase card fell another 16%, and 30 of the 80 are at their lowest price since release.
• Black Bolt and White Flare broke the pattern. 11 of their 20 chase cards sit above launch, led by the Victini and Zekrom ex cards.
• Journey Together fell hardest. Its chase cards trade at a median of 28% of launch, and none has recovered.

How much do Pokémon card prices drop after release?

Across all 80 chase cards, prices slid for the first eight months. The chart tracks the median card as a percent of what it cost in the month its set came out.

The steepest stretch runs from month four to month seven, when the typical card gave up about another fifth of its launch price. For the six sets with a full year of data, the median card then held between 61% and 65% of launch through month twelve.

Collectors already sense this. On a 275-comment r/PokeInvesting thread about chase cards losing value, the top reply said every modern chase card starts high, drops, and finds a floor. The data agrees on the shape. What it adds is how big the drop is and when the floor tends to arrive.

Set by set: eight release curves

Median of each set's ten chase cards, as a percent of release-month price. "Today" is September 26, 2026.

The sets fall into three groups. Four of them, Surging Sparks, Prismatic Evolutions, Destined Rivals, and Phantasmal Flames, followed the average path and now sit between 54% and 77% of launch. Prismatic Evolutions shows the round trip most clearly. Its Umbreon ex special illustration rare cost $1,712.24 in its release month, fell to 49% of that by month seven, and has climbed partway back since. It sells for $1,384.05 on TCGplayer today.

Two sets collapsed. Journey Together's chase cards lost 44% in the first month alone, and Destined Rivals lost 31% in the same stretch. Both sets came out in the last days of their month (March 28 and May 30), so their release-month price leans heavily on presale and first-weekend sales, the most expensive time to buy anything. Mega Evolution also launched late in its month, on September 26, but held up through its first month. Then it fell hard between months one and three and sits at 41% today. Its two Mega Hyper Rares lost more than half their value: the Mega Lucario ex went for $605.00 in its release month and sells for $244.23 today, and the Mega Gardevoir ex went for $562.78 and now sells for $194.64.

Black Bolt and White Flare are the outliers. Both dipped like everything else and hit bottom around month six. Black Bolt's chase cards now sit above their launch prices as a group, and White Flare's are close behind at 93%.

When do chase cards bottom out?

For every chase card in the six sets with a full year of history, we found the month it hit its lowest price during that first year. The median was month eight, the same month the average line in the first chart bottoms out. The spread is wide. Five cards set their first-year low in month one, and five more waited until month twelve.

Put the two charts together and the pattern is simple to state. Most of the discount on a chase card shows up in the first eight months. After that, what happens depends on the card.

The first-year low isn't the whole story this year. Between July and late September the median chase card in this study fell another 16%, and 75 of the 80 dropped. Thirty of them are at their lowest price since release right now, most from the newer sets: 8 from Phantasmal Flames, 7 each from Journey Together and Mega Evolution, and 5 from Destined Rivals. Team Rocket's Mewtwo ex is a good example. It sat 38% above its launch price in June and has since slipped just below it.

The chase cards that went up

Fourteen of the 80 chase cards are worth more than they were at launch. Eleven of them come from Black Bolt and White Flare, the two Unova sets that released together in July 2025. Here are the ten biggest gains.

Release-month prices come from PriceCharting's monthly ungraded history and today's prices from TCGplayer. The change column compares each card with itself on one consistent basis (see how we measured this), so it won't always match dividing one price column by the other.

The biggest percentage gains came from cards that launched cheap. White Flare's Oshawott and Zoroark illustration rares both started near $34 and have more than doubled, and Black Bolt's Haxorus illustration rare is up 57%. At the top end, both Victini cards and both Zekrom ex cards now sit above their launch prices.

Outside the Unova sets, only three chase cards are above launch. Milotic ex from Surging Sparks is up 21% on its release-month price, Sylveon ex from Prismatic Evolutions is up 4%, and the Mega Charizard X ex special illustration rare from Phantasmal Flames is up 3%. Even inside that set the pattern held for most cards: the Mega Charizard X ex Mega Hyper Rare sits at 59% of its launch price.

What this means for 30th Celebration

30th Celebration came out on September 16, 2026, which is too recent for a release curve. Every card in it now has a daily price on its Catchinary set page. What the eight sets before it show is how the first year usually goes. If 30th Celebration follows the typical path, its chase cards will sell for about two thirds of their release-month price by March 2027, with the low point closer to next spring.

Our September 20 Reddit roundup covered how generous the set's hit rates are. More copies of the chase cards on the market is the same force that pulled the eight curves above down. The cards that held up best in this study came mostly from Black Bolt and White Flare, two sets built on nostalgia for a single generation of Pokémon.

Every card in this study has a page on Catchinary with its daily price history, so you can see where a card sits on its own curve before you buy. The set pages rank each set's cards by current price, and the market page shows which cards are moving this week.

How we measured this

We used the eight English sets released between November 2024 and November 2025 that have full monthly price history. Release dates come from the official Pokémon TCG expansion list. For each set, the chase cards are the ten cards with the highest ungraded price in the calendar month the set released. We measured every later month as a percent of that release-month price and report the median across cards, so one runaway card can't skew a set.

Monthly prices through April 2026 come from PriceCharting's ungraded price history. For May through July 2026, we extend each card with the monthly average of Catchinary's daily TCGplayer market price, linked to its own PriceCharting value in April 2026. The two sources agreed closely that month: across 292 cards worth $5 or more, TCGplayer ran a median of 7% above PriceCharting. Catchinary's daily snapshots from August 12 to September 24 did not update, so we left them out, and today's figures come from a fresh TCGplayer pull on September 26, linked the same way. We looked at how TCGplayer's market price compares with actual sales in an earlier post.

We dropped 579 cards where the two sources disagreed by more than double in April 2026, a sign the card was matched to the wrong product. Nearly all of them, 530 of 579, were worth less than $5. The filter changed the chase lists in two sets, Prismatic Evolutions and Phantasmal Flames. Ascended Heroes, Perfect Order, and Chaos Rising are left out because we have no prices from their release months.

Sets that release late in a month carry a presale premium into their first month, so we also ran everything from each set's first full month. The six-month figure moves from 66% to 68%, and the count of cards still below launch from 66 to 63. The direction holds either way. All prices here are ungraded, and graded copies and sealed product follow their own curves.

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