Reddit Roundup Pokémon TCG Reddit: The Hit Rates Broke the 30th Anniversary Trade

Each week we read the busiest Pokémon TCG corners of Reddit and put verified Catchinary price data next to the conversation. This week of September 20, 2026 there was one story and it swallowed everything else. 30th Anniversary hit shelves, people opened a single elite trainer box and pulled three chase cards, and within a day r/PokemonInvesting had gone from hype to a queue of people asking how fast they could sell.

Key takeaways

• 30th Anniversary hit rates are the story. A thread literally titled "The hit rates are cranked - 1 ETB" took 2,882 upvotes, and the top reply at 1,021 upvotes hoped it meant "dirt cheap singles."
• r/PokemonInvesting flipped to sell in about a day. The busiest thread of the week asked whether to sell or hold and the 216-upvote answer was blunt: five-year hold, cash out now.
• A raw Blue RGB Mew listed above five figures and the sub called it a pump. Several commenters said they had already seen three or four copies posted that same day.
• Vintage went the other way. A Torchic Gold Star PSA 10 reportedly sold for $2.7 million, the biggest Gold Star sale on record, against a raw market of $1,969.69 on Catchinary.
• Nobody had to fight for product. Commenters reported Target holding six figures of stock and a local Best Buy sitting on 140 elite trainer boxes.
• The biggest Pokémon post anywhere this week was not about money at all: a Mew special illustration rare with red ink bleeding off the top edge, at 19,019 upvotes.

The hit rates broke the trade in about a day

r/PokemonTCG spent the week posting the same photo over and over: one elite trainer box, opened, with a row of special illustration rares fanned out on a table. "The hit rates are cranked - 1 ETB" cleared 2,882 upvotes and 233 comments. "Opened 1 ETB… wtf" did 5,114. "My local card shop sold me an ETB of 30th anniversary for 80$ for being a loyal customer" did 4,060 and the poster ripped it immediately. The top comment on the first one, sitting at 1,021 upvotes, was not a flex. It read like a shopping list: the hit rates seem absurd, hope that equates to dirt cheap singles.

Over on r/PokemonInvesting the same information landed as an emergency. The single busiest thread of the week across all four subs we read, at 540 upvotes and 232 comments, was a person holding a stack of 30th cards asking whether to sell quickly or hold. The 216-upvote answer told them to treat it like the 25th Anniversary set, a five-year hold, and to cash out now. Another reply put it at minus 90 percent. A third made the distinction that actually matters: sealed will stay hard to get, singles are going to take a nose dive.

That split is worth holding onto, because it is the whole market in one sentence. When a set prints heavily and hits generously, the sealed box and the single inside it move in opposite directions. Sealed gets scarcer over time because people open it. Singles get more common over time for exactly the same reason. The people telling each other to panic and the people telling each other to hold were often talking about two different products.

Threads: "The hit rates are cranked - 1 ETB" · "Should I sell quickly or hold onto?" · "Opened 1 ETB… wtf"

A raw Mew listed at five figures and the sub called the pump

The card at the centre of the hype is the RGB Mew, and this week somebody screenshotted a raw copy listed above five figures. The post took 350 upvotes and 122 comments, and almost none of them were celebrating. The top reply, at 75 upvotes, guessed the order would simply be cancelled. Another said the listing had already vanished and called it a poor attempt to inflate the card. The sharpest comment pointed out that people had only assumed a one in 20,000 pull rate, that the poster had personally seen three or four copies in posts that same day, and that anyone paying near that number would regret it.

There is a useful rule buried in that thread. A listing is a number somebody typed. A comp is a number somebody paid, twice, to different people. The RGB Mew has plenty of the first and almost none of the second, because the set has been out for days. Vintage cards with the same kind of scarcity claim have decades of settled sales behind them, which is why the Dragon Frontiers Mew Gold Star can carry a clean $3,500.00 market read on Catchinary and the RGB Mew cannot carry anything yet.

The genuinely lovely story of the week was also a Mew. Somebody pulled a 30th special illustration rare where the red ink bled down off the top border, and it became the biggest Pokémon TCG post anywhere this week at 19,019 upvotes and 403 comments. Nobody priced it. The top comment, at 3,992 upvotes, was a joke about hoping someone pulls a full blood Mew. That thread is what the sub looks like when it forgets to be an investment forum.

Threads: "Raw Mew B/RGB sold for over five figures" · "Pulled a Mew 30th SIR Error" · "Pulled Raw Blue RGB Mew"

Meanwhile a Torchic sold for $2.7 million

In the same week modern chase cards were being dumped, the most expensive Gold Star sale ever reported went through: a Torchic Gold Star in PSA 10 at $2.7 million. The r/PokemonInvesting thread was mostly people trying to work out how. The answers stacked up quickly. Low print run, a pull rate that was rough even by 2004 standards, print quality that makes a 10 nearly impossible, and a population of around 19 mint copies in existence. One reply added the detail that explains the rest: this was the stretch when Nintendo had taken the card game back from Wizards of the Coast, Pokémon popularity had cratered, and almost nobody was sleeving anything.

Catchinary has the Torchic Gold Star at $1,969.69 market in raw condition. That is the number for a card you could actually go and buy, and the distance between it and a headline auction result is the whole story of graded scarcity. The rest of the Gold Star run sits in similar territory: the Dragon Frontiers Charizard Gold Star at $4,000.00, the Holon Phantoms Pikachu Gold Star at $3,200.00, and the Holon Phantoms Gyarados Gold Star at $1,200.00. One commenter suggested spending $20,000 on a Gold Star Charizard or Gyarados rather than on an unproven modern Mew, and the numbers above are roughly why that argument keeps getting upvotes.

The most cynical reply in the thread was also the most quoted: a collector since the beginning saying the hobby has become a game of find the bigger fool. Both halves of this week's news fit that reading if you want them to. Our most expensive Pokémon cards page tracks where those headline sales land, and the rarest cards list covers the population side that drives them.

Threads: "Torchic sells for $2.7M"

The part nobody expected: there was enough product

A 161-comment thread on r/PokemonInvesting asked whether 30th Anniversary elite trainer boxes were worth buying as an investment. The top reply, at 69 upvotes, said it will not be one for a long while. Underneath it the numbers arrived. Someone said Target had six figures of stock for launch night. Someone else said their local Best Buy normally receives around 30 elite trainer boxes for a new set and had 140 of these. The advice that came out of it was practical: if you are buying, avoid cards, packs and boxes on the first weekend entirely.

The drawings ran the usual gauntlet. An 81-comment thread chasing news on the September 16 draw was mostly people confirming they had not been picked, plus one person who got selected and then had their bank decline the charge. A 127-upvote post from r/PokemonInvesting showing a "stash" hidden in a Target aisle got the correct response in the comments, which was that nobody bothers hiding current product any more. One reply mentioned walking past ten elite trainer boxes sitting in plain sight.

That is a genuinely different launch from the last two years. When product is this available, the scarcity premium people pay in the first week is the part that disappears first, and it disappears before the cards themselves find a floor. Our set pages will carry 30th Anniversary prices once there are enough real sales behind them to be worth printing.

Threads: "30th Anniversary etb Price" · "Any updates on 9/16 drawing?" · "Found someone's stash in target"

What a settled price looks like, for comparison

Every number quoted about 30th Anniversary this week was a guess, an asking price or a vibe. It is worth putting three real ones next to them. The Prismatic Evolutions Umbreon ex reads $1,480.32 market on Catchinary. Moonbreon, the Evolving Skies Umbreon VMAX alternate art, reads $2,335.47. A raw Base Set Charizard reads $825.38.

None of those three moved on this week's news, which is the point of quoting them. They are priced by months of completed sales rather than by launch-week sentiment, so a panic thread about a different set does not touch them. A 30th Anniversary chase card will get a number with that kind of weight behind it too, roughly one to three months after release, once the opening rush is done and supply has caught up. Anyone quoting one today is quoting a preorder.

Away from the spreadsheet

The second-biggest Pokémon TCG thread of the week, at 7,194 upvotes and 326 comments, was a memorial for a well-known member of the community. The comments are worth a minute of your time and have nothing to do with any of the above.

r/pkmntcgcollections stayed cheerfully unbothered by the whole 30th Anniversary argument. A complete 151 set mounted in a frame led the sub at 788 upvotes. An Eeveelution collection built into art-matched binder pages did 266. A WotC-era e-Reader run covering Expedition, Aquapolis and Skyridge alongside the Japanese e-Series counterparts drew a small, very serious crowd. One post gave the Kanto Eeveelutions some attention in what its title called a world of Umbreon supremacy, which given the numbers in the section above is a fair complaint.

The thread that stuck with me was a 161-upvote post on r/PokemonInvesting about buying product on clearance a couple of years ago. The top comment said 85 percent of people in the hobby now do not realise how unpopular Pokémon was for most of its life: Evolving Skies booster boxes at $100, 25th Anniversary sitting on clearance shelves, 151 elite trainer boxes available for weeks on the Pokémon Center site. Every card in that list is now a benchmark somebody quotes. Worth remembering the next time a launch-week sell-off feels like the end of something. You can check where any of those sets actually landed on our set pages or run a single card through the card database.

Threads: "Avery The Poke Kid has passed away today" · "151 Pokémon Frame" · "Eeveelution collection, with art-based, themed binder pages" · "Crazy how I was getting these on clearance only a couple years ago"

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