The Most Expensive Cards In Pokémon TCG's Surging Sparks

While the Pikachu ex might be making all the headlines and drawing all the wider attention, Pokémon TCG’s Surging Sparks set is pulling in resale prices on multiple cards like the game hasn’t seen in years. And although the opening fortnight’s craziness is beginning to calm down, it’s still a surprisingly pricy collection.

Cards have held their value well into the second week, when we’d normally see them crashing down, though I still strongly suspect we’ll see a bunch of those prices dropping by the end of November.

However, I think what we’re seeing with Surging Sparks is another of the Pokémon TCG’s occasional peaks, those moments when it grabs the zeitgeist once again and everyone’s jumping in for a bit of speculation. That’s likely driven in part by the expectations for January’s new set, Prismatic Evolutions—a set that has already sold out on early pre-orders because of its focus on Eevee-lutions. Everyone always goes nuts over those, and it’s likely to see prices that make Surging Sparks’ look minimal.

I’ve ripped open about 60 packs of Surging Sparks (in part thanks to The Pokémon Company, who sent Kotaku a hefty pile), and haven’t had good luck at all. Pull rates seem about standard for 2023-24, a disappointing one in five for a standard ex or better, and far lower if you want to see any of the astonishing number of gorgeous artworks in the set.

It’s getting to a point where it just feels silly to let artists create so much beautiful work, and then make it so phenomenally difficult for anyone to see any of it. And given Pokémon isn’t seeing any of the profits made by those reselling them, the financial incentive is only in hoping that people will just buy more packs to try to find them. But given that everyone’s getting used to the horrible chances, that’s not a great long-term strategy. Grimly, I managed to get three of the ghastly full-art Bruxish cards (the art is great, the Pokémon is hideous), and comprehensively missed out on any of the 35 different cards I’d hoped to pull. The full-art Castform is lovely, though, and I’m pleased to have it.

Still, you may have been far luckier. Usually when we put these articles together, there’s one card teetering at around a hundred bucks, and then it’s down into the teens by card five or six. Not so in Surging Sparks.

As ever, all prices are correct at the time of writing, but these things change pretty rapidly. Check latest numbers yourself via TCG Player.

Things do not exactly begin in exciting fashion when it comes to the tenth-highest-priced card in Surging Sparks (but they get better fast, promise!). God knows why anyone’s paying $26 for a gold version of a bland Trainer card, with the useful but not exciting ability to pull a Pokémon or Energy card from your discard pile. While gold cards used to hold some collectability, that faded with Sword & Shield, with TPCi desperately trying to reinvigorate interest with a series of quickly abandoned alternatives. (Those green and gold ones? Bleurgh.)

Even sillier, there’s a much nicer Alolan Exeggutor ex gold card that’s in 12th place, at $23, and Night Stretcher is even out-pricing the Ultra Rare version of the Pikachu ex card everyone’s going so nuts over, which is in 11th place at $24. Ludicrous.

The art on this card is just so special. It’s a style that the TCG has never seen before, looking like something from an animated Disney short. It’s also such a perfectly captured moment, Jasmine caught mid-bite of an epic sandwich. Also, play spot the Alcremie.

In a normal set, the “other” special art with the girl on it would normally be fetching around 15 bucks, but in the extra-expensive Surging Sparks, this is still going for $36, crashing down from its early high of $83.

It’s also a very useful Trainer card, given it gives all your cards a 30HP buffer.

Quite how TPCi determines which cards are “Illustration Rare” and which are “Special Illustration Rare” is deeply mysterious. This stunning Latios is somehow not given the Special status, despite being one of the most striking cards they’ve ever printed, and indeed seeming like the perfect companion to the Latias ex we’ll be meeting soon.

It’s still fetching the sort of price you’d expect for a card this good in any other set, right now selling for $42, down only ten bucks from its peak.

It’s a fantastic card, too, with the ability to pick Pokémon off the opponent’s bench, and a big 110 attack for a Basic card.

I’m really enjoying how artists are experimenting with the obligatory color palette of the tera-type Pokémon for these SIRs. Yuriko Akase takes things in a very pastel direction, and it’s so effective.

The card itself is part of the current meta of requiring multiple color energies to deliver mighty attacks, but bloody hell, this card is ridiculous. A 150 attack AND you can attach any number of energy cards to any of your Pokémon! Sorry for the italics, but good grief, because that’s the minor attack. Swinging Sphene then gives you a 50:50 chance to knock out your opponent’s active Pokémon (albeit Basics only), and even if it misses you knock out one on the bench!

Sorry, I’ve got to go build an Exeggutor deck immediately. Uh, the card’s currently $51.

Yup, it’s the obligatory waifu card. Gorgeous art, of course—no one can take anything away from Nobusawa/Mochipuyo, and I love the way her outfit matches the Altaria behind her. Still though, we all know why this is selling so well.

The Trainer card is especially good, as it happens. Not only can you pick one of your opponent’s benched monsters to switch into the active spot, but they also get confused in the process. Which seems ridiculously OP to me.

The card, which works the exact same as the 5c regular version, is currently priced at a ridiculous $62.

This strikes me as the sort of card that would usually start fetching prices in the hundreds of dollars, so spectacular is the design and the color.

Akira Egawa is one of the most exciting artists working on the Pokémon TCG, having done Paldean Fates’ extraordinary Charizard (currently fetching around $200), and indeed the Zard from Obsidian Flames ($54), but also Crown Zenith’s four masterpiece gold cards ($50 to $104). In a list of outrageously expensive cards, I’m genuinely surprised this is as low as $73—of all the cards here, this is the one I can see eventually returning to its peak price of $120.

I say it every single set, and no one ever listens: Why does TPCi not sell posters of its SIR artworks?! This Milotic by Kuroimori would look stunning blown up and framed. Heck, it looks stunning on a three-inch piece of bendy cardboard.

It’s a perfect card to combat any of the Tera meta decks right now, preventing any and all damage done to it by Tera cards, benched or active, while dishing out a mighty 160 attack that puts the enemy to sleep.

An unambiguously wonderful Pokémon card, that has barely dipped since launch, still fetching at least $88.

As gold cards go, it’s one of the least rubbish. The issue with most gold versions is that they lose all their colorfulness, but not here, with Pikachu still a vibrant yellow, and all the Tera colors sparkling away.

Still, though, it’s less appealing than the non-gold version of the same art, which is currently just under $25. This one’s getting a daft $105, but at least it’s one you’d be glad to part with for the cash.

It’s never entirely clear why some cards do so spectacularly well, when equivalent cards fare far worse. Case in point: this lovely Latias ex, which doesn’t seem to be doing anything spectacularly more exciting than the equally lovely Latios down at $42. Sure, this one’s an ex, but the Latios is stacked too, and won’t cost you two prize cards when it’s knocked out.

However, that Skyliner ability is clearly a big deal, removing all retreat costs while it’s on your bench, meaning you can switch cards in and out as often as you want. I’m really interested to see what sort of decks will be built around this.

Still, I’d be really interested to know why it’s this card that’s changing hands for a mindblowing $205.

No surprises here. It’s the card that’s put brainworms in every collector’s head.

The price has been on a bit of a journey since we reported its $500 tag on November 11, from which it climbed even higher to almost $600, before whooshing back down again over the last week to currently sit at $463.

It’s on a pretty sharp decline, so don’t expect that price to hold, either. It’s already idiotically inflated, given it’s just a decent ex card with quite a pretty piece of art that just caught fire due to the mimesis of collectors. It’s obviously no more powerful than the $8 regular version, which is what you should buy if you want that 300 attack in your deck, and if you’ve got the SIR to sell, sell it now before everyone entirely comes to their senses. And for god’s sake, don’t buy it at this price.

That it ever reached such highs will likely cause the price to remain artificially inflated for a while to come, but I bet my trousers this’ll be down to $200 by December, and then gently drift down further by the New Year.

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