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.
