Mega Evolution Chase Cards: The Top 10, One Year On
Mega Evolution's gold cards have had a humbling year. In its first weeks, the gold Lucario at the top of this list sold for more than $700. Today it is about a third of that, and it has stopped falling.
The set came out on September 26, 2025, a year ago on Saturday, and it opened a brand new series by bringing back Mega Evolution, the souped-up battle forms from Pokémon X and Y, which the card game had not used since the Sun & Moon era. Getting hold of it was a contact sport. The Pokémon Center's online queue kept throwing people back to the start, preorder boxes were on eBay at twice their price within minutes, and in the week before release single packs were selling on TCGplayer for more than three times their shop price. It also introduced a new all-gold rarity, the Mega Hyper Rare, and made it absurdly hard to find.
It did not last. Chase cards dropped hard through the autumn, the "crash" videos piled up, and by January some of the big hits were down 70 percent from launch. Unopened boxes went the other way: they bottomed out in November, climbed all spring, and now sell for nearly twice their shop price. At launch the reviews ranged from "certainly a great set" (Kotaku) to "it just sort of… is" (TheGamer). A year later, one popular ranking puts it in the middle of its own series, behind the Charizard set that followed it.
The card numbers say 132. The real count is 188: 56 secret rares sit beyond the official total, and all ten cards below are among them. Eight are Special Illustration Rares, full painted scenes, some for the big Mega Pokémon ex and some for Supporters, the trainer cards with a person on them. The other two are the gold ones.
One thing about the numbers. The prices in the boxes below are live and move with the market, while the ones in the writing are accurate as of publication, September 24, 2026. All of it is raw and near mint unless it says otherwise.
All 188 cards, with what each one is worth today, are on the Mega Evolution card list.
Ten cards, two of them gold, cheapest first.
#10 Acerola's Mischief 183/132 (Special Illustration Rare)
Illustrated by sui
Somebody is making costumes, and they are not for people.
sui put Acerola, the ghost-type expert from Pokémon Sun and Moon, in a forest at night, lit by a warm lantern and strings of fairy lights. She is smiling to herself and sewing: the white cloth in her lap has dark eye holes and a stitched mouth, like a ghost costume in progress. Around her is the rest of the workshop. An open sewing box sits at the bottom left. At her side is a patched, stitched Mimikyu disguise with a scribbled face, above it a purple plush with big gem eyes that looks a lot like a Sableye, and more button-eyed dolls tumble in from the bottom right. It is the cosiest card in the set, and every item in it is slightly haunted.
At $31.13 it is the cheapest way onto this list.
#9 Mega Absol ex 180/132 (Special Illustration Rare)
Illustrated by Mitsuhiro Arita
Mitsuhiro Arita, the artist behind the original Base Set Charizard, put Absol on the corner of an old building at night and made it look like a gargoyle.
Mega Absol perches on a carved stone cornice, wings of white fur spread wide, one red eye glowing, looking down at you over a city of dark towers with lit windows. The white fur is lit so brightly it almost glows against the night sky. It could double as a horror film poster.
It is also half of the only deck on this list that has won anything big. Paired with Mega Kangaskhan ex, the next card up, it won the Las Vegas Regional Championship in November 2025 and the European International Championships in London in February. For a card with that record, $53.31 is cheap.
#8 Mega Kangaskhan ex 182/132 (Special Illustration Rare)
Illustrated by GOTO minori
The baby is out of the pouch, and it is not here to watch.
GOTO minori drew the brown mother Kangaskhan and her spiky purple child both leaping straight at the viewer, mouths wide open, the mother's clawed fist raised. In Mega form the child leaves the pouch and fights alongside its mum, and here it is doing exactly that. Behind them, the old town has gone bendy, street lamps dangle, and orange and blue speed lines burst from every corner. It is loud in the best way.
The card's ability is called Run Errand, which is a lovely bit of parenting humour for a Pokémon this angry. It is $54.25, less than a dollar clear of its tournament partner.
#7 Lillie's Determination 184/132 (Special Illustration Rare)
Illustrated by satoma
The most important card in the set, if you play the game.
satoma drew Lillie in her original outfit from Pokémon Sun and Moon: the wide white sunhat, the white sleeveless dress, the braids. She has half-turned towards us in a sunny field of yellow flowers, clutching the strap of a white bag to her chest. The bag has a red and white Poké Ball design on its end. In Sun and Moon, Lillie smuggles a very secret Pokémon around in a bag very like that one, and anyone who played them will recognise the nervous look.
Tournament players took to it straight away: the deck that won the 2026 World Championships ran four copies, the most the rules allow. It was around $75 for most of the spring and is $59.72 now.
#6 Mega Latias ex 181/132 (Special Illustration Rare)
Illustrated by AKIRA EGAWA
Mega Latias, very late for something.
AKIRA EGAWA, who also painted the crystal Charizard at the top of our Obsidian Flames chase cards countdown, has Mega Latias banking hard across the card at night, trailing streaks of red, blue, gold and violet above a sprawling city glittering with lights. It is all thick, loose brushwork, and it looks like it is moving even when it is sitting in a binder.
June was its best month this year, at around $97. It has given back about a fifth of that since, to $76.07.
#5 Mega Venusaur ex 177/132 (Special Illustration Rare)
Illustrated by mashu
The last piece of a three-card picture.
mashu, who also drew the connected Moltres, Articuno and Zapdos in the new 30th Celebration set, drew the Bulbasaur line in this set as one continuous image across three cards. Bulbasaur 133 leaps through a black background of hot pink petals and golden vines. Ivysaur 134 picks up the same vines and petals where Bulbasaur's card ends. And this one finishes it: Mega Venusaur roaring out of a jungle of giant leaves and flowers in hot pink, cyan and yellow. Put the three side by side and the picture runs straight across all of them, the golden vines carrying from Bulbasaur into Ivysaur, and the red swirls and cyan leaves carrying on into Venusaur.
When it came out, Mega Venusaur ex was the first Pokémon card ever printed with 380 HP. It has held up better than most of this list, and at $153.33 it is about $33 up on March.
#4 Mega Gardevoir ex 178/132 (Special Illustration Rare)
Illustrated by Raita Kazama
The whole evolution line, in stained glass.
Raita Kazama had never drawn a Pokémon card before this one. You would not guess. Mega Gardevoir stands in the centre with its long white gown spread wide, and the rest of the line is around it: a Kirlia spinning in one corner, a regular Gardevoir twirling in another, and a Ralts at the bottom right holding a little book with its eyes shut. Behind them the background is cut into bright, glassy panels, with climbing flowers and yellow stars. Everyone else is dancing. The Ralts has nodded off, and nobody has the heart to wake it.
It is $170.37, a few dollars below where it was in March.
#3 Mega Lucario ex 179/132 (Special Illustration Rare)
Illustrated by Atsushi Furusawa
Seven Megas walk into a city.
Atsushi Furusawa, who also drew the sleepy Dragonite in our Evolving Skies chase cards countdown, put Mega Lucario in the middle of a free-for-all above a city of skyscrapers, a huge red fist cocked back in the foreground as it squares up to Mega Venusaur, which is clinging to a building in the top corner. Lucario is only the main event. A Mega Manectric is crackling with electricity on a rooftop on the right. Mega Latias is diving through the middle of the fight. There is an icy explosion that TCGplayer identifies as Mega Abomasnow, and at the bottom left, Mega Kangaskhan and Mega Mawile are having their own scrap. That is seven of the set's ten Mega Pokémon on one card. Gardevoir, Absol and Camerupt must have had other plans.
It spiked to $247 in June and is $180.29 now, the most valuable Special Illustration Rare in the set, but only just.
#2 Mega Gardevoir ex 187/132 (Mega Hyper Rare)
Illustrated by 5ban Graphics
Now for the gold.
The Mega Hyper Rare is the rarity this set introduced: a card drawn almost entirely in fine gold line etching, gold to every edge, with brand new artwork rather than a recolour. There are two in the set, both by 5ban Graphics. Gardevoir stands facing you in front of a huge circular emblem with an ornate chain pattern, arms and ribbon-like fins flung wide, rays shooting out behind it.
They are also ridiculously hard to pull. TCGplayer opened more than 5,000 packs to measure the odds and found a gold card about 1 in 1,260 packs, and one particular gold card about 1 in 2,520. That rests on only a handful of hits, but it works out at something like thirty five booster boxes per gold card.
In October 2025 it peaked at around $500 on TCGplayer. It is $195.55 now, only about fifteen dollars more than the painted Lucario at number three.
#1 Mega Lucario ex 188/132 (Mega Hyper Rare)
Illustrated by 5ban Graphics
The most valuable card in the set, a year and nearly $475 later.
The same gold treatment as number two, this time with Mega Lucario squaring up to you, spiked arms out, a giant sunburst emblem behind it. Its attack is called Mega Brave, which is also the name of the Japanese set this card first appeared in.
It peaked at around $721 on TCGplayer in the second week of October 2025, while hardly anyone had one. By November it was around $500. Today it is $247.84, about a third of its October peak, and it has barely moved since spring. Nothing about the card changed. There were just a lot more of them by Christmas.
Is it worth grading Mega Evolution cards?
This is the set where the gold cards and the painted cards could not be more different in a slab.
| Card | Raw | PSA 10 | Profit | PSA 10 pop | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mega Lucario ex 188 | $247.84 | $706.45 | $388.63 | 2,763 | Gamble |
| Mega Gardevoir ex 187 | $195.55 | $569.40 | $303.87 | 1,909 | Gamble |
| Mega Lucario ex 179 | $180.29 | $343.63 | $133.36 | 13,485 | Gamble |
| Mega Gardevoir ex 178 | $170.37 | $302.52 | $102.17 | 11,903 | Gamble |
| Mega Venusaur ex 177 | $153.33 | $216.84 | $33.53 | 9,976 | Gamble |
| Mega Latias ex 181 | $76.07 | $202.92 | $96.87 | 10,244 | Gamble |
| Lillie's Determination 184 | $59.72 | $137.54 | $47.84 | 5,817 | Gamble |
| Mega Kangaskhan ex 182 | $54.25 | $129.80 | $45.57 | 8,111 | Gamble |
| Mega Absol ex 180 | $53.31 | $119.43 | $36.14 | 7,779 | Gamble |
| Acerola's Mischief 183 | $31.13 | $65.20 | $4.09 | 2,904 | Gamble |
PSA 10 is our market estimate from recent graded sales. Profit is what is left after buying the card raw and paying the grading fee and shipping. PSA 10 pop is how many copies PSA has graded a 10 so far: copies graded, not sold, and the supply a new slab would join. Safe bet means a PSA 9 still turns a profit; Gamble means only a 10 does.
Start with the gold cards, because PSA is hard on them. It has graded about 10,500 gold Lucarios, and only about a quarter came back a 10. The gold Gardevoir does even worse, at a little over one in five. The painted Mega cards, from the same packs, come back a 10 about two thirds of the time. There is no official explanation for why the gold cards struggle, and it does not change the maths: a PSA 10 gold card is scarce, and priced like it.
That makes the gold cards the best grading bets on this list, for the copies that make it. A PSA 10 gold Lucario sells for nearly three times a raw copy. At the other end, the painted Venusaur gets its 10 so often that a 10 is worth less than one and a half times raw, and the fee eats most of the difference.
The catch is the same across the board: almost nothing here sells for more as a PSA 9 than raw, so a 9 gets you your own card back in a plastic case, minus the fee.
Three in four gold Lucarios miss the 10, and no price chart knows which way yours will go. Run it past Slab Advisor first: one photo gets you a grade estimate and what that card sells for as a 10 and as a 9, which is the whole decision in two numbers.
Honourable mentions
Wally's Compassion and Lt. Surge's Bargain, the two Supporter cards that missed the list, sit around $16 to $21. The best of the Illustration Rares, the cheaper full-art cards for ordinary Pokémon, are a Vulpix and the Bulbasaur that starts mashu's three-card picture, both around $19.
One oddity: a copy of the ordinary, pack-common Lillie's Determination with a Regional Championships stamp on it sells for around $45. Nobody pulled it from a pack; it was handed out at tournaments.
Going for all 188? The Mega Evolution card list ticks off what you own and prices the gaps.
The gold Lucario used to be the card nobody could get hold of. Now anyone with $248 can, and three in four of them still come back from PSA without a 10.