Obsidian Flames Chase Cards: The 10 Cards Everybody Wants
Obsidian Flames turned three years old this month, which in Pokémon TCG time is roughly middle age. It came out in August 2023 with 197 official cards, and then kept going up to 230 once you count the secret rares hiding past the numbering. Those extras are where all the money went, which is how these sets almost always work.
The pitch at the time was Tera Pokémon and a very large lizard. Charizard ex got three separate printings in this set, at three different rarities, which tells you exactly who the marketing department was thinking about. What nobody predicted is that a Cleffa would end up outselling one of them.
A quick note before the countdown. The prices in the boxes below are live and move with the market. Any figure quoted in the writing is accurate as of publication, August 20, 2026. Everything here is raw and near mint unless it says otherwise.
If you want the full picture rather than the top of the pile, the complete Obsidian Flames card list has all 230 cards with current values.
Here are the Obsidian Flames chase cards, counting up to the one nobody is surprised by.
#10 Lechonk 209/197 (Illustration Rare)
Illustrated by Narumi Sato
Fourteen dollars. For a pig.
I am not complaining. Narumi Sato put Lechonk indoors, on a patterned tile floor in what looks like somebody's conservatory, working through a bowl of fruit it has very obviously just knocked over. There are berries stuck to its back. There is a second basket hanging above its head that it has not noticed yet. The whole card is warm in a way most competitive cards never bother being. Illustration Rares are the best thing to happen to the Pokémon TCG in years, precisely because they hand this treatment to a Lechonk instead of saving it for another legendary.
It has also roughly doubled since early 2026, which is more than most people's savings accounts managed.
#9 Scizor 205/197 (Illustration Rare)
Illustrated by Oku
Scizor has been coasting on being extremely cool since 1999 and shows no sign of stopping.
Oku painted two of them. The big one holds the left of the frame, braced on a dark branch with its wings spread, and a second Scizor hangs back in the haze on the right where it takes a second to notice. Everything behind them is red, a loose painterly wash of it, and that choice is doing one very specific job: it throws those translucent green wings into relief. Red against green, straight off opposite sides of the colour wheel, which is the oldest trick in the book and still the reason this card is legible from the far end of a table.
It peaked near twenty dollars in the spring and has been sliding since, so watch this one rather than chase it.
#8 Pidgey 207/197 (Illustration Rare)
Illustrated by Jerky
Here is a fact that will annoy anyone with a sense of order: Pidgey is worth more than the Pidgeotto it evolves into. The Pidgeotto sits just outside this list at about eleven dollars. The baby bird beats the teenager by four dollars. I will be honest, I have no idea why.
The reason is that Pidgeotto did not get an Illustration Rare and Pidgey did, and in this era rarity beats evolutionary logic every time. Jerky drew this one. Hold that name, it comes back two entries from now.
#7 Pidgeot ex 225/197 (Special Illustration Rare)
Illustrated by Jerky
Told you.
Jerky illustrated both the Pidgey at number eight and this Pidgeot ex, in the same flat poster style, and both cards put a road sign in the frame. They were built to sit next to each other. That is the sort of thing collectors notice and act on, which is probably why the pair move in lockstep. Pidgeot ex is down 17.2 percent over thirty days and Pidgey is down 16.3 percent, close enough that you can stop calling it a coincidence.
Pidgeot ex was also a genuinely strong competitive card for a long stretch, with an ability that let decks find whatever they needed on demand. Cards that get played get damaged, sleeved, and shuffled, and that has a way of thinning out the mint copies over time.
#6 Charizard ex 215/197 (Ultra Rare)
Illustrated by 5ban Graphics
Charizard number one of three, and the cheapest of the lot at around twenty two dollars.
This is the standard full art, done by 5ban Graphics, who handle most of the machine finished cards in the modern game. Their work gets unfairly dismissed as the boring option, which I think misses the point: 5ban cards are designed to look expensive under a light at a card show, and they absolutely do. It is a different job than the illustrated cards and they are very good at it.
Worth knowing which Charizard you actually pulled before you get excited. The number in the corner is doing all the work here.
#5 Gloom 198/197 (Illustration Rare)
Illustrated by Masako Tomii
Gloom is a small purple creature whose defining trait is smelling terrible, and it is a twenty four dollar card.
Masako Tomii leaned into the ugly and made something genuinely strange out of it. This is not a swamp. It is teal ferns, magenta mushrooms and purple undergrowth cranked to a saturation that sits closer to a blacklight poster than a forest floor, with Gloom standing in the middle of it drooling and entirely content. Nobody was asking for a premium Gloom. We got one anyway, it went from fifteen dollars to twenty eight in about four months, and it has held most of that.
#4 Charizard ex 228/197 (Hyper Rare)
Illustrated by 5ban Graphics
The gold one. Charizard number two of three.
Hyper Rares are the hardest cards to pull in a set and they are covered in actual gold texturing, so on paper this should be the crown of Obsidian Flames. It is not. It is not even the most expensive card in this set with a Charizard on it, and as you are about to see, it is not the most expensive card in this set drawn by someone who has never met a Charizard.
Gold cards have been quietly losing ground to illustrated cards for a few years now. Collectors decided they would rather have art than shine, and the market followed.
#3 Cleffa 202/197 (Illustration Rare)
Illustrated by HYOGONOSUKE
And there it is. On the day this went up, Cleffa was $38.92 and the gold Charizard was $36.91.
A baby Pokémon whose entire competitive contribution is existing beat the most expensive rarity tier in the set by two dollars and one cent. Not a rounding error. An actual, measurable Cleffa premium. Check the two boxes above and below to see whether it still holds, because that gap is close enough to flip.
HYOGONOSUKE earned it, to be fair. The card is a night scene with Cleffa surrounded by stars, and it has the specific storybook quality that makes people who do not play the game stop and look at it. That is the whole trick with Illustration Rares. They sell to people who are not buying a card, they are buying a small piece of art that happens to be a card.
It nearly doubled between late 2025 and spring, topping out around forty six dollars before settling where it is now.
#2 Ninetales 199/197 (Illustration Rare)
Illustrated by SIE NANAHARA
The most expensive Illustration Rare in Obsidian Flames, and the highest any card gets in this set without a Charizard on it.
SIE NANAHARA lit the entire card gold. Ninetales stands in a shaft of forest sunlight with its tails fanned out behind it in a wide arc, and the light does as much work as the fox does: trees, air and tails all run the same warm amber, so the thing glows from across a room. Ninetales has also been a collector favourite since the Base Set era, which never hurts.
It touched fifty one dollars in the spring and has drifted back to forty. If you have been waiting on this one, check the box above before you assume it is still out of reach.
#1 Charizard ex 223/197 (Special Illustration Rare)
Illustrated by AKIRA EGAWA
Charizard number three of three, and the only one that matters.
At $110.27 it runs nearly five times the Ultra Rare and roughly three times the gold one. Same Pokémon, same set, wildly different outcomes, and the difference is entirely that AKIRA EGAWA drew this one.
This is the Tera version, so the whole card is crystal. EGAWA set Charizard inside a shattered prism, all faceted silver and refracted rainbow, with the lizard blazing orange dead centre. The contrast is the entire trick: hot animal, cold geometry, and a composition that makes fully grown adults say "whoa" out loud in a card shop. EGAWA has credits on an absurd number of expensive cards across multiple games at this point, and pulling one has quietly become its own category of good luck.
The chart tells a story too. It ran from eighty eight dollars up to a hundred and forty one last spring, then gave back about a fifth of that. Still the most valuable card in the set by a comfortable margin, and still the one everybody means when they say they are hunting Obsidian Flames.
Illustration Rare vs Special Illustration Rare vs Hyper Rare
Seven of the ten cards above are Illustration Rares, which confuses people, so here is the short version.
An Illustration Rare is a full-art card with alternate artwork, given to ordinary Pokémon rather than the ex ones. No gold, no extended frame, just a scene. This is where most of the depth in Obsidian Flames lives.
A Special Illustration Rare is the same idea applied to a Pokémon ex, with textured foiling and artwork that runs past the frame. Charizard 223 and Pidgeot ex 225 are the two here. These are the cards collectors chase hardest.
A Hyper Rare is the gold one. Textured, extremely shiny, historically the top of the ladder. In this set it finishes fourth, behind a Cleffa.
The pattern across recent sets is consistent: collectors would rather have art than metal. Gold cards have not stopped selling, they have just stopped winning.
Is it worth grading Obsidian Flames cards?
Every chase card article gives you the same advice here: grade the expensive one, leave the rest alone. For Obsidian Flames that advice is wrong, and it is not close.
The instinct says a fifteen dollar Scizor is an obvious no. Then you look at what PSA 10 copies of it actually sell for, and it turns out to be the best return on this entire list.
| Card | Raw | PSA 10 | Profit | Sales | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Charizard ex 223 | $109.16 | $730.00 | $550.86 | 499 | Safe bet |
| Cleffa 202 | $37.88 | $415.00 | $347.14 | 322 | Gamble |
| Ninetales 199 | $41.56 | $350.00 | $278.46 | 164 | Gamble |
| Scizor 205 | $15.11 | $305.15 | $260.06 | 175 | Gamble |
| Charizard ex 228 | $36.89 | $303.55 | $236.68 | 418 | Gamble |
| Charizard ex 215 | $20.99 | $185.75 | $134.78 | 320 | Gamble |
| Lechonk 209 | $13.73 | $222.50 | $178.79 | 112 | 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. Sales is how many PSA 10 copies have traded, which is the number that decides whether any of the rest of the row means anything.
So grade everything? No, and this is where the verdict column earns its keep.
Look at what sits behind Scizor's beautiful median. PSA 10 copies have sold for as little as three dollars and as much as five hundred, across 172 sales. That is not a market, that is a coin flip with a flattering average. The Charizard 223 had 477 PSA 10 sales clustered between about $355 and $988. Same idea, completely different confidence, and that gap is the whole difference between a safe bet and a gamble.
The other half of it is the part nobody puts in a table: you have to actually get the 10. Every card above is priced at PSA 10 and every one of them becomes a much worse trade at PSA 9. Special Illustration Rares are the worst offenders because those dark full-bleed borders show every speck of edge wear, and centering on modern full-arts is genuinely inconsistent straight out of the pack.
So the real question is never "is this card worth grading". It is "is this copy worth grading", and that you cannot answer from a price chart.
Stop guessing what is in your binder
This is the part Slab Advisor was built for. Scan a card, get a grade estimate before you pay anyone a submission fee, and see the same PSA 10 numbers and safety tiers you just read, for whatever is actually in your binder rather than for the ten cards above.
It works on the rest of your collection too, which is usually where the surprises are. Most people have some idea what their Charizard is worth. Almost nobody knows they are sitting on a Scizor.
The other 220 cards
Most of Obsidian Flames is worth under a dollar, which is normal and not an insult. A 230 card set is mostly commons by design, and the commons are what make the chase cards feel like anything.
If you are building the set rather than hunting singles, the useful view is the whole thing at once: what you have, what is missing, what the missing pieces cost. That is all on the Obsidian Flames card list.
Anyway. Cleffa. Thirty nine dollars. I am going to be thinking about that one for a while.