Dragapult ex Is Trending and Pikachu & Zekrom GX Just Tripled. Here's Why.

Two very different forces moved the market this week, and they tell you something about how Pokémon prices actually work. One is a calendar event you could have seen coming: the North America International Championships start tomorrow in New Orleans, and the deck everyone expects to win is dragging its chase card up with it. The other is a surprise announcement that did the opposite of what you would expect, sending a six-year-old card up triple in under two weeks. Last week the story was vintage Greninja riding pure nostalgia. This week it's competition and reprints, and both have a clean read for anyone holding the cards.

What's hot: Dragapult ex (Prismatic Evolutions #165)

The biggest tournament in North America runs June 12 to June 14 at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, and the official power rankings panel was unanimous: Dragapult ex is the deck to beat. Limitless has it sitting at the top of the Standard meta at roughly 8.9% of the field, ahead of Gardevoir and Charizard, with the Dusknoir and Crushing Hammer variants both putting up regional wins this season. When a deck is the consensus favorite going into a championship of this size, two things happen at once. Players scramble to finish their playsets in the days before, and collectors start watching the chase art because a marquee win on camera is the single best advertisement a card can get.

The playable copies are cheap. The regular Double Rare from Prismatic Evolutions trades around a dollar fifty, which is what competitors are actually sleeving up. The card that carries the attention is the Special Illustration Rare, #165, the prismatic full-art that has been one of the most wanted modern pulls since the set dropped in early 2025. TCGPlayer holofoil market on the SIR sits at $142.79 as of today, with the floor around $130 and the mid band right at $142. PriceCharting's blended ungraded comp reads lighter at $112 because it folds in lower-condition sales, so the honest read on a clean near-mint raw is the $112 to $143 range depending on where you buy and how picky the buyer is.

Be clear about what this move actually is. This is an attention spike, not a price breakout. The SIR has been a firm, liquid card for months, and NAIC week puts it back in front of a lot of eyes without necessarily lighting a fire under the price. That matters for how you play it.

Flipper's angle: the grading math here is tighter than the headline numbers suggest. PriceCharting has the PSA 10 at $269.64, the 9.5 at $152, and the PSA 9 at just $109.95. Read that ladder carefully. A PSA 9 sells for less than a clean raw copy already does, so a 9 is a loss after you pay the grading fee and the eBay cut. The entire bet is the 10. The good news is that a 2025 SIR with a glossy, non-textured surface hits PSA 10 far more often than the vintage cards we covered last week, so the submission odds are genuinely better. The catch is that the absolute spread is thin: a 10 nets maybe $210 after fees against $143 you could get selling raw today, so you are risking a fee and weeks of turnaround for about $65 of upside if you hit and a real loss if you miss. This is the textbook case where the gap between a 9 and a 10 is the whole trade, and on a card this liquid, selling raw into NAIC attention is the lower-variance play for most people.

Biggest gainer: Pikachu & Zekrom GX (Team Up #33)

The sharpest pure-price move of the week came from a 2019 card nobody was talking about ten days ago. Pikachu & Zekrom GX, the Tag Team full-art from Team Up, ran from about $40 on June 1 to roughly $130 to $140 in near-mint today, which is a triple in under two weeks. The weekly trackers logged it as one of the top gainers on the board, with one showing a jump from $43 to $133. PriceCharting's ungraded comp still reads $73 because that blended loose number lags hard during a fast spike, folding in older and played sales that have not caught up yet. The live TCGPlayer and eBay sold data is the real current read, and that says $130 and up for a clean copy.

The catalyst is the interesting part, because it is the opposite of what most people assume a reprint does. Pikachu & Zekrom GX was revealed as one of the first two confirmed cards, alongside Base Set Charizard, in the classic-reprint collection for the Pokémon 30th Anniversary set. Normally a reprint announcement tanks the original. Here it did the reverse. Getting hand-picked as one of roughly thirty cards to represent three decades of the game is a prestige signal, and it put PikaRom back in front of an enormous audience overnight. The reprint will carry its own anniversary treatment and stamp, so the original Team Up #33 keeps its scarcity while suddenly being the card everyone wants to talk about. Demand spiked, supply did not, and the price gapped up.

Is it sustainable? Be skeptical. This is a hype pulse, not a fundamentals shift, and hype pulses give some back. Once the anniversary set's details fill in and attention shifts to the new version, the original's premium usually softens off the peak. Watch eBay sold depth: if daily sales thin out while asking prices climb, the move is running on fumes. The graded picture follows the same pattern we keep seeing. PriceCharting has the PSA 10 at $1,089, but the PSA 9 at $134 is basically what a raw near-mint sells for right now, so once again the 9 is a wash and the entire grading bet is the 10. Team Up Tag Teams are a 2019 print with a large holo area and full-art borders that scratch and whiten easily, so the PSA 10 rate on raw copies is not generous, which is exactly the kind of pop-report read that separates a real flip from a trap.

Flipper's angle: if you already own one raw, this is a sell-into-the-hype window, not a buy. The move has happened, you are not early, and the safest money is taking the triple while search interest is hot. If you are tempted to grade, remember that the 10 is the only outcome that pays, and if you do pull a 10 off this card, know where the strong PSA 10 buyers actually are before you ship it, because the spread between venues on a four-figure slab is real money.

What both moves tell you about this week's market

The throughline is the same on both cards even though the catalysts could not be more different. On Dragapult ex and on Pikachu & Zekrom GX, the PSA 9 sells at or below a clean raw copy, which means the grading decision is binary: you are betting entirely on the 10 or you are not grading at all. That is the single most useful filter you can carry into any flip. When the 9 is a wash, the question stops being "should I grade" and becomes "can I realistically hit a 10 on this exact copy," and if you cannot answer that honestly under good light, you sell raw.

The concrete action this week: if you hold either card, price the raw sale and the PSA 10 outcome side by side before you do anything. Run both through Flipr's profit calculator with the live comps, not the lagging blended ones, because on Pikachu & Zekrom GX in particular the loose average is sitting $60 below where copies actually sell. The NAIC attention on Dragapult fades after the weekend, and the anniversary hype on PikaRom fades once the new set details land, so the sharpest part of both windows is open right now.