Mega Gengar ex SIR Price Tops $1,000 Raw, and the Rayquaza V Alt Art Jumped 32%

A brand new 2026 Special Illustration Rare crossed $1,000 this week and became the most expensive English Pokemon card you can still pull from a pack, something no other current set card has managed this year. At the same time, a Rayquaza alt art from 2021 is climbing fast as collectors get ready for two Mega set launches in the next month. One card is a record setter still sitting in boosters, the other is a retired chase card that scarcity keeps grinding upward. Before we get to either, an honest look at how last month's calls turned out.

A month ago we tagged two Mega Evolution tournament SIRs, Mega Lucario ex and Lillie's Clefairy ex, as cards to grade and sell quickly while tournament demand held them up. Both calls came due this week, and both landed partly right. Mega Lucario ex held its raw price almost dead flat, $202.50 then and $204.92 now on PriceCharting, so the tournament demand did keep the card from cratering. But the rise we expected never showed, and the graded prices actually softened: the PSA 10 slipped from $537 to $480. Lillie's Clefairy told the same story from the other side. We framed it as a quick flip inside a short tournament window, and the window did close: the raw price eased from $215 to $200, and the PSA 10 came off 19% to $557. The lesson we banked: tournament demand holds a card's raw price steady while the graded prices bleed as attention fades, so treating these as quick flips rather than long holds was the right instinct. Keep that in mind, because this week's hot card is the opposite animal, a card whose graded ceiling is the whole question.

What's hot: Mega Gengar ex (Ascended Heroes #284)

The card everyone was talking about this week is the Mega Gengar ex Special Illustration Rare from Mega Evolution: Ascended Heroes, card 284/217, the danciao illustration of a grinning Mega Gengar melting out of a wall of acid color. It crossed $1,000 and stayed there, which makes it the newest and most expensive English Pokemon card currently in print. That is a real distinction. Every other card sitting above $1,000 is retired, while this one is still coming out of packs right now.

What set it off was a mix of genuine scarcity at the top of a huge set and one sale so big it put the card in every feed. A BGS Black Label 10 copy sold for $85,000 on eBay, and a second Black Label moved through Goldin for $49,460. Those are prices for perfect copies, not the everyday market, but headline numbers like that pull attention onto the raw price, and the raw price is where the action is. PriceCharting has the blended ungraded figure at $1,234.25, with clean near mint listings running as high as $1,449.99. Gengar keeps showing up on this blog too: last week the vintage Gengar & Mimikyu GX alt art jumped 57% past $1,500. A different Gengar and a different reason, but the Ghost type is clearly having a moment.

Now the graded prices, because they are the whole story here. PriceCharting has the Grade 9 at $1,260 and the Grade 9.5 at $1,863. The PSA 10 sits at $2,500. Look at that Grade 9 number next to the raw price. A PSA 9 sells for essentially what a clean raw copy costs, so after the grading fee and eBay's cut, a 9 leaves you worse off than not grading at all. The whole bet is the PSA 10, and even the 10 only brings about double the raw price. That is a small prize by the standards of a chase card, and it comes with a catch the retired cards above $1,000 do not have.

Be careful here. This card is still in print, which means the number of graded copies is small today and grows every week as people crack packs and submit. A brand new SIR whose PSA 10 pays only about double raw is exactly the kind of card where the graded premium shrinks while your submission is still in the mail. The $85,000 Black Label is a fantasy price for a flawless copy, decided by grading luck, and you cannot plan around it. If you own a genuinely pristine copy and want to gamble on the 10, be brutally honest about the surface and centering before you pay the fee, because a 9 here loses money. For most people the smart move is to sell raw into the attention, not grade and hold. The record sale explains why the card is hot, but it is not a reason to pay $1,400 for one.

Biggest gainer: Rayquaza V (Evolving Skies #194)

The cleanest big mover of the week was the Rayquaza V alternate full art from 2021's Evolving Skies, card 194/203, the beloved shot of the serpent coiling through the sky behind its trainer. The TCGPlayer holofoil market price reads $506.26 as of today, up from around $383 a couple of weeks ago. That is roughly a 32% climb, about $120 in real dollars, on a card that was already expensive. It was not alone, either. The Rayquaza VMAX secret alt from the same set pushed 12% higher to over $1,000 in the same stretch, so this is demand for Rayquaza across the board, not a blip on one card.

The reason is easy to describe honestly. Evolving Skies is one of the most heavily chased modern sets ever printed, it has been retired for a while, and sealed product keeps drying up, so every alt art in it climbs slowly with no reprint to stop it. Then there is the calendar. English Pitch Black, headlined by Mega Darkrai ex, drops July 17, and Storm Emeralda with Mega Rayquaza follows on July 31. When a new set puts a marquee Pokemon back in the spotlight, collectors go hunting for that Pokemon's best older cards, and the Evolving Skies alt art is the single most iconic modern Rayquaza there is. That anticipation is pulling buyers into a set that already had a supply problem.

Will it hold? Partly, and the graded prices tell you where the value actually lives. PriceCharting has the raw at $462.98 and the Grade 9 at $550. The Grade 9.5 runs $605 and the PSA 10 runs $1,516. That Grade 9 barely clears the raw price, the same PSA 9 tax we keep hammering: a 9 on this card is close to break even once fees land, and the whole return lives in the 10, which pays roughly triple the raw price. Evolving Skies alt arts are known for holo scratches and loose centering straight from the pack, so fewer copies gem than the art's beauty suggests. With more than $1,000 riding on the difference between a 9 and a 10, knowing exactly where the strongest graded buyers are before you ship is the difference between a good flip and a mediocre one.

This is buying into strength, and that is fine as long as you know it. The supply squeeze is real and the set launch tailwind is real, so a clean copy held or graded into the Storm Emeralda window has a reasonable case. The risk is timing. Demand that builds ahead of a launch often peaks around the release and then rotates to the shiny new Mega Rayquaza cards once people can actually pull them, so the raw price could give back some of this climb after July 31. Watch what actually sells on eBay, not the asking prices. Steady sales above $500 mean the demand is real. Listings stacking up unsold mean the anticipation got ahead of itself.

What both moves tell you about this week's market

The two cards sit at opposite ends of the same era. Mega Gengar ex is a record setter you can still pull today, hot because of a headline sale, but capped on the graded side by the growing population every card still in print carries. Rayquaza V is a retired alt art that scarcity plus a set launch keeps pushing up, where buying raw is the easy part and the PSA 10 is the prize. The Mega Evolution wave is lifting both the newest cards and the classics, which is exactly what you would expect when the Pokemon Company puts Mega mechanics back at the center of the game.

The concrete action this week is to respect the difference between a card still in print and a retired one before you grade anything. On Mega Gengar, the growing graded population works against your slab, so selling raw or gambling on a genuine 10 are the only real plays. On Rayquaza, the fixed supply works for your slab, but only at the 10, and the launch calendar sets your clock. Run either copy through Flipr's profit calculator using the live market price, not the lagging blended average, and be honest about whether your surfaces earn the grade. When a card is hot because someone paid a record price for a perfect copy, the real question is whether the next ordinary copy finds a buyer at the new number.