Mega Greninja ex SIR Price Hits $480 to $520 After the Chaos Rising Launch, and N's Zekrom Jumped 31%

Two very different price moves landed on Pokemon flippers this week. One is a brand new chase card from a set that has only been out three days. The other is a promo from January whose price just popped because the supply ran out. Both tell you something useful about how the market is behaving in the Mega Evolution era.

What's hot: Mega Greninja ex (Chaos Rising #116)

Chaos Rising hit shelves Friday, May 22, and within 48 hours the Special Illustration Rare Mega Greninja ex was the card people searched for most on TCGPlayer and the pull people talked about most on r/PokemonCardValue. Athlon Sports, CBR, Mint Vandal, and Card Chill all flagged it as the set's "definitive masterpiece card" in their coverage on day one. That kind of agreement across outlets by day three is rare, and it tells you the demand is not being manufactured by a single influencer.

Why the price is moving

Three things are stacking on top of each other.

First, Greninja consistently lands in the top three of every Pokemon Company popularity poll. The TCG finally gave it a proper Mega Evolution this set, and the demand that built up over a decade of "where is my Mega Greninja card" complaints is unloading all at once.

Second, Mega Greninja ex is not just a chase pull, it is the set mascot. It is printed on every booster pack and ETB box, which makes the artwork the face of the entire set's marketing. Every YouTuber opening Chaos Rising is holding a Mega Greninja ex pack up to the camera, and that visibility feeds on itself.

Third, the card reads well as an actual playing card, not just a collectible. It has 330 HP, a retreat cost of zero, and an attack that hits for 250, so it will see real play in standard and expanded. A card that flippers want and players want sells on a different demand curve than a pure chase pull.

What it is selling for

Across TCGPlayer, eBay, and CardLadder over the last 48 hours, near mint copies of the SIR (card #116) are settling into a $480 to $520 range. The Mega Hyper Rare variant (#122) is currently selling above $700. The Ultra Rare full art (#100) sits in the $180 to $220 lane, and the standard Double Rare (#22) goes for around $35.

PSA 10 sales on the SIR have not started landing yet because the set is too new. Based on how Surging Sparks SIRs graded out, expect the PSA 10 price to settle around 2.5 to 3.0 times raw. That puts a PSA 10 SIR Mega Greninja ex in the $1,200 to $1,500 zone once the first wave of grades comes back.

What a flipper should do

The honest read: this card is expensive next to raw chase cards from comparable sets at the same age. Surging Sparks SIRs were selling in the $300 range at this point in their life, and Mega Greninja is at $500. Either that premium is justified by the unusual mix of demand (Greninja himself, the mascot slot, real tournament play), or it is set up for a fall once bulk opening starts churning out supply.

If you already have a clean copy, the right move is probably to check whether it has a realistic shot at a PSA 10 and grade it. PSA's queue is going to fill up with this card in the next 60 days, and the first slabs back sell into the strongest prices. If you are considering buying in at current SIR pricing, watch how fast sold listings clear on TCGPlayer for the next two weeks. If listings keep clearing fast at $500, the new floor is set. If they start sitting, this was a peak you missed.

Biggest gainer: N's Zekrom (Ascended Heroes #155)

The biggest mover of the past seven days is a January promo that is running out of stock. Near mint copies of N's Zekrom from Ascended Heroes climbed from £84.22 to £110.61 over the past week, a 31.3% jump and the largest weekly gain for a single card reported by Card Value's price tracker.

Why it popped

There is no story here, just supply. N's Zekrom was bundled into Ascended Heroes Elite Trainer Boxes as a Pokemon Center exclusive when the set launched January 30. There was no separate booster print, no rarity slot in the main set's pull table, and crucially, no announced reprint. The card exists only in ETBs that have now been on shelves for four months.

What happened this week is the secondary market figured out that Pokemon Center's ETB stock is basically gone. Restocks have been small and spotty, and the moment the deal hunters on Reddit and Discord noticed, the eBay floor on a raw N's Zekrom popped from the $85 range to $110 and above over four days.

This is a textbook supply squeeze: the supply is fixed, the demand keeps growing, and no reprint is on the calendar. Whether it lasts depends on what the Pokemon Company does next with this card. If it gets reprinted in a Mega Evolution Special Edition product later this year, the premium evaporates. If it stays a Pokemon Center exclusive permanently, $110 is the new floor and $140 is plausible by Q3.

The demand looks real

The tell is what actually sells. Looking at eBay sold listings over the past seven days, completed sales at the new price are happening within 24 hours of listing. Buy It Now listings at $110 do not sit. That is healthy demand, not a quick pump that fades.

But a 31% jump in a week is the kind of speed that draws in flippers who have not done the supply homework. If you see N's Zekrom on Reddit flip threads next week with people saying "still going up," that is the top.

The play here

If you already own copies, you are not in a hurry, so sit on them. If you are considering buying in, the question is whether the next reprint announcement is one month away or six months away. The Pokemon Company has gotten more aggressive about Pokemon Center exclusive print runs this generation, so the reprint risk is real but not immediate.

The grading math gets ugly here. N's Zekrom is a basic Rare, not a Special Illustration Rare or Ultra Rare, and a PSA 10 on a basic Rare has historically sold for 1.3 to 1.8 times the raw price. At $110 raw you are looking at maybe $160 in a PSA 10, and you just spent over $25 on grading. Grading this one barely pays even when everything goes right. The play is buy raw, sell raw.

What this means for your watchlist

The two cards are in different lanes and call for different moves.

Mega Greninja ex SIR is in the lane where a new set is at peak frenzy. Cards in that lane have huge upside if the demand sticks, and just as much downside if the wave of bulk opening overwhelms the chase. If you are playing this card, you are betting that Greninja's lasting popularity outruns the supply curve. Either commit early and grade, or wait six months for the correction.

N's Zekrom is in the scarcity lane. Cards in that lane move quietly until the market notices the supply is gone, and then they pop. If you are playing this card, you are betting that the Pokemon Company does not reprint it. Buy raw, hold raw, and watch reprint announcements like a hawk.

If you want to track moves like this in real time, Flipr's Top 10 surfaces the cards with the biggest profit potential every 30 minutes, and QuickFlip catches sellers' pricing mistakes when supply tightens. Both of these cards have been showing up in those feeds all week.

The video below breaks down why Mega Greninja ex is dominating the Ninja Spinner set and what it means for collectors:

The next step is to look at your own collection. If you have any uncatalogued Ascended Heroes ETB pulls or January promos sitting in a binder, pull them out tonight. There is a real chance you are holding the next N's Zekrom and do not know it.