Foilio Study · Open data
What each Pokémon rarity is really worth
We grouped every card in 6 modern Pokémon sets by rarity and took the median trend price of each tier. The ladder is steep and the top is surprising: a typical Common is €0.04, a Double Rare €0.62, and a Special Illustration Rare €24.25 — and the gold “secret” Hyper Rares are not the most valuable rarity in the set.
Computed 2026-06-19 from Cardmarket EUR trend price, via the open pokemontcg.io API. Median (not average) per tier — reference estimates, not sold records. Free to cite with a link to this page.
The rarity price ladder
Typical (median-of-medians) trend price for each rarity tier across the 6 sets. Bars use a log scale — each step right is roughly a ten-fold jump — because the tiers span three orders of magnitude.
Median trend price per tier, taken per set then averaged across sets. Top-tier card counts are small (5–11 per set), so these are typical values, not chase ceilings.
Three things the ladder shows
- The jump to chase rarities is exponential. Commons, Uncommons and Rares all sit under €0.09. The first real money is the Double Rare (€0.62), and from there each tier roughly multiplies up to the Special Illustration Rare at €24.25 — about 600× a common.
- Gold isn't king. The gold “secret” Hyper Rares feel like the top of the set, but their typical value (€7.93) is well below the Special Illustration Rares (€24.25) — and SIRs won in all 6 of 6 sets. The textured full-art SIRs are the modern chase.
- Most of a set is filler. The Common / Uncommon / Rare tiers — the bulk of every pack — are worth pennies. This is the same lopsided picture as our set value-concentration study, seen from the rarity angle.
Median price by tier, per set
Median EUR trend price for each rarity tier in each set, 2026-06-19. Blank = the set has no cards in that tier.
| Set | Common | Uncommon | Rare | 2★ | Ultra | IR | Hyper | SIR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Scarlet & Violet Base 2023 | €0.04 | €0.04 | €0.08 | €0.61 | €2.07 | €5.42 | €5.36 | €8.16 |
Scarlet & Violet—151 2023 | €0.05 | €0.06 | €0.21 | €1.84 | €9.95 | €26.14 | €4.14 | €79.37 |
Paldean Fates 2024 | €0.03 | €0.03 | €0.09 | €0.56 | €0.52 | €0.85 | €7.20 | €17.25 |
Twilight Masquerade 2024 | €0.04 | €0.05 | €0.09 | €0.63 | €2.06 | €3.84 | €8.65 | €19.02 |
Temporal Forces 2024 | €0.04 | €0.04 | €0.11 | €0.70 | €2.24 | €7.23 | €10.33 | €33.92 |
Surging Sparks 2024 | €0.03 | €0.04 | €0.06 | €0.61 | €1.84 | €4.83 | €11.78 | €29.48 |
How we computed this
- For each set we pulled every card id from the open pokemontcg.io API and grouped them by rarity tier.
- We took the median Cardmarket EUR trend price of each tier — median, not average, so a single expensive chase card can't inflate a tier's typical value.
- The ladder is the median across the 6 sets of each tier's per-set median.
- It's reproducible — the script is in our repo and re-running it refreshes the figures.
Questions
What is a Special Illustration Rare worth?
Across 6 modern Scarlet & Violet-era sets, the typical (median) Special Illustration Rare trades around €24.25 — about 39.1× a Double Rare and on the order of 600× a common card. Individual SIRs of popular Pokémon (Charizard, Mew, Pikachu) go far higher; this is the typical tier value, not the chase ceiling.
Are gold Hyper Rares the most valuable Pokémon cards in a set?
No — that's the surprise. In all 6 of the 6 sets where both exist, the median Special Illustration Rare out-values the gold "secret" Hyper Rare (typical SIR €24.25 vs Hyper Rare €7.93). The textured, full-art Special Illustration Rares are the real chase in the modern era, not the gold cards.
How much is a typical Pokémon card worth by rarity?
Median trend prices across the sets we measured: Common €0.04, Rare €0.09, Double Rare €0.62, Illustration Rare €5.13, Hyper Rare €7.93, Special Illustration Rare €24.25. The jump from "filler" rarities to chase rarities is roughly exponential — value lives almost entirely in the top tiers.
Where does this data come from, and is it reliable?
We grouped every priced card in each set by its rarity and took the median Cardmarket EUR trend price per tier, using the open pokemontcg.io API. Median (not average) so one expensive chase card can't inflate a tier. These are reference estimates, not sold records; top-tier counts per set are small (often 5–11 cards), so read them as typical values, not guarantees. We never scrape marketplaces and never invent a number.
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Citing this study? Please link to foilio.net/studies/pokemon-rarity-prices. Data licensed CC BY 4.0.
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<img src="https://foilio.net/studies/og?stat=%E2%82%AC24.25&label=the%20typical%20Special%20Illustration%20Rare%20%E2%80%94%20vs%20%E2%82%AC0.09%20for%20a%20regular%20Rare&title=What%20each%20Pok%C3%A9mon%20card%20rarity%20is%20actually%20worth%20(modern%20sets)" alt="What each Pokémon card rarity is actually worth (modern sets) — Foilio" width="600" style="max-width:100%;height:auto;border-radius:12px" />
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Source: <a href="https://foilio.net/studies/pokemon-rarity-prices">What each Pokémon card rarity is actually worth (modern sets) — Foilio</a> · data CC BY 4.0
</p>Foilio (2026-06-19). What each Pokémon card rarity is actually worth (modern sets). Retrieved from https://foilio.net/studies/pokemon-rarity-prices