The Pokémon card market since 2021

How we got here

CardTrack's equal-weighted long-run series of raw card prices (rebased to 100 at February 2021) reads 479 as of July 2026 (+379%). It has not risen in a straight line: it reached 145 in May 2021, then fell to 112 by December 2022 (-23%), its deepest peak-to-trough drop, and has since moved +329% from that low. These are index levels on the 58-card long-run basket, not a forecast of what comes next.

Year by year, the series closed 2021 at 115 (+15% on the base), 2022 at 112 (-3%), 2023 at 124 (+11%), 2024 at 173 (+40%), 2025 at 346 (+100%), 2026 at 479 (+39%). The last of those is the year to date, ending at the latest monthly point rather than at December. Read the sign of each year rather than its exact figure: the series is equal-weighted, so one card's spike is diluted by the rest of the basket, but a year with a handful of monthly points is a thinner reading than one with twelve.

Over the most recent twelve months the series ranged from 300 (July 2025) to 488 (May 2026); it stands +60% on a year earlier and +10% on three months earlier. Both windows point the same way, which is the least ambiguous reading a monthly series gives. These are month-end readings: the daily price on any card page has moved since July 2026; the market today page carries the daily picture.

The headline tile above is this long-run basket, not the CardTrack 100, which is a separate daily index of the 100 most valuable cards. When CardTrack changes how a headline price is computed, that index can step on the day of the change without a single card changing hands; those steps are method changes, they are documented on the index page, and this report does not read them as market events. The long-run series used here is rebased once, at February 2021, and read at month ends from PriceCharting's ungraded sale history (how CardTrack prices cards), so it is slower but steadier.

Vintage vs. modern

Splitting the same basket by era, grouped coarsely by set name — WotC-era sets (Base Set through Skyridge), EX-era sets, and everything since — change since February 2021 to July 2026:

Since February 2021 the Modern slice has led at +725%, with EX era at +376% and WotC era last at +197% — a spread of 528 percentage points between the strongest and weakest era. Modern leading an equal-weighted series says as much about where prices started as where they ended: a card that went from $5 to $40 adds far more to the index than a $5,000 card that gained 20%, so check the value-weighted reading below before concluding modern has been the better place to hold. The monthly market reports ask the same question month by month, with separate Vintage and Modern chase sub-indices.

Weighting each slice by value instead of equally changes the picture: Modern reads +418% value-weighted against +725% equal-weighted; EX era reads +385% value-weighted against +376% equal-weighted; WotC era reads +202% value-weighted against +197% equal-weighted. Where the value-weighted figure is the lower of the two, the slice's cheaper cards did most of the running; where it is higher, the expensive cards led — the most expensive Pokémon cards list shows which those are.

Each era has had its own drawdown: Modern fell 22% between June 2023 and October 2023; EX era fell 22% between May 2022 and October 2022; WotC era fell 43% between May 2021 and September 2023. They did not peak in the same month, which is why a collector holding both vintage and modern sees a smoother line than either slice alone. The collection tracker draws that line for the cards you actually hold.

Which types and sets have led

11 energy types have a baked value history. Since 2021, Colorless leads at +424%, followed by Darkness (+399%) and Water (+368%); Fighting is weakest at +161%, and 11 of the 11 sit above the level their history starts at. Over the last twelve months the leader is different: Fire at +148%. A type's long-run rank is set by whichever of its chase cards ran hardest since the base date; a year's rank is set by what has been released or reprinted since. A type index groups tracked cards by energy type, so it mixes bulk with chase cards and is best read as a temperature rather than a pick.

Among the 175 Pokémon sets with a baked history and at least a year on sale, 137 are above the level their history starts at and the median set is +103%. The strongest is POP Series 6 at +1080%, ahead of Dragon Frontiers (+1073%) and Team Rocket Returns (+991%); the weakest is Journey Together at -69%. The 7 sets released in the last twelve months are left out, because a launch-period history is release-week pricing rather than a trend. Small sets move more than large ones in this view, because a single chase card is a bigger share of a small set, so a promo series or a subset topping the table is not the same signal as a main expansion doing so.

The grading premium

The PSA 10 premium — the PSA 10 price divided by the raw price, taken as a median across gradeable cards worth at least $20 raw — reads 11.8× as of July 2026, against 9.3× in January 2021. It peaked at 12.2× in June 2026 and bottomed at 7.6× in February 2025; the latest reading is measured over 2,434 cards. Graded copies have pulled further away from raw ones over the period: a gem-mint copy is worth a larger multiple of the ungraded one than it was at the start.

A premium of ten times does not mean grading a card multiplies its value by ten. It is a median across cards that actually reach a 10, and the raw price already includes copies that would never grade that well. Grading fees, shipping, turnaround and the real chance of a 9 or an 8 all come off the top, and on a cheap card they can eat the whole premium. The grading ROI page runs that arithmetic card by card, from each card's own PSA 10 and raw prices, and that is the number to look at before sending anything in.

The biggest single-card moves

In PriceCharting's raw-price history the biggest three-year gains among tracked cards are Grovyle (Nintendo Black Star Promos, $6 to $99, +1700%), Gengar LV.X (Arceus, $21 to $278, +1258%) and Bulbasaur (SWSH Black Star Promos, $7 to $90, +1187%). All 20 baked three-year gainers that match their card's current price moved five-fold or more. The steepest three-year fall is Axew (BW Black Star Promos), $180 to $45, -75%.

Over one year the leaders are Team Magma's Groudon (Team Magma vs Team Aqua, $5 to $141, +2466%) and Deoxys δ (Holon Phantoms, $11 to $102, +803%), and the steepest one-year fall is Earthen Vessel at -46%. A one-year list is noisier than a three-year one: a single strong sale on a thinly traded card can put it near the top for a few months.

These figures are the baked window's own start and end prices from one source's sale history; a row whose end price is more than half away from the card's current price is left out, because that gap means the history belongs to a different printing of the card. The movers page recomputes every move against the card's current price and drops any row whose move has since reversed, so its lists can differ from the names here — and a large percentage on a card that started under $10 is a much smaller event than the same percentage on a card that started at $500.

What real auction sales add

CardTrack tracks 257,910 completed Fanatics Collect lots across 17,090 cards. The highest hammer price among them is $1,020,000 for a CGC 10 Rayquaza ☆ (Deoxys). An auction hammer price is what somebody paid on the day, which makes it the firmest kind of evidence a market page can show — but it is also one copy, in one grade, on one date.

A record sale does not reprice every copy of the card. The most expensive cards list ranks cards by their record lot; a record with a run of comparable sales behind it is a very different thing from a record that stands alone, and the same-slab price index follows slabs that have sold more than once. Listing prices, by contrast, are what sellers hope for, and on this page they are never presented as sales.

How to read this report

The multiples on this page describe baskets, not the card in your binder. A basket that has multiplied since the base date contains cards that went up thirty-fold and cards that went down; the set, type and card pages are where the figure for a specific card lives, and the card value checker is the quickest way to that page.

Keep raw and graded apart. Most of the figures here are ungraded prices; the PSA 10 premium and the graded sub-index in the monthly reports are the exceptions, and they say so. Comparing a raw index to a graded sale is the commonest way to misread a chart.

Mind the cadence. The long-run series, the type and set histories and the grading premium are monthly bakes and can trail the live market by several weeks; the CardTrack 100 and the movers lists refresh far more often. When a monthly reading and a daily one disagree, the daily one is newer, not wrong.

Nothing here is a forecast. CardTrack publishes what the data shows and does not tell readers what to buy (the methodology says how each price is built); the monthly reports add a written analysis of each month's movers, and the hype page shows which cards collectors are talking about, whether or not their price has moved yet.