Movers & Shakers (four up, five down)
The Prism Stars ran, the Eeveelutions slid, and the 30th Celebration's Futuristic pair kept falling. Four risers from out-of-print sets, five fallers from the sets still on shelves.
Every week a handful of cards decide they would rather live at a different price. This fortnight the decision split clean by age again: the risers are from 2016 and 2018, and the fallers are the shiny new cards and the Eeveelutions everyone already owns. Old cardboard went up. New cardboard went on sale.
New to this? Market Price is TCGPlayer's going rate for a Near Mint copy — roughly what people are actually paying right now. Every price below was checked live on TCGPlayer on October 25 and cross-checked with PriceCharting before it got in, and every move names its dates, because a percentage without a window is just a rumor with formatting.
The Risers
Start with the cleanest story of the fortnight: three Prism Star cards moved together. Arceus Prism Star from Forbidden Light rose 27.3% from $46.40 on October 11 to $59.09 live on October 25, on 16 Near Mint sales in the week to October 18 that all cleared the starting price. PriceCharting agrees on direction — its median raw sale jumped from $19.99 to $49.99 over that week. When three cards of one type move in the same window, somebody is collecting the type.
Darkrai Prism Star from Ultra Prism rose 27.9% from $67.45 to $86.25, and its cross-check is steadier than its twin's: PriceCharting's ungraded figure sits at $50.48, up $21.05, with recent sales clustering at $50 to $67. Same direction, lower altitude — the Near Mint premium doing its usual work on a 2018 holo.
Giratina Prism Star is the round trip. It spiked to $97.97 on October 18, then PriceCharting's sales log shows a TCGPlayer sale at $66.00 on October 22, and today it reads $85.22 — still up 9.5% from $77.81 on October 11, but a long way from the top of its own spike. A spike that holds is a trend; a spike that round-trips is a warning. The fourth riser is a full art from 2016. Ho-Oh EX from BREAKpoint rose 20.0% from $45.55 to $54.66. Honesty note: only 4 Near Mint copies are listed, and the lowest listing sits at $199.80 — the Market Price and the asking prices live in different countries on this one. Nothing about any of these four cards is new, and that is the point. No new supply of any of them is coming from the printer.
The Fallers
Now the other side, and it is one story told five times: too much new product, opened too fast, plus one beloved set repricing in public. Sylveon ex, the Prismatic Evolutions Special Illustration Rare, fell 17.5% from $473.49 on October 9 to $390.80 live today. The screen is still flattering it: nine of its 11 Near Mint sales in the week to October 18 cleared between $329.99 and $362.25, and PriceCharting's raw median for that week was $351.00. The real price is closer to $350 than to $391.
Umbreon ex, the set's top card, fell 7.9% from $1,301.12 to $1,198.39 — and kept going underneath that number, with PriceCharting's log showing TCGPlayer sales at $1,099.99 on October 21 and $1,075.00 on October 23. Nobody in the family was spared: all nine Prismatic Evolutions Special Illustration Rares fell between October 9 and 18. Vaporeon ex is the third of them here at $231.83, down 25.3% from its $310.38 July peak.
The 30th Celebration's Futuristic pair kept sliding with them. Mew ex is at $46.01, down 26.8% from its $62.82 Market Price on October 11, with sales through the month stepping down $63.28, $52.00, $46.00, $43.72. Its twin Mewtwo ex is at $37.59, down 12.3% from $42.87 on October 11. These were the set's futuristic chase cards five weeks ago. Beautiful art is not a floor. Supply is a floor, and this set has supply to spare.
The Record Book
One auction result worth printing, with its wrapper on. A PSA 10 Art Academy Lily-Chan Pikachu — one of just 100 copies given to its creator in a 2015 illustration competition — closed at $660,000 in Fanatics Collect's October 18 weekly auction, on 55 bids, including the buyer's premium. That is an auction result, not a raw market price, and it follows the same auction house's $8.4 million Raincoat Pikachu from September. Pikachu is not just the face of the hobby this autumn; it is the whole auction calendar.
What did not make the board
Two famous names got cut, and the cut is the story. Mewtwo EX, the Black and White promo, posted the week's biggest percentage on paper — up 102.3% to $53.86 on October 18 — but it did it in a single day of buying on October 17, with sales from $37.00 to $160.50, and PriceCharting does not see the move at all: $15.00 ungraded, $13.00 median raw sale. Its live Market Price today is $48.56, already giving back the spike. One day of buying on one site is not a price move, so it is not in this post. Several Gold Star cards jumped hard on PriceCharting this week, but TCGPlayer shows no Near Mint Market Price for them at all: their markets are so thin the price is a dash. A dash is not a number. And Gengar ex from 30th Celebration was cut at discovery for looking flat on PriceCharting — though its live TCGPlayer Market Price has since slipped to $65.38, down from $75.36 on October 11. It leads the watchlist for next week.
The full board
The takeaway
The market rhymes in complete sentences now: scarcity plus nostalgia goes up, hype plus supply goes down. This fortnight it said both in the same breath — three Prism Stars and a 2016 full art outran everything printed this year, while a five-week-old anniversary set and a year-old Eeveelution set kept repricing their own chase cards downward in public.
Two habits worth stealing. One: when a card's price is a dash on one of the two big trackers, it does not have a price — it has a rumor, and rumors are free for a reason. Two: a spike is only a trend once it survives a second week. Giratina round-tripped from $97.97 to $66 and back to $85.22 in a week; the Prism Stars that hold their October 25 closes into November are the ones to watch. See you next week.