Ascended Heroes: the most expensive Pokémon cards

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Ascended Heroes launched on 30 January 2026 and is, by some distance, the richest set in the Mega Evolution series. With 295 cards against the 120-130 of the others, it is more than twice the size, and the value it holds matches: completing it costs over €2,600, five times any other expansion in the block.

At the top sits a Pikachu ex at €500.64, and around it the most extreme figure we found anywhere in the series: the same Pikachu ex, in its base print (#057), sells for eleven cents. That is a 4,551x gap between two cards carrying the same name.

We ran all 295 cards in the set through the DarkDex pricing engine and ranked them by value: real prices for singles in Near Mint condition, updated to 12 August 2026. Graded copies are excluded.

In short. Ascended Heroes has four cards above €200, something no other set in the series comes close to: Pikachu ex (#276) at €500.64, Mega Gengar ex (#284) at €440.27, Mega Charizard Y ex Gold (#294) at €300.64 and Mega Dragonite ex (#290) at €215.60. Prices as of 12 August 2026.

The ranking: every card above €20

1Pikachu exSpecial Illustration Rare · #276€500.64

2Mega Gengar exSpecial Illustration Rare · #284€440.27

3Mega Charizard Y exGold Secret Rare · #294€300.64

4Mega Dragonite exSpecial Illustration Rare · #290€215.60

5Pikachu exSpecial Illustration Rare · #277€194.64

6Team Rocket's Mewtwo exSpecial Illustration Rare · #281€151.26

7Mega Dragonite exGold Secret Rare · #295€145.64

8N's Zoroark exSpecial Illustration Rare · #286€75.64

9Mega Feraligatr exSpecial Illustration Rare · #274€60.64

10Mega Meganium exSpecial Illustration Rare · #272€45.64

11Lillie's Clefairy exSpecial Illustration Rare · #280€45.63

12Mega Froslass exSpecial Illustration Rare · #275€37.52

13Steven's Metagross exSpecial Illustration Rare · #289€33.52

14Fezandipiti exSpecial Illustration Rare · #288€30.39

15Mega Emboar exSpecial Illustration Rare · #273€25.39

16Mega Gengar exUltra Rare · #269€24.97

17Mega Scrafty exSpecial Illustration Rare · #285€24.90

18Mega Hawlucha exSpecial Illustration Rare · #283€24.65

19Mega Diancie exSpecial Illustration Rare · #282€22.40

20Marnie's Grimmsnarl exSpecial Illustration Rare · #287€20.27

Twenty rows, and unlike the other sets in the series we get there comfortably: the twentieth card is still worth €20.27, and below it there are still cards at €15-18. These are all the cards in the set above €20, and this is the only expansion in the block where a long ranking genuinely earns its place.

These are the cards people buy boxes for. Add them to your collection on DarkDex and track their value day by day.

The Trainers' set

Ascended Heroes is built around a different idea from the rest of the series: cards do not just carry the Pokémon's name, they carry its Trainer's. The ranking includes Team Rocket's Mewtwo ex (€151.26), N's Zoroark ex (€75.64), Lillie's Clefairy ex (€45.63), Steven's Metagross ex (€33.52) and Marnie's Grimmsnarl ex (€20.27).

That choice has a direct effect on prices: these cards draw from two collector pools at once, people who follow the Pokémon and people who follow the character. It is probably why the set holds high values across so many cards instead of concentrating them in two or three.

The two Pikachus

Positions 1 and 5 are the same Pokémon: Pikachu ex, in two different Special Illustration Rares, at €500.64 and €194.64. Together they are worth almost €700, more than the completion cost of any other set in the series.

Then there is the third print, the base one (#057), at €0.11. The ratio between the most and least expensive is 4,551x, the widest we measured anywhere in the Mega Evolution series. If someone tells you "I have a Pikachu ex from Ascended Heroes", that sentence alone can mean eleven cents or five hundred euros.

This is why the collector number matters more than the name. DarkDex keeps every variant's price separate for exactly this reason: without the number, a collection cannot be valued.

The same holds for Mega Gengar ex, running from €0.49 for the common print to €440.27 for the Special Illustration Rare (898x), and for Team Rocket's Mewtwo ex, from €0.18 to €151.26 (840x).

What it costs to complete Ascended Heroes

Here the answer is harsh. Buying every card in the set at the lowest Near Mint price costs roughly €2,628. It is the most expensive set to finish in the whole series, and not by a little: the others sit between €470 and €1,020.

The structure, though, is the usual one:

• the top three cards cost €1,242, which is 47% of the total
• the set's median card is €0.11
• 236 of 295 cards, 80% of the set, are under one euro

So the bulk of those 295 cards costs almost nothing, and the real spend is twenty pieces. An Ascended Heroes Elite Trainer Box costs €70.63 and a Booster Bundle €42.76: opening sealed product gives you a very low chance at any of the top four, while with singles you know exactly what you are getting.

As always this is a theoretical floor: minimums from different sellers, shipping excluded, counting only cards with at least one listing. In practice you spend more, but the order of magnitude is right.

The variants that stay out of the ranking

Ascended Heroes has two special reverse holo runs that the market treats as separate expansions. They are not in this ranking, which covers the standard prints: mixing them in would produce a table with the same card repeated at different prices, less readable and less useful.

Where Ascended Heroes sits in the series

We ran all six sets in the Mega Evolution series through the pricing engine, so this comparison rests on numbers rather than impressions, and it is here that you see how far off the scale Ascended Heroes is:

Ascended Heroes alone costs more than the two most expensive sets combined. Not because its cards are more valuable than those in Phantasmal Flames, which holds the priciest card in the whole series, but because there are far more of them: 295 against 130, with twenty cards above €20 instead of two.

That is the difference between a concentrated set and a deep one. Phantasmal Flames closes almost entirely for ninety euros plus three very expensive cards. Ascended Heroes offers no such shortcut: even removing the top three cards, almost €1,400 of cards remain to buy.

For collectors it is the set that demands a real decision. Completing it is a project, not a purchase. Many collectors choose to target only the Special Illustration Rares, which are also the cards that have held value best in the six months since release.

Singles or packs?

It depends what you are after. Packs are bought for the fun of opening them: a box's expected value is almost always below its price, and on a 295-card set the odds of hitting one of the top four are especially low. Singles are for when you want a specific card, because you pay market price and know what arrives.

On Ascended Heroes there is a third factor: volume. With 236 cards under one euro, commons and uncommons can be bought in bulk for very little, and that is a far better route than hoping for them in packs.

Heads up. Card prices move constantly, and on a set with four cards above €200 the swings are felt: the figures in this article capture the market on 12 August 2026.

How to keep track of the value

On DarkDex you add your Ascended Heroes cards to your collection and the market value updates itself, with price history and a running portfolio total. On a 295-card set that is the difference between knowing what your collection is worth and guessing.

The same ranking exists for every other set in the Mega Evolution series: Pitch Black, Chaos Rising, Perfect Order, Phantasmal Flames and Mega Evolution.