Obsidian Flames: the most expensive Pokémon cards

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Obsidian Flames came out on 11 August 2023 and it has the most famous Charizard ex of the Scarlet & Violet era. Three years later it is also, by a distance, the cheapest set of its era to complete: every card in it, one copy each, comes to 420.42 €.

We ran every card in the set through the DarkDex pricing engine and sorted by value. These are real single-card prices, Near Mint, the lowest available across sellers, updated on 7 September 2026.

In short. Charizard ex #223 leads at 114.57 €, which is over a quarter of the set on its own. Behind it the drop is immediate: the second card is at 49.91 € and the tenth at 15 €. The 197 base set cards cost 43.26 € together. Prices as of 7 September 2026.

The ranking: the 10 most expensive cards in Obsidian Flames

Every card in the set above 15 €. Above twenty-five euro there are only four, and that tells you more about the shape of this set than any ranking.

1Charizard exSpecial Illustration Rare · #223€114.57

2NinetalesIllustration Rare · #199€49.91

3Charizard exHyper Rare · #228€34.10

4CleffaIllustration Rare · #202€25.40

5GloomIllustration Rare · #198€20.25

6PidgeyIllustration Rare · #207€16.62

7PidgeottoIllustration Rare · #208€15.00

8Pidgeot exSpecial Illustration Rare · #225€13.21

9Charizard exUltra Rare · #215€10.15

10ScizorIllustration Rare · #205€8.15

The Charizard ex #223, or a quarter of the set

The 114.57 € of the Special Illustration Rare Charizard ex is 27.3% of the value of all of Obsidian Flames. It is the card the set was opened, bought and resold for over two years.

What separates it from the top cards of other sets is that this one you can actually find, and the price says so: a hundred and fifteen euro for the most famous Charizard of the era is less than the tenth card of Evolving Skies costs.

Four Charizard ex in one set, from 115 to 4 euro

Charizard ex appears in four printings inside Obsidian Flames, and the gap between the first and the last is twenty-eight times:

If you search for "the Obsidian Flames Charizard" and find prices between four and a hundred and fifteen euro, nobody is making a mistake: they are four different cards, and the only thing that really changes is the artwork.

The Illustration Rares are worth more than the playable cards

One thing jumps out of the ranking: from second to tenth place it is almost entirely Illustration Rares, and almost no competitive card. Ninetales #199 at 49.91 €, Charizard ex gold #228 at 34.10 €, Cleffa #202 at 25.40 €, Gloom #198 at 20.25 €, and even Pidgey #207 at 16.62 € and Pidgeotto #208 at 15 €: two commons with a nice drawing.

The comparison can be made card by card, because each of these also exists in the ordinary version inside the base set, where they all cost 11 cents, which is the floor of the market:

Same Pokémon, same set, same attacks. The only difference is the drawing.

What is the rarest card in Obsidian Flames

There is no official answer: pull rates are not published. If you mean the signature card, it is the Charizard ex #223. If you mean the printing that closes the numbering, it is a Fire Energy #230, a gold energy costing 3.10 €.

Between those two is everything worth knowing about how these sets work: the last card in the list is not the most valuable, it is just the last.

How many cards does Obsidian Flames have

The set has 197 official cards and reaches 230 counting the special printings.

What it costs to complete Obsidian Flames

Adding up the cheapest Near Mint copy of each of the 230 cards: 420.42 €. It is the lowest total of any Scarlet & Violet set we have measured, and inside it:

• the 197 base set cards cost 43.26 € in total
• the 33 special printings cost 377.16 €, nearly nine times as much
• the median card costs 11 cents, and 192 of 230 are under one euro
• take out the top ten and the other 220 cards cost 113.06 €

Put practically: anyone who wants the complete base set of Obsidian Flames, all 197 cards, spends under fifty euro. Anyone who also wants the display case spends nine times that, and most of it on a single card.

In practice you spend more: shipping goes on top and the cards come from different sellers.

Heads up. Prices move constantly. These numbers are a snapshot of the market on 7 September 2026.

Obsidian Flames inside the Scarlet & Violet era

Obsidian Flames is last, and it holds the most famous Charizard of the era. The difference is not card quality: it is how much was printed and how much is left for sale. Obsidian Flames was produced at the height of the 2023 boom and an enormous amount of it survives; Prismatic Evolutions was not. That is why the Charizard, the single most in-demand Pokémon there is, costs less here than an Umbreon does there.

Singles or sealed

Prices here move slowly, which cuts both ways: nothing to chase, but also nothing to lose. For completing the set, singles win outright at 43.26 € for the base.

How to keep an eye on them

On DarkDex you add your Obsidian Flames cards to your collection and the value updates itself, with every variant kept separate. With 230 printings and a median of eleven cents, knowing which of your cards actually matter is the whole point.

To understand how a whole collection is valued, read how much your Pokémon collection is worth.