Paldea Evolved: the most expensive Pokémon cards

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Paldea Evolved came out on 9 June 2023 and it is the second expansion of the Scarlet and Violet series. It is also the largest set in the block, with 285 cards that have at least one listing, and the one with the strangest story to tell.

The most expensive card is not an ex, not a character card and not a Special Illustration Rare. It is a Magikarp (#203), the most useless Pokémon in the franchise, illustrated leaping out of the water. It is worth 189.63 €, six times the second card in the set. Its base print (#042) costs 0.11 €: between the two there are 1,724 times.

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 21 August 2026. Graded copies are excluded: a slabbed card follows a separate market.

In short. The value of Paldea Evolved sits in one card: the Magikarp Illustration Rare (#203) at 189.63 €, which is 28% of the entire set's value. Behind it, Chi-Yu ex (#259) at 30.40 € and a Raichu (#211) at 24.79 €. Completing the set costs around 671 €. Prices as of 21 August 2026.

The ranking: the 15 most expensive cards

This is the full ranking down to 9 euros: every card in the set worth more than that.

1MagikarpIllustration Rare · #203€189.63

2Chi-Yu exSpecial Illustration Rare · #259€30.40

3RaichuIllustration Rare · #211€24.79

4TyranitarIllustration Rare · #222€22.40

5MausholdIllustration Rare · #226€18.27

6Chien-Pao exSpecial Illustration Rare · #261€14.91

7Skeledirge exSpecial Illustration Rare · #258€14.70

8IonoSpecial Illustration Rare · #269€14.18

9Tinkaton exSpecial Illustration Rare · #262€14.00

10MismagiusIllustration Rare · #212€13.21

11Meowscarada exSpecial Illustration Rare · #256€12.42

12BaxcaliburIllustration Rare · #210€11.35

13MarillIllustration Rare · #204€11.21

14Wo-Chien exSpecial Illustration Rare · #257€9.84

15HeracrossIllustration Rare · #194€9.15

Fifteen rows, and what jumps out is the composition: eight cards out of fifteen are Illustration Rares, the "lesser" tier. In a 285-card set the special ex cards got overtaken by the artwork.

These are the cards people buy boxes for. Add them to your collection on DarkDex and track their value day by day, without redoing the maths every time the market moves.

Which is the rarest card in Paldea Evolved?

The rarest card in Paldea Evolved is Basic Water Energy (#279), the last numbered card in the set, a gold Hyper Rare. It is worth 4.51 €.

The most expensive is the Magikarp Illustration Rare (#203) at 189.63 €, forty-two times as much. It is the most extreme case in the Scarlet and Violet block: a card from the middle rarity tier worth forty-two times the rarest card in the set, and six times the priciest Special Illustration Rare.

Pull rates are not published, so there is no official answer, and price remains the only measurable indicator.

Why a Magikarp is worth 189 euros

This card is worth pausing on, because it dismantles three wrong ideas at once.

First: price does not follow rarity. The Magikarp is an Illustration Rare, the same tier as dozens of cards in the set that are worth one euro.

Second: price does not follow playability. Magikarp is in no deck, has no useful attacks and has never been competitive in thirty years.

Third: price follows the image. The artwork shows a Magikarp leaping out of the water backlit, and it has become the signature card of the entire Scarlet and Violet series. People who buy it buy it to frame it.

The rest of the ranking tells the same story more quietly: Raichu (#211) at 24.79 €, Tyranitar (#222) at 22.40 €, Maushold (#226) at 18.27 €. All Illustration Rares, all Pokémon nobody plays, all ahead of special ex cards from the same set.

The chase cards of Paldea Evolved

There are three chase cards, and the first is far out in front:

1. Magikarp (#203), Illustration Rare: 189.63 €
2. Chi-Yu ex (#259), Special Illustration Rare: 30.40 €
3. Raichu (#211), Illustration Rare: 24.79 €

Between first and second there are six times the difference. Below third place nothing clears 23 €, and the set gets cheap very quickly.

Add them to your collection on DarkDex and follow the value day by day.

The versions of the Paldea starters

The three Paldea starters each have their ex in several prints, and it is a good illustration of how much the collector number matters. Meowscarada ex exists in four versions inside the same set:

• base print (#015): 0.11 €
• Ultra Rare full art (#231): 0.99 €
• Secret Rare (#271): 3.09 €
• Special Illustration Rare (#256): 12.42 €

From first to last there are 113 times. The same pattern holds for Skeledirge ex (from 0.18 € to 14.70 €) and Quaquaval ex (from 0.18 € to 7.14 €).

Which is why estimating a collection by eye does not work, and why DarkDex keeps the price of every single variant separate instead of lumping them under one name.

How much it costs to complete Paldea Evolved

Buying every card in the set at the lowest Near Mint listing, one by one, takes around 671 €:

• the top three cards cost 245 €, which is 36% of the total
• the top ten reach 356 €, or 53%
• the median card is 0.11 €
• 215 cards out of 285, 75% of the set, sit below one euro

Translated: without the top ten cards the set costs about 315 €, and that number is high because the set is large. With 285 cards to buy, even at eleven cents each the bill adds up.

Worth saying that this is a theoretical floor: minimums from different sellers, shipping excluded, counting only the 285 cards that have at least one listing.

Where Paldea Evolved sits in the Scarlet and Violet block

We ran eight sets of the Scarlet and Violet block through the pricing engine, so the comparison can be made on numbers rather than impressions:

The "cards" column counts the cards in the set with at least one Near Mint listing, not the number printed on the back of the pack.

Paldea Evolved is the largest set in the group and sits mid-table on cost to complete. The interesting figure is a different one: it is the oldest of our eight, three years out, and its prices have not fallen. The Magikarp was already the signature card in 2023 and it still is.

That is the signal that holds for the whole series: cards with recognisable artwork keep their value for years, while cards that were valuable because they were played lose it as soon as rotation ends.

Singles or packs?

The Paldea Evolved Booster Box costs 154.64 € and the Elite Trainer Box 100.64 €, with just seven sellers listing it: stock of a 2023 set is drying up, and a hundred-euro ETB is already an end-of-print price.

671 € buys the whole set in singles, Magikarp included. Four and a half boxes buy nothing guaranteed. On an older set the choice is even sharper than on recent ones: packs are opened for fun, sets are completed with singles.

Heads up. Card prices move constantly, and chase cards are the most volatile of all: the numbers in this article are a snapshot of the market on 21 August 2026.

How to keep an eye on the value

On DarkDex you add your Paldea Evolved cards to your collection and the market value updates itself, with price history and your portfolio total always in view. It works with any language and any condition, not just English cards.

The same ranking exists for the other sets in the block: Destined Rivals (the priciest of the group), Surging Sparks, Twilight Masquerade, Journey Together, White Flare, Black Bolt and Paradox Rift.