Pokémon 30th Celebration is reprinting more than £180,000 worth of classic cards

There’s no shortage of vintage cards I desperately want but don’t have the spare change to afford. I’ve checked under my sofa cushions, and sadly, I don’t have a spare £23,500 lying around that I can put towards a Shadowless Charizard in a PSA 10. That’s why collections of older cards being reprinted, like Pokémon 30th Celebration’s Classic Collection, are perfect for collectors like me. And if you were hoping to eventually inherit more than £180,000, you’re effectively saving all of that by getting the reprints. Yes, that’s four zeroes.

Ahead of the Pokémon 30th Celebration pre-orders that I’m sitting around waiting for to arrive, I decided to look into the value of the original cards included in the Classic Collection, according to PokéBeach. For the standard ungraded vintage cards, you’re looking at a decently pricey but comparatively modest £7,510.40 figure. However, taking into account the allure of a PSA 10 copy? Well, I hope you have £183,206 sitting around in your bank account.

What’s interesting is the fact that just five cards make up 86% of the total raw value: those being the Lugia from Aquapolis (or Crystal Lugia), Shining Celebi, Gengar #94, Dark Tyranitar, and Charizard #4. Similarly, the top five most expensive cards make up a massive 84% of the total for the PSA 10 figure, but it’s a slightly different list: Metagross from Delta Species and Scizor Ex #108 replace Shining Celebi and Dark Tyranitar.

The biggest change from raw to PSA 10, surprisingly, isn’t Crystal Lugia – it’s Metagross. At just a measly £78 for the ungraded version, the PSA 10 is a huge £11,900. That’s a 152.56x increase, or a 15,156% increase. If you happen to have a Metagross Delta Species card lying around in perfect condition, I really wouldn’t blame you for looking at the best Pokémon card grading services right after reading that figure.

Magikarp and Lugia cards from the Pokémon 30th Celebration Classic collection

I was pleasantly shocked by my findings, which I used data from Collectr to figure out. While there are some expensive hits getting reprinted here, the vast majority aren’t pulled out of the vintage binders and receiving modern reprints because they’re simply valuable. Instead, it’s almost an art museum of 30 years of the Pokémon TCG. For example, Crobat G doesn’t even have a PSA 10 sale on record with Collectr, and the Genesect EX #11 has a surprisingly low figure of £60 for a slabbed version with PSA’s award of pristine approval.

When I went into the calculations, I was expecting a massive figure. Sure, it still is, but considering how much some classic cards from older Pokémon sets can sell for, it’s actually fairly small. That’s no more apparent than with the raw value, which gives you 30 cards for the same price as two Umbreon VMAX Alt Art cards in a PSA 10 at roughly $4300 each. Considering Moonbreon is a modern card with a higher population, that data is surprising.

If anything, this data has actually made me more excited for the Pokémon 30th Celebration set. Not because it’s packed full of vintage cards that I’ll never afford, but because it’s not 30 of the most sought-after cards of the franchise. Instead, it’s a curated list of everything from cards that are cheap to buy to the mega hits that have defined collectors for decades. Excuse me for saying it in such a cheesy way, but it’s a celebration of the TCG, and not some ‘greatest hits’ collection of cards that every modern collector desperately wants.

Considering the Pokémon 30th Celebration leaks point to some really gorgeous SIRs and new rarities, like the Futuristic Rares, I’m more hyped than ever. Hopefully, I manage to pre-order the Pokémon 30th Celebration UPCs too – I really, really want those Umbreon and Espeon promo cards.