Flying Pikachu Rising Rivals Price Is Up 36.8% After the $2 Million Pikachu Sale, and Morpeko ex Bounced 49%

Two cards moved this week for two very different reasons. Flying Pikachu, a 2009 secret rare that nobody is printing more of, has been climbing since the biggest private card sale the hobby has ever seen. Morpeko ex, a chase card from a set released two weeks ago, fell hard at launch and just bounced enough to top every gainer list in the UK. Neither move is as simple as its headline number, so here is what actually happened with both.

What's hot: Flying Pikachu (Rising Rivals #113/111)

On July 22 a 1998 CoroCoro Comics Promo Illustrator Pikachu graded BGS 9 sold privately for $2 million, which Sports Illustrated logged as the top TCG sale of the week. A record sale like that drags the word Pikachu into every feed at once. It also landed six weeks before 30th Celebration arrives on September 16, a set where every booster pack is guaranteed to contain one of 30 different Pikachu illustrations, each by a different artist. So collectors started digging back through old Pikachu cards, looking for the ones that were already scarce.

Flying Pikachu 113/111 is the one they found. TCGplayer flagged it in their July 28 price spikes article as nearly gone from the marketplace, and the numbers back that up. As of today the TCGplayer holofoil market price is $172.70, up 36.8% over 30 days. The cheapest listed copy is $115 and the direct low is $140, so copies are thin and getting thinner. PriceCharting's blended ungraded figure reads $116.18, but that is a lagging average of loose played copies, not a live near mint asking price. The real range for a clean copy right now runs from about $115 to $172.

The graded prices are where this card stands out. PriceCharting today has the Grade 8 at $472.48 and the Grade 9 at $623.60. A Grade 9.5 runs $745.50 and a PSA 10 runs $1,527.46. A 10 selling for 2.45 times a 9 is a small step by modern standards, and it means the PSA 9 is not the consolation prize it usually is. Against a $172.70 raw copy, even a 9 returns roughly 3.6 times your money before fees. Most cards we cover have a brutal cliff between the two grades, so this one is a genuine exception to the usual PSA 9 versus PSA 10 math.

If you are grading one, know what you are betting against. The 2009 Platinum era print wears its age in predictable places, edge wear on the yellow border and holo scratches across that sky full of balloons, so most copies will not come back a 10. The bigger risk is the calendar. Only a handful of the 30 Pikachu illustrations in 30th Celebration have been revealed so far, and Flying Pikachu is not among them. If it shows up in that set, the climb stalls, the same way reprint announcements have knocked original printings around all year. Submitting now also means your slab likely comes back near or after the September 16 release, which is exactly the grading turnaround risk we broke down earlier this month. If you already own a clean copy, this is a good week to send it. If you are buying at $172 to grade, you are paying for a climb that already happened and taking reprint risk on top.

Biggest gainer: Morpeko ex (Pitch Black #117/084)

Monster Card Corner's movers table for the week ending July 26 put Morpeko ex on top at plus 49.0%, rising from GBP 48.64 to GBP 72.48, a gain of GBP 23.84 in seven days. TCGplayer called out the same card in its own weekly article, noting the NC Empire illustration has now passed the artist's previous record. Two trackers that do not share data landed on the same card in the same week, so the move is real.

The bigger picture is less exciting than plus 49% sounds. Pitch Black released July 17, which we covered when Mega Darkrai ex was still a week out. This Special Illustration Rare sold for around $193 in the English presale window and then did what new set chase cards almost always do: it fell. Cardrake still shows it down 32.6% over 30 days even after the bounce, so the biggest gainer of the week is a card that is still deeply negative on the month. It found a floor and lifted off it.

PriceCharting today has the raw at $116.28 and the Grade 9 at $161.88. A Grade 9.5 runs $178.00 and a PSA 10 runs $618.23. US market listings sit around $130. That PSA 10 is about 5.3 times the raw price, which looks tempting until you notice the Grade 9 barely beats a raw sale once grading and selling fees come out. Grading this card only pays if it comes back a 10. And the PSA 10 price is two weeks old, built on a handful of early submissions, so it will soften as more graded copies come back, the same trap we mapped in the PSA 10 multiplier post.

This bounce is a chance to sell, not a reason to buy in. Pitch Black is still being opened by the case. Every set we have tracked through this stage says supply, not popularity, sets the price for the first six to ten weeks, which is the whole argument in our piece on what happens when new set chase cards drop. A 49% recovery while boxes are still being cracked is the market testing whether the floor holds, not proof the launch price is coming back. If you pulled one, list it into this strength. If you are grading, do it because your copy is flawless and you can wait, not because $618 is on the screen today.

Scoring the calls we already made

Two bullish calls from June 18 are close enough to their review date to grade honestly, and both missed the same way. We called N's Zoroark ex SIR (Journey Together #185) bullish at $52.42 raw, back when the PSA 10 was $180.06. Today it reads $46.43 ungraded and $149.99 in a 10. We called Darkrai VSTAR (Crown Zenith #GG50) bullish at $117.36 raw, when the PSA 10 was $369. Today it reads $94.44 ungraded and $315 in a 10. In both cases the raw price held up better than the graded price, a pattern we have now written down four separate times: when we turn bullish on a card that has already spiked, the raw price tends to stall while the PSA 10 quietly bleeds. Neither call was a disaster, but both were wrong.

What both moves tell you

Flying Pikachu is being bought because supply is scarce and a headline put eyes on it. Morpeko ex is being bought because a flood of new supply is finally slowing down. Those are opposite situations, and they call for opposite moves. When scarcity meets attention, patience wins and chasing loses, so the play is to check what you already own rather than buy the top. When a card bounces right after launch, selling into the strength wins, because more supply is still coming.

One concrete thing to do this week: go through any Platinum era bulk you have and look for a 113/111 in the bottom right corner. Rising Rivals sat in binders for fifteen years as a forgettable set, and a lot of those copies are still raw with people who have not checked a price in a decade. Run whatever you find through Flipr against both the raw and the PSA 9 prices, because on this particular card even a 9 is worth grading for, which is rarer than it sounds.