Primal Kyogre-EX Price Climbs to $438 While a $1 Metang Jumps to $4 on Deck Play

Almost nothing in the Pokemon market moved this week. TCGplayer's own Wednesday column opened by saying the top end of the modern market barely budged in either direction, with everyone parked and waiting for 30th Celebration on September 16. Two cards did move, and they moved for completely opposite reasons. One is a secret rare from 2015 that nobody is printing more of. The other is a common you could buy for a dollar last week, spiking because a deck list said so. Those are the only two engines running right now, and they call for opposite trades.

Primal Kyogre-EX (Ancient Origins #96/98) is climbing with the rest of the 2015 shiny full arts

When the modern chase market goes quiet, the money does not leave. It moves into things with fixed supply, and this week it moved into the 2015 shiny full art class. TCGplayer's August 5 spikes column flagged Primal Kyogre-EX as the standout, sitting near $450 against roughly $300 at the start of the summer. The same column notes that M Rayquaza-EX's shiny full art just crossed $1,000, up from about $975 a week earlier and roughly $500 a year ago, and that Primal Groudon-EX from this same set is close to its highest price ever, near $325. The whole class is being repriced upward, not just one card.

Live numbers, pulled today rather than quoted from a summary. The TCGplayer feed as of August 5 has the holofoil at a $438.96 market price, with the lowest listing at $239.99 and the mid at $471.66. Cardmarket's European data confirms the direction on its own: the card averaged 135.19 over the last 30 days, 160.97 over the last 7, and 175 over the last day, so buyers on two continents are pushing the same way. PriceCharting's blended ungraded figure reads $230.50, which looks like a contradiction until you notice it lands almost exactly on TCGplayer's lowest listing. That is a condition split on a card that is eleven years old, not stale data. The played copies really do sell near $230 and the near mint copies really do sell near $440, and if you mix the two up you will misprice this card in both directions.

The graded prices are where it gets loud. PriceCharting today: Grade 7 at $312.67, Grade 8 at $379.50, Grade 9 at $675.00, Grade 9.5 at $875.00, and PSA 10 at $4,400.00. Say that plainly: against the $438.96 near mint market, a PSA 10 is worth about ten times a raw copy, and against the $230.50 blended figure it is about 19 times. A gap that wide is the market telling you very few copies come back a 10, not free money sitting on the table. Look at the card and you can see why. It is a 5ban Graphics full art from 2015 with gold borders, which means chipping on the gold edges and scratches across a busy holo background, exactly the two flaws that decide whether a card comes back a 10.

Flipper's angle: buy the slab, do not send the raw. A Grade 9 at $675 against a $438.96 near mint raw pays about 1.54 times your money before costs. Subtract grading, shipping, insurance, and roughly 13% in selling fees, and a 9 is close to a wash on a card that cost you $440 and took months to come back. So the whole trade rides on the chance of a gem, and that is a bad bet on a 2015 gold border where the market already prices the 10 at ten times raw because so few copies get there. If you want to own this card, the PSA 9 at $675 is the honest way in, the same conclusion we reached in our piece on buying the slab versus grading your own. If you already own a genuinely flawless raw copy, that is a different conversation, but "genuinely flawless" on this card is rarer than people want it to be.

Metang (Temporal Forces #114/162) quadrupled because a deck needs it

It is genuinely rare for competitive play to move Pokemon prices. This week it did. Cardprices.io's weekly movers table has Metang 114/162 up 239.2% to $4.07 over seven days. TCGplayer's column backs it up on its own, describing the base printing going from a dollar to $4 this week, after flagging the same card the week before as having gone from 50 cents to over $5. The live TCGplayer feed as of August 5 shows the normal printing at a $3.36 market price with a $3.10 low, and the reverse holo at $3.71. Depending on which printing and which starting point you use, the card has multiplied somewhere between four and seven times in about three weeks.

The reason is specific and easy to check. Metang's Metal Maker ability lets you look at the top four cards of your deck and attach any number of Basic Metal Energy you find to your Pokemon in any arrangement. That is the engine behind the Mega Excadrill ex deck out of Pitch Black, whose Maximum Drilling attack does 200 damage for three Metal and jumps to 330 with two extra energy of any type attached. 330 is the number that knocks out Dragapult ex, Mega Kangaskhan ex, and N's Zoroark ex, so the deck lives or dies on getting energy down fast. Metang from Temporal Forces appears in roughly two thirds of published Mega Excadrill ex lists. That is why a common is $4.

One detail argues against this being a lasting move. Cardmarket has the European base printing essentially flat, averaging 0.09 over the last 30 days against 0.10 over the last day. Only the reverse holo has followed, going from a 0.16 monthly average to 0.30 in a day. This is a demand spike inside the US Standard format, not the whole world repricing the card. Worlds runs August 28 to 30 in San Francisco, which keeps the buying alive for another three weeks. After that, the deck either stays good or it does not, and the price follows.

Flipper's angle: sell these raw, never grade them. PriceCharting today reads Ungraded $2.31, Grade 9 $13.29, Grade 9.5 $15.00, PSA 10 $37.96. A PSA 10 worth 16 times the raw price looks like easy money, and that shape is exactly what fools people. Do the actual math. A PSA 10 at $37.96, minus about $19 in grading and roughly 13% in selling fees, nets you somewhere near $14, and only if you gem. A Grade 9 at $13.29 does not even cover the grading fee. This is the same trap we mapped in the PSA 10 multiplier post and the reason some grades lose money outright. If you have a playset sitting in bulk, list them raw this week while the deck is winning. If you play the deck, buy your copies now rather than the week of Worlds.

What past calls already taught us

Nothing in our ledger of past predictions came due for scoring this week, so there is no verdict to hand out. The next two calls resolve on August 9. But two lessons we already paid for are doing real work in this post. The first: a wide gap between TCGplayer and PriceCharting is usually froth in the asking prices that closes downward, except on vintage cards, where it is a genuine condition split. Kyogre is the second case, and the tell is that PriceCharting's blended figure sits on top of TCGplayer's lowest listing rather than under it. The second: when a PSA 10 is worth many times the raw copy, that gap is the market saying gems are rare, not offering free upside. That is the entire reason the Metang grading math fails and the Kyogre grading math is a coin flip you are being underpaid to take.

What both moves tell you

Kyogre is a supply story and Metang is a demand story. Supply stories reward patience and demand stories reward speed. The scarce 2015 secret rare will still be scarce in November, so there is no reason to chase it into a run that has already happened. The $4 common is priced entirely on a deck being good in August, and deck prices fall back fast once the field adapts, which is the same lesson last week's Morpeko ex bounce taught from the other direction.

One concrete thing to do this week: pull your Temporal Forces bulk and check for 114/162. Most people sleeved a Metang into a binder page in 2024 and never looked again, and a common that went from 50 cents to $3.36 is exactly the kind of move that never shows up in a collection tracker until you go looking. Run whatever you find through Flipr against the raw price, not the PSA 10 price, because on this card only the raw price pays.