Stellar Crown felt like a return to form for the Pokémon TCG, after a fair few sets that have had disappointing pull rates—albeit this time by being an incredibly small set, with many fewer cards to collect. Now, on the verge of the next set Surging Sparks’ release, it’s a good moment to look at which Stellar Crown cards are getting the most love.
Things started going odd for the Pokémon TCG in January 2024, with Paldean Fates. This special set contained a ridiculous 88 baby shinies, and while pull-rates felt amazing, the sheer volume of cards made it utterly impossible to collect. This was followed by Temporal Forces and Twilight Masquerade, two sets with almost identical card numbers and pull rates, both with a galling one-in-five chance of receiving a secret rare or better. (Even bland ex cards were only appearing in one out of every six packs!) While this appears to be the new norm Pokémon TCG in the Scarlet & Violet era (and looks set to continue with November’s Surging Sparks), it’s still hard not to hark back to the joy of sets like Crown Zenith, and wish for better.
So it was even more galling when August’s “special” set, Shrouded Fable, then bemused everyone by featuring the lowest number of cards since the desultory Pokémon Go set in 2022, and making the good ones nightmarishly hard to find. Boy, did everyone get a lot of the same bulk.
So then came September’s Stellar Crown, and while the pull rates still sat at a sulk-inducing 20 percent, it sat at a sweet spot for size. A Goldilocks set, if you will. With a total of 175 cards, rather than the 220+ that had become the norm (and be warned, Surging Sparks has a deranged 252, with an eye-watering 191 of them before the secret rares start), it feels manageable, collectible, and most importantly, is packed with completely gorgeous cards.
Here are the cards fetching the highest prices, whether for the meta, or just because they’re so very pretty. (All prices are correct at the time of writing, but obviously are subject to rapid change.)