Pokémon Set Returns: EX Deoxys Soars 124% as Vintage-Era Sets Lead the Market
The Pokémon card market continues to show a major divide between some of its strongest established sets and several newer releases.
Looking at three-month set returns through August 2026, EX Deoxys leads all 30 tracked sets with a massive +124% return, nearly tripling the performance of the No. 2 set on the list.
Behind it, several older Pokémon eras continue to post strong gains, while a number of Scarlet & Violet and Mega Evolution releases have moved in the opposite direction.
EX Deoxys Separates From the Market
No set came close to matching EX Deoxys over the past three months.
The 2005 EX-era release climbed 124%, putting it more than 80 percentage points ahead of second-place EX Unseen Forces at +43%.
Four EX-era releases appear inside the top 10, led by EX Deoxys, while highly collectible sets such as Call of Legends, Legendary Collection and Expedition Base Set also posted gains of nearly 30% or more.
Recent Scarlet & Violet Sets Have Cooled
The other side of the rankings looks very different.
Several major Scarlet & Violet releases posted negative three-month returns:
Paldean Fates: -1%
Prismatic Evolutions: -1%
Surging Sparks: -3%
Destined Rivals: -15%
The declines don't necessarily mean collector demand has disappeared. Instead, they illustrate how quickly prices can adjust when highly popular modern products meet larger available supplies and significant amounts of new inventory entering the market.
Scarlet & Violet—151 remains one of the most recognizable releases of the era, but its 17% decline over the period shows that popularity alone does not guarantee continuously rising prices.
Mega Evolution Releases See the Sharpest Pullback
The newest Mega Evolution releases occupy much of the bottom of the rankings.
Mega Evolution—Pitch Black fell 20% since July, followed by Phantasmal Flames at -21% and Ascended Heroes at -24%.
The steepest decline belonged to Chaos Rising, down 53%.
Recently released sets often experience significant price discovery as early demand, initial supply constraints and speculation give way to a larger amount of product entering circulation.
That makes the first few months after release especially volatile and can produce dramatically different returns from older sets where supply is already well established.
A Market Increasingly Divided by Set
One of the biggest takeaways from the August rankings is just how wide the performance gap has become.
The spread between the best and worst performer is 177 percentage points, from EX Deoxys at +124% to Chaos Rising at -53%.
Even within the same Pokémon market, collectors are experiencing dramatically different results depending on the sets and eras they hold.
Established sets with scarce high-end cards have been some of the strongest performers over the past three months, while several recent releases are undergoing the opposite process as prices normalize following launch.
For collectors, that makes understanding supply, card desirability, graded populations and where a release sits in its market cycle increasingly important when evaluating price.
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