Quietly Rising: XY Evolutions Booster Boxes

The market for modern Pokémon cards has chopped sideways for months.

Sealed booster boxes from both the Sword & Shield and Scarlet & Violet eras have seen their prices trend flat or downwards while graded cards from those same eras have crashed significantly from all-time highs.

All this while vintage grails - and even mid-era cards with low enough pops - are breaking huge records every other day.

When PSA 10 Art Academy Mudkip cards are selling for $4.8 million while Evolving Skies booster boxes have fallen to $2,000, it's easy to declare "modern is dead."

But despite this, at least one modern set (well... a relatively modern set...) is having success in the market: XY Evolutions. This 2016 set has nearly doubled in price on TCG Player over the past year.

Just in case you're not familiar with it, XY Evolutions was released at the end of 2016 to celebrate Pokémon's 20th anniversary and contained a large number of reprints from the original Pokémon Base Set, including the coveted Charizard Holo.

It was extremely popular when it released but, due to a large number of reprint waves, prices for XY Evolutions crashed and the set became the poster child for being "printed to oblivion." It wasn't until the 2020 pandemic boom, 4 years after the set was released, that prices finally starting appreciating again as a flood of new collectors entered the market and saw value in the base set reprints it contained.

XY Evolutions booster boxes crashed after 2021, and moved very slowly upwards afterwards. By March of 2024, I became convinced that Evolving Skies would exceed the price of Evolutions and started posting regularly about their prices. It only took until Nov 8, 2024 or it to happen, and Evolving Skies continued to rocket up in price afterwards while Evolutions continued moving slowly.

But, over the past year, Evolving Skies has taken a turn, falling from it's all-time-high around $2,700 USD to a market price of just over $2,000 USD, while XY Evolutions has risen from about $1,700 to $3,000 USD.

And, I understand why XY Evolutions has risen in popularity again...

Vintage is booming.

As a reprint of Base Set, XY Evolutions carries enormous nostalgic value to collectors who covet those original cards. For those looking for a nostalgic thrill, it is a far more affordable option for ripping what feels like a Base Set pack than, well, ripping base set.

In a market where 1st Edition Charizard cards are selling for more than $1 million, we should expect collectors to chase after the experience of pulling that base set Zard, even if it's just the XY Evolutions reprint.

This contrasts with Evolving Skies, which has become one of the token standout modern sets. And it's primary chase card, the Moonbreon, the standout modern chase card.

Evolving Skies is a set that has graduated from being a popular set, and into a truly iconic set from the modern era. When modern Pokémon is booming, Evolving Skies is likely to be discussed, driving attention - and demand - to it all over again.

But, today, modern is dead, and vintage is booming. It's XY Evolution's time to shine.

The thing is, that doesn't mean it's a good time to be buying XY Evolutions. Whenever a set is rising it can feel like the time to FOMO in before it's really too late. But we should always remember that buying into the hype is risky, and the time to be buying XY Evolutions was before 2020, or in the bear market of 2022 and 2023, when prices were falling and no one cared about the set.

Instead of rushing into a rising set like Evolutions, I'd instead look for those falling and overlooked sets that are being ignored by the market. Their time will come again too, one day.

As usual,

Thanks so much for reading the TCG Buyers Club newsletter. My name's Grey, I buy cardboard, and I'm on a mission to make collecting and investing in Pokémon simple.

Cheers 🍻

P.S. This is my 104th weekly newsletter: That’s 2 years of TCG Buyers Club! I find it kind of crazy that I’ve made writing about Pokémon and collectibles a weekly tradition for 2 whole years, and it means a lot that anyone takes the time to read it. Thank you 🙇‍♂