30th Celebration, five weeks in: three Mew hold 95% of the set, PSA has graded 711 copies, and the art behind it
The follow-up to the nine-days-in note. Independent opening counts agree with TCGplayer's odds on the main tiers and still cannot pin down the RGB Mew; PSA's count went from 125 in BetterPop's 8 October build to 711, 261 of them RGB Mew, which come back PSA 10 far less often than the rest; a pack's contents are worth 57% of its $10.83 price. Plus what The Pokémon Company chose for the art, and the stories of the first five weeks.
Nine days after the 30th Celebration's worldwide release on 16 September, this site set TCGplayer's pull rates beside the catalog's first prices and found a pack's contents worth 60% of its price. This is the follow-up on the same theme, five weeks in: what newer opening counts say about the odds, what a pack holds now, what the first graded copies show, what The Pokémon Company chose for the art, and the stories the set produced along the way. Prices are this catalog's latest reads, 16 October for the whole set; population counts are BetterPop's data as of 15 October. It describes the set; it does not say whether to open, grade or sell.
The pull rates, five weeks on
TCGplayer's study of more than 3,000 packs, published 24 September, is still the largest published sample with intervals, and the article has not been revised since that day. Two independent counts are published as well, and both agree with it on the main tiers.
- TCGtalk, 652 packs from narrated openings ("hits only" videos rejected, because they cannot show the empty packs): a Double Rare about 1 in 4.6 packs, an Illustration Rare 1 in 5 to 6, a Classic Collection reprint about 1 in 10, a Special Illustration Rare about 1 in 18 (36 pulls), a Futuristic Rare about 1 in 82 (8 pulls). 43.1% of packs held nothing beyond the Pikachu every pack carries.
- DigitalTQ, 420 packs: Special Illustration Rares 22 (5.24%), Illustration Rares 84 (20%), Futuristic Rares 4 (0.95%).
- TCGplayer's own figures, for comparison: Double Rare and Illustration Rare 1 in 5, Classic Collection 1 in 10, Special Illustration Rare 1 in 21, Futuristic Rare 1 in 120. The Futuristic Rare is the one tier where they differ, and the two independent figures rest on eight and four pulls; the box EV screen already badges that tier thin.
The RGB Mew still have no rate. TCGplayer opened none in 3,000 packs. Bill's Archive, which set the published counts side by side on 23 September, puts it plainly: "They are too rare for any count to pin down," and "The one-in-20,000 figure that circulated in the first week has no published source." This site therefore seeds no rate for them, and the box EV screen leaves them out. The population gives a floor instead of a rate: PSA had graded 261 English RGB Mew by 15 October, and the three are three of the four most graded cards in the set. That says how many have been pulled and sent in, not how often a pack holds one.
What a pack holds now
The box EV screen, generated 21 October on the same pull rates and the latest reads: $3.64 per pack from the set's own tiers and $2.54 from the Classic Collection tier, $6.18 together, against a loose pack at $10.83 on 16 October: 57%. In the month-on note of 13 October it was 49% ($6.57 against $13.37). The ratio rose because the pack fell further than its contents, −19% against −6%. The RGB Mew are not in either figure, for the reason above.
The prices, same 158 cards
TCGplayer market via PokemonPriceTracker, near mint, the same 158 cards as the two earlier notes (the three RGB Mew had no first read and are left out).
- One of every card: $1,267.51 on 25 September, $731.96 in the month-on note, $666.39 on 16 October. −47% from the first read, −9% in the last fortnight.
- Special Illustration Rares (10): $443.25, −45% from the first read. Mew ex 152 $86.17, Gengar ex 154 $73.82, Pikachu ex 150 $55.62, Mewtwo ex 151 $47.30, Pikachu ex 149 $46.00, Jirachi ex 155 $43.34, Sylveon ex 153 $40.22, Greninja ex 148 $20.89, Fuecoco ex 147 $15.08, Salamence ex 156 $14.81.
- Futuristic Rares (2): $91.99, −47%. Mew ex 158 $51.48 (it read $102.16 on 25 September), Mewtwo ex 157 $40.51.
- Illustration Rares (18): $76.81, −56%; from Maushold 146 at $11.11 down to Kommo-o 143 at $1.16.
- Pikachu Rares (30): $24.27, −63%. Double Rares (12): $12.04, −60%. Rares (18): $4.09. Commons (68): $13.94.
- The Classic Collection held still this fortnight: the 28 reprints read in both earlier notes went from $747.26 to $748.17, still −31% from $1,089.53 on 25 September. Metagross 11 ($41.17) and Genesect-EX 11 ($25.19) now have reads too, so all 30 come to $814.53. Lugia 149 $174.71, Charizard 4 $133.45, Magikarp 203 $86.57, Gengar 94 $57.68.
The RGB Mew now carry TCGplayer market prices: R $6,000.27, B $3,746.75, G $3,738.75 on 16 October. R has read the same $6,000.27 on every read since 4 October. With them in, the three Mew are 95% of the set's $14,152 summed market value, and the chase concentration screen ranks the 30th Celebration first of 53 sets. Every other card in the set together is worth about a sixth of one G Mew.
The first slabs
BetterPop counts 669 PSA grades across 38 cards of the main set (data as of 15 October) and 42 across 10 cards of the Classic Collection (as of 1 October), 711 in all. Its build of 8 October held 125 for the two together. The main set's PSA 10 share is 68.9% (461 of 669).
- Most graded: R Mew 107 (61 PSA 10), B Mew 84 (41), Mew ex 158 72 (64), G Mew 70 (29), Mewtwo ex 157 53 (41), Mew ex 152 51 (46), Gengar ex 154 45 (40), Mewtwo ex 151 41 (31). In the Classic Collection, Lugia 149 has 13 (11 PSA 10) and Gengar 94 has 8 (7).
- The RGB Mew come back PSA 10 far less often: R 57%, B 49%, G 41% (BetterPop names G the hardest card in the set to gem). The two Futuristic Rares are at 77% and 89%, and the Special Illustration Rares with ten or more graded at 70% to 94%.
- These are shares of what collectors chose to send in first, which is not a random sample of the print run, so they are not a gem rate. Nothing published so far explains why the RGB Mew grade lower.
What the first PSA 10s sold for, from the eBay sold-by-grade buckets this site reads through PokemonPriceTracker (the grading ratio screen carries them): Lugia 149 $3,150 on 5 sales (13 October), 18 times its raw price; Charizard 4 $1,913 on 5 sales (13 October), 14 times; Mew ex 158 $1,538 on 3 sales (8 October), 30 times. Mew ex 152 ($2,500), Pikachu ex 150 ($1,309), Gengar ex 154 ($1,151) and Mewtwo ex 157 ($870) rest on one or two sales each. On 19 October the median PSA 10 across the catalog's modern eras sold for four to six times raw. These first comps were set while PSA's count for the whole set was still in the hundreds.
The RGB Mew have no PSA bucket in this site's data yet. The sales that outlets have reported, all raw unless stated:
- ICv2, 17 September: "the Red Mew has sold for between $6,000 and $7,000, the Green Mew sold for about $8000, and the Blue Mew sold for around $5,000", and eBay had logged a $20,000 blue sale on 14 September, before release. Dexerto noted that listing "also accepted Best Offers", so the price actually paid is not public.
- TCGplayer, 2 October: "$3,500 to $4,000. That's the price range for the sold listings of an RBG Mew." On 7 October its weekly report had the listings for the red variant "all in the $5,000 range", and the blue and green "selling in the $3,500 range".
- PokéSats, 6 October, reported one R Mew graded TAG 10 sold for US$17,500 on 1 October.
The art, and what The Pokémon Company chose
The choices The Pokémon Company has explained, in its own words:
- One release date for the world. The June announcement called it "the first-ever Pokémon TCG expansion to debut with a simultaneously coordinated global launch in participating markets", and pokemon.com gave the reason: "allowing fans across the world to enjoy collecting new cards at the same time."
- Foil throughout. In pokemon.com's words, "every card is foil, including Basic Energy."
- Thirty Pikachu. Every pack holds "one of 30 unique foil cards featuring Pikachu, each illustrated by a different artist"; the expansion page invites collectors to "indulge in 30 different art styles". pokemontcg.io's credits list 30 different names, Ken Sugimori on the first; the first three shown, in June, were by OKACHEKE, Yuu Nishida and Atsuko Nishida.
- A new rarity. The Futuristic rare, "illustrated by the renowned Japanese artist YOSHIROTTEN", each card depicting "Pokémon in striking artwork evocative of hope toward an unknown future". YOSHIROTTEN also designed the Basic Energy in every pack, and the day and night Pikachu ex promos in the Ultra-Premium Collections of 6 November. Pokémon published a video interview with him and Creatures Inc. art director Satoru Nagaya on 18 August about the influences behind the work. TCGplayer's collector's guide says he "developed the look for the rarity inspired by themes from his 2018 FUTURE NATURE exhibition".
- Day and night. New cards "depict an array of Pokémon during different moments throughout daytime and nighttime"; the two Pikachu ex Special Illustration Rares, both by kantaro, are the day and the night versions.
- The reprints. Thirty classic cards, "complete with gold borders and a unique texture to give them new life" (pokemon.com, 14 October). How the thirty were picked is not stated in any official page read for this note.
The ten Special Illustration Rares are by nine artists: Mew ex 152 by Kuroimori, Gengar ex 154 by CHORISO, Mewtwo ex 151 by Yano Keiji, Jirachi ex 155 by Akira Egawa, Sylveon ex 153 by You Iribi, Greninja ex 148 by GIDORA, Fuecoco ex 147 by Atsushi Furusawa and Salamence ex 156 by Ryota Murayama, besides kantaro's two Pikachu ex. Peter Day, a TCGplayer editor, on two of them: "I didn't know we needed an art deco take on Mewtwo, but thankfully, Yano Keiji knew better," and of Gengar, "Fun fact, this is CHORISO's first full-art Pokémon card!" On the Futuristic Rares he was frank: "Personally, these don't look very 'futuristic' to me. But I appreciate them more with the context of YOSHIROTTEN's 2018 FUTURE NATURE exhibition, which used the extremes of the visible spectrum to explore the theme of 'seeing the invisible.'"
Two quieter choices that TCGplayer pointed out on 15 September: the three Kanto legendary birds "each have an Illustration Rare in 30th Celebration, which combine to form a colorful cloudscape illustration by mashu", and the set's 18 Rares are "the 18 Legendary mascot Pokémon from the nine generations of Pokémon games", with "Mew and Mewtwo subbed in for Gen I."
The RGB Mew are the choice nobody has explained. They are not on Pokémon's official card list for the set, they were not in the Elite Trainer Box checklist, and no public statement about them from The Pokémon Company could be found for this note. All three are credited to YOSHIROTTEN, and the card's own flavour text says the most: "So rare that it is still said to be a mirage by many experts. Only a few people have seen it worldwide." PokéBeach, as Dexerto reported, reads the trio as a reference to the original Pokémon Red, Green and Blue games. YOSHIROTTEN's own site has a page for an exhibition titled "PHENOMENON: RGB", which Dexerto pointed to in July; whether the cards refer to it is not stated anywhere.
On what the design choices add up to, two readings. Kenji Okubo, president of The Pokémon Company International, in a press release of 4 February about the anniversary year as a whole rather than this set: "As we look to the next 30 years and beyond, we invite Trainers to join in celebrating this landmark milestone." And Corbin Hosler, writing for TCGplayer on 24 September: "The Pokémon Company valued stocking these packs with hits, more than they valued stocking them with a bunch of crazy valuable chase cards," adding, "We can expect a ton of this set to be printed, and most of it to be opened."
Stories from the first five weeks
The first Mew, in July. The first B Mew surfaced on 25 July, nearly two months before release, in a Whatnot live break by the Australian seller PokeAus Hits. Dexerto quoted the streamer's reaction: "Oh my God. What is that?" Two more blue copies appeared in separate openings on 28 August, and on 12 September PokéBeach documented collectors pulling all three colours ahead of release, French and Japanese copies among them (as Dexerto reported).
Release day. Nearly 200 people came to the Comic Book Shop's Spokane Valley store in Washington on 16 September. "It was probably the biggest Pokémon release day I've seen," Vinny Paganelli, one of its managers, told the Spokesman-Review, and he hoped for "oodles and oodles of product, because the amount of people I've had to tell 'No, we don't have any 30th, I'm really sorry,' is insane." Charles Xavier, manager of Pixels and Packs in Spokane Valley: "There's a healthy fear of scalping," and "There is potential to, 'flood the market,' but the company is trying to get everybody to affordably get their goodies to collect." Corbin Hosler, at a release party where "nearly 100 people gathered for a lottery ticket system to purchase at MSRP", called it "probably the biggest set release Pokémon has ever seen". Not every queue went well: Kotaku gathered clips from the Instagram channel Pokestreetz, including one from a Target in Gilroy, California, where after a dispute over line-jumping "it's alleged that a knife was pulled".
Retail decisions. Pokémon Center UK told customers on release day that Elite Trainer Box orders would ship "mid to late November", with a 10% code for a future order. In Japan, The Pokémon Company and LINE Yahoo! introduced new rules on Yahoo! Auctions and Yahoo! Flea Market from 13 October: no listings of cards by the carton, no empty boxes or packs, and no bulk listings of the same item for a period after each new release, applied first to the 30th Celebration (Automaton).
Errors and fakes. Factory errors became a chase of their own. Dexerto described "a wave of factory errors, including the so-called Blood Mew", and called a foil splice error "the most likely explanation" for it; and a Japanese roundup it cited found nine Mercari sales of a Mew ex printed with Mewtwo ghosting, median about ¥56,000 against about ¥14,000 for a normal copy. On 17 September SODA, which runs the authenticated marketplace SNKRDUNK, reported counterfeit Mew ex and Mewtwo ex Futuristic Rares, told apart by colour tone, surface relief and a standard Energy design, and "re-shrinked" boxes, and said its Pokémon card transactions for January to August 2026 were about ten times those of the same months of 2024 (ASCII.jp).
Avery's Jirachi. Avery, a 12-year-old Pokémon influencer known as Avery the Poké Kid, with 313,000 followers, pulled the Jirachi ex Special Illustration Rare in his last pack opening before he died of pancreatic cancer in September. Its illustrator, Akira Egawa, wrote: "I'm so deeply moved. I'm so glad I kept drawing," and "'I want my art to bring happiness to people.' That's one of the reasons I draw. I'm so glad I put that wish into this piece" (as quoted by IGN). When copies were then listed in his name, his family asked sellers to stop: "We are not involved in or benefiting from any cards being sold in Avery's name or likeness. … This does not honor Avery's generous heart."
What comes next
The 30th Celebration Battle Decks, Espeon ex and Umbreon ex, are due on 30 October, and the Ultra-Premium Collections, Day and Night, on 6 November; each of those carries a Classic Collection booster pack and a YOSHIROTTEN Pikachu ex promo. The next monthly population read is due in mid-November. The RGB Mew still have no published rate, and this site will not print one until a sample large enough to bound it is published.
Sources: this site's catalog reads of 25 September and 4 to 16 October 2026 (PokemonPriceTracker, TCGplayer market and eBay sold-by-grade); the box EV, concentration and grading ratio screens, generated 21 October 2026; BetterPop, "30C EN-30th Celebration PSA Population Report" (data as of 15 October 2026) and its 8 October build; TCGplayer: "Pokémon TCG: 30th Celebration Pull Rates" (Peter Day, 24 September), "Collector's Guide to Pokémon TCG: 30th Celebration" (11 September), "The 10 Cards Everybody Wants from 30th Celebration" (Peter Day, 15 September), "The 10 Most Expensive Pokémon Chase Cards in 30th Celebration" (Peter Day, 17 September), and Corbin Hosler's reports of 18 and 24 September and 2 and 7 October; TCGtalk, "Pokémon 30th Anniversary Pull Rates" (652 packs); DigitalTQ, 30th Celebration pull rates (420 packs); Bill's Archive, "30th Celebration Pull Rates: The Odds for Every Rarity" (23 September); The Pokémon Company International press release of 1 June 2026, pokemon.com (1 June, 17 and 18 August, and 14 October), the 30th Celebration expansion page and product gallery, and the official card list; press.pokemon.com, 4 February 2026 (Kenji Okubo); pokemontcg.io set me55 (illustrator credits); the B/RGB Mew card (flavour text); yoshirotten.com; ICv2 (Jeffrey Dohm-Sanchez, 17 September); Dexerto (26 July; 15, 16 and 20 September 2026); PokéSats (Riley Park, 6 October); The Spokesman-Review (Nick Gibson, 4 October); Kotaku (John Walker, 22 September); Automaton (13 October); ASCII.jp (18 September); IGN via Yahoo (Virginia Glaze, 23 and 25 September). Reddit and X were not read. Nothing here says whether to open, grade, hold or sell.