Journey Together chase cards: the top 10, and which are worth grading

Journey Together came out on 28 March 2025 and brought back Trainer’s Pokémon, cards like N’s Zoroark ex and Lillie’s Clefairy ex that belong to a named character. Eighteen months on, the hype has settled and the prices tell you what collectors actually want. This guide ranks the chase cards by what they sell for now, puts PSA 9 and PSA 10 sales next to the raw price, and works out which ones are worth sending to a grader. Spoiler: fewer than you’d think.

What are the chase cards in Journey Together?

The chase cards are the six special illustration rares (182 to 187), led by Lillie’s Clefairy ex, plus a few illustration rares and the gold hyper rares. Here are the ten most expensive singles by TCGplayer market price, which is built from recent near mint sales.

Just outside the ten sits the Wailord illustration rare (162/159) at $9.76. Clefairy sells for nearly double the next card raw, though in a PSA 10 Salamence closes most of that gap. Raw prices on the cheaper cards are within a few dollars of each other, so the order from sixth place down can shuffle week to week.

What makes Journey Together’s special illustration rares the chase?

Three things: four of the six show a trainer with their Pokémon, they’re the hardest cards to pull, and those trainers are characters people already love. Trainer’s Pokémon first appeared in Gym Heroes in 2000 (ICv2), and Journey Together brought them back with more than 40 of them, according to pokemon.com.

• The art tells a story. Lillie kneeling in a meadow with Clefairy, N crouched beside Zoroark, Iono hugging Bellibolt. A special illustration rare is a full-card painting, and the trainer pairings give these ones a reason to exist beyond the Pokémon.
• They’re scarce. Card Codex estimates a special illustration rare in about 1 in 86 packs, and any one specific SIR in about 1 in 517. The Pokémon Company doesn’t publish pull rates, so treat those as community estimates.
• Character pull. Lillie, N, Iono and Hop each have big followings from the games. Salamence and Volcanion are plain Pokémon ex with no trainer, and Salamence still ranks second: a dragon in full flight, and a Pokémon with fans of its own.

Popularity shows up in the population counts too. PSA has graded more copies of Clefairy than of any other special illustration rare in the set, which is what happens when a card is the one everyone opens packs hoping for.

What’s on the Journey Together card list past 159?

Journey Together has 190 cards: 159 in the main set and 31 secret rares numbered 160 to 190. Every chase card lives in that secret range, so the number on the card tells you straight away whether you have one.

The full art Ultra Rare versions of the same Pokémon are not the chase: the 173/159 Clefairy ex sells for about $7. If you’re unsure which symbol you’re looking at, our guide to Pokémon card rarity symbols covers each one.

If you want one particular card, buy the single. At Card Codex’s 1 in 517 estimate and a TCGplayer market price of $5.79 a pack, you’d expect to open close to $3,000 of packs to pull a specific special illustration rare. The Clefairy itself is $80.

How much is a PSA 10 worth compared with raw?

A PSA 10 of a Journey Together chase card sells for roughly three to fourteen times the raw price, while a PSA 9 sells for about the same as raw. That gap is the whole story of whether grading pays.

Look at the PSA 9 column. For the top four cards it’s within $10 of raw, so a 9 doesn’t cover the cost of grading. That’s the usual modern pattern, and PSA 9 vs PSA 10 explains why buyers pay up only for the top grade. The Clefairy sales back it up: between 20 and 24 October, PSA 10s sold for $248 to $305 and PSA 9s for $80 to $110 on eBay and Fanatics Collect.

The two illustration rares are the surprise. Articuno and N’s Reshiram cost about $13 raw, yet a PSA 10 Articuno is worth more than a PSA 10 of every special illustration rare except Clefairy and Salamence.

How often do these cards get a PSA 10?

About a third of the time for the special illustration rares, according to PSA population counts shown on TCG Charts on 25 October 2026: 30% for Clefairy, 32% for Salamence, 34% for N’s Zoroark. The illustration rares come in a little lower, at 27% for Articuno and 26% for N’s Reshiram. The gold hyper rares are much harder, at 18% for the Zoroark and 17% for the Bellibolt. Those rates are for cards people chose to send in, which they’ve usually checked first, so a random copy from your binder does worse. Our PSA population report guide explains how to read those counts.

Which Journey Together cards are worth grading?

Only Lillie’s Clefairy ex, Salamence ex and the Articuno illustration rare can pay, and only for a copy with at least a 40 to 46% chance of a 10. The other seven lose money even when they come back a 10, because the fee eats the gap.

Here’s the cost side. PSA’s cheapest open tier is Standard at $59.99 a card, quoted at 90 to 100 business days, with the Value tiers still paused (psacard.com, last checked 21 October 2026; trackers still listed it on 25 October). We’ve added about $20 a card for postage and insurance both ways, assuming you send a few cards in one box; that’s our assumption, and your quote will differ. eBay takes 13.25% plus $0.40 on each sale. Full fee details are in what PSA grading costs.

Selling the same card raw keeps you about $69 after eBay’s cut. A PSA 9 at $90 keeps you about −$2 once you’ve paid to grade it. So you need a 10 roughly 40% of the time just to break even, which is above the 30% rate in PSA’s own counts. Grade a Clefairy only if it’s a clean, well-centered copy you’d bet on.

N’s Zoroark ex is the trap. It’s the third most valuable card raw and a PSA 10 still triples the price, but $115 minus fees and grading leaves less than selling it raw for $34. The gold hyper rares are the same story with worse odds. If you’d keep the slab rather than sell it, ignore the sum and grade what you love; is it worth grading Pokémon cards works through that choice.

Is CGC cheaper for Journey Together cards?

The fee is, the resale isn’t. CGC’s Bulk tier is $17 a card for cards worth up to $500, with a 25-card minimum and about 150 working days (cgccards.com, 25 October 2026). But CGC 10 Clefairys sold for $94 to $145 between 21 and 24 October, against about $295 for a PSA 10. After eBay’s cut and the $17 fee, that’s roughly $64 to $108 before postage, against $69 for selling raw. Worth it only to fill a bulk order you were sending anyway. The CGC grading cost guide has every tier.

Should I grade the Journey Together card I pulled?

Grade it if it’s one of the three cards above and you can’t find a single flaw that would cost it a 10. Spend five minutes looking before you spend $80.

1. 1Check centering, front and back. PSA’s 10 allows 55/45 on the front and 75/25 on the back. Our centering guide shows how to measure it.
2. 2Look at the back edges. The dark blue back shows white specks along the edges that the front hides. Even a few can turn a 10 into a 9.
3. 3Tilt the front under one bright light. These are textured foil cards. Look across the surface for scratches, print lines and dents, especially on the gold hyper rares.
4. 4Check all eight corners. Any whitening or softness on a corner rules out a 10.
5. 5Make sure it’s genuine. Fake special illustration rares are common, and PSA still charges for a card it won’t grade. See how to tell if a Pokémon card is fake.

So which Journey Together cards should you chase?

Chase Lillie’s Clefairy ex if you want the set’s best card, and buy it as a single rather than in packs. For grading, only Clefairy, Salamence and the Articuno illustration rare make sense, and only with a near-perfect copy. Everything else in the top ten is a card to enjoy raw or sell raw. For other recent sets, see our guide to Destined Rivals chase cards.