Phantasmal Flames chase cards, ranked by price, and which ones are worth grading

Phantasmal Flames is a two-card set. The two Mega Charizard X ex secret rares are worth more than every other card in it put together, and after them the prices fall off a cliff. That matters if you’ve just pulled something: the question isn’t only what it’s worth, it’s whether it’s one of the very few cards here where grading pays. This guide ranks the set by today’s prices, explains the gold card, and runs the grading sums.

What are the chase cards in Phantasmal Flames?

Three Mega Charizard X ex cards, then a long tail of Special Illustration Rares and Illustration Rares between about $5 and $18. Here are the ten most valuable cards by TCGplayer market price.

Two things stand out. First, the Meowth Illustration Rare, a Kanto nostalgia piece with Meowth asleep in a tree above Cerulean City, outsells two of the five Special Illustration Rares. Art beats rarity here, as it often does. Second, Mega Gengar ex is on the booster box art but has no full art, Special Illustration Rare or gold version in this set; its only printing is the Double Rare 056/094, at about $2.

Prices have fallen a long way since launch. In the first days after release Kotaku put the two top Charizards at $600 and $800 without saying which was which, Dawn’s Special Illustration Rare at about $60 and the full art Charizard at about $57 (18 November 2025). Today the two Charizards are about $600 and $195, Dawn about $18 and the full art about $21. For Charizards across every era, see Charizard card values.

How many cards are in Phantasmal Flames?

130: a 94-card main set plus 36 secret rares numbered 095 to 130. It’s the second main expansion of the Mega Evolution series, released worldwide on 14 November 2025, and it carries the set code PFL.

Phantasmal Flames card list: the 36 secret rares

Every card that matters for value sits above 094. Here’s how the secret rares break down, with the most valuable card in each group.

The 17 Ultra Rares are eight full art Mega Evolution and regular Pokémon ex, eight full art Trainers (Dawn, Firebreather and Grimsley’s Move among them) and Ignition Energy. The five Special Illustration Rares are Mega Charizard X ex, Rotom ex, Mega Sharpedo ex, Mega Lopunny ex and Dawn.

What is a Mega Hyper Rare?

It’s the top rarity in the Mega Evolution sets: an all-gold, etched version of one Mega Evolution Pokémon ex, marked with a gold star with a black border by the card number. Phantasmal Flames has exactly one, the gold Mega Charizard X ex at 130/094.

It plays the part the three-gold-star Hyper Rare played in Scarlet & Violet sets, and like those cards it uses the regular full art’s illustration (takuyoa’s, the same as 109/094) washed in gold rather than new art. That’s a big part of why the Special Illustration Rare, with its own painting, sells for three times as much raw even though the gold card is far harder to pull. Our guide to Pokémon card rarity symbols has every symbol, from the black circle to this one.

How rare is the Mega Charizard X ex?

The Pokémon Company doesn’t publish pull rates, so every figure is a community estimate. CardCodex, counting thousands of packs, put Special Illustration Rares at about 1 in 80 packs and the Mega Hyper Rare at about 1 in 1,260 (18 November 2025).

• Mega Hyper Rare Charizard (130): about 1 in 1,260 packs, the only card at that rarity, so roughly one in 35 booster boxes of 36 packs.
• Special Illustration Rare Charizard (125): if the five SIRs fall evenly, about 1 in 400 packs. That’s our arithmetic from the 1 in 80 estimate, not a counted figure.
• Illustration Rares: about 1 in 9 packs. Ultra Rares: about 1 in 12.

So the gold card is about three times harder to pull than the SIR, yet it sells for a third of the price raw. Rarity and price are different things; demand for the artwork sets the price.

Which Phantasmal Flames cards are worth grading?

Only the two Charizard secret rares, and only clean copies. For every other card in the set, even a PSA 10 sells for less than the cost of getting it graded at PSA and selling it.

The costs: PSA’s cheapest open tier is Standard at $59.99 a card for cards worth up to $1,000 after grading (90 to 100 business days), and Priority is $79.99 up to $1,500. Its Value tiers are paused. We assume about $40 of shipping both ways. eBay takes 13.25% plus $0.40 on a trading card sale over $10, and that applies whether you sell raw or graded. The full fee list is in what PSA grading costs.

The Special Illustration Rare Charizard (125/094)

PSA 10s sold eleven times on eBay on 22 and 23 October 2026, for $1,275 to $1,475. A PSA 9 sold for $602.76 on 23 October, which is the raw price. That makes it a bet on the 10: at $1,300 it’s over Standard’s $1,000 limit, so it goes in Priority and grading costs about $120 all in.

Break-even is about a 1 in 5 chance of a 10 if every miss is a 9. The population is encouraging: of 65,091 copies PSA has graded, 34,296 got a 10, or 59.7%. But that’s copies people chose to send, usually their best, so don’t read it as your odds. A CGC 10 is the cheaper route on fees (CGC Economy is $20 for cards up to $1,000) but sold for $688 and $975 on 22 October, well under a PSA 10. The PSA 9 vs PSA 10 guide explains why the gap is so wide on modern cards.

The gold Charizard (130/094): a long shot that can still pay

This is the opposite card. Only 2,029 of 22,845 PSA-graded copies are 10s, about one in ten, against 11,360 nines. The population doesn’t say why, so look extra hard at the gold surface and the edges before you send one. A PSA 10 sold for $1,900 on Fanatics Collect and $2,066 and $2,500 on eBay on 20 October 2026; PSA 9s sold for $233 to $325 between 20 and 23 October.

With a 10 that unlikely, a 9 is the realistic value to declare, so it goes in Standard at about $100 with shipping. If it comes back a 10 worth $2,000, PSA moves it to Express and bills the $139.01 difference, which is a problem you’d be happy to have.

On average that’s about $239 graded against $169 raw, so grading edges ahead. But nine times in ten you end up with less than the raw sale. Break-even is roughly a 3% chance of a 10 if every miss is a 9, or 8% if misses are 8s. If you can’t afford to end up $35 to $115 short of the raw sale, sell it raw. The is it worth grading guide walks through this formula for any card.

Everything else in the set

Below the two Charizards, a PSA 10 doesn’t cover PSA’s fee, shipping and the selling fee. Here’s what a 10 would leave you with after about $100 of grading and shipping and eBay’s cut.

Even a perfect grade loses money on these at PSA. CGC’s Bulk tier, $17 a card with a 25-card minimum, changes the sum, but only if a CGC 10 of that card sells well above raw; check its sold listings first. Grading a Dawn or Meowth for your own binder is fine. Just count the fee as the price of the slab, not an investment.

Should I grade my Phantasmal Flames pull?

Only after five minutes under a bright light. On both Charizards the money is in the 10, so you’re looking for the one flaw that rules it out.

1. 1Measure the centering. PSA’s 10 allows about 55/45 on the front and 75/25 on the back. On the SIR, compare the grey frame left to right and top to bottom; on the gold card, the gold border. Our centering guide shows how to measure it.
2. 2Check the back edges and corners. Whitening shows on the dark blue back long before you see it on the front. One speck on a corner can make it a 9.
3. 3Tilt it under one lamp. Look across the surface for print lines, scratches and dents. Etched and textured cards hide marks until the light catches them, so turn it slowly in more than one direction.
4. 4Make sure it’s real. Both Charizards are among the most copied modern cards. PSA charges the fee on a fake and returns it without a grade. Check it against how to tell if a Pokémon card is fake.
5. 5Run the sum with today’s prices. Raw, PSA 9 and PSA 10 sold prices move week to week. Recheck them the day you submit, not the day you pulled the card.

Is Phantasmal Flames worth collecting for the chase cards?

For the art, yes: the SIR Charizard, Meowth and Dawn are some of the best-looking cards of the Mega Evolution era. For value, the set lives and dies on two Charizards. If you pull either one, keep it sleeved and check it before you decide anything; if you pull anything else, enjoy it or sell it raw. Buying the single you want is almost always cheaper than chasing it in packs.