The pull rates aren't great, and with 295 cards to collect, Pokémon Ascended Heroes is already proving to be a menace of a set to finish. Even if you manage to find retail-priced products (and if you have, I salute you) getting a full collection just by ripping packs seems close to impossible. Keen collectors may even be tempted to buy all 295 as singles, sidestepping the gamble on turning up those god packs. If that's you, I regret to inform you that, at time of writing, you'll have to pay almost $10,000 for a master set. No, I didn't accidentally add an extra zero.
Of course, Ascended Heroes is the newest Pokémon set on the block, so there's likely a lot of unstable values right now, made even more chaotic by the very strange release schedule for the latest expansion. However, even taking into account the especially bouncy pricing of cards around set launches, the Pokémon TCG prices are just in a rough old place overall. Spare a glance at Destined Rivals booster boxes going for upwards of $500, and you'll realize this seeming endless hype bubble is making almost every card ever ridiculously expensive.
When the Mega Gengar ex SIR sold for $1000 last week, right as Ascended Heroes first hit store shelves, I knew this was going to be a cardboard-laced money pit, but I didn't realise just how expensive it'd turn out to be. Based on my own analysis (and using the brilliant market-valuing Collectr app), getting every card in the set - that's every common, every reverse holo, and all of those Ascended Heroes chases - would set you back $9,708.58. Give or take.
It's worth noting that Collectr takes recent sales on eBay into account, but cards sell so fast that there is a slight margin of error. That being said, it's a very strong indication of how much you'd have to shell out to get a master set, and that's not even including any promo cards that will join the expansion in the coming weeks. That's unlikely to shift the figure much, though, because reverse holos and common cards don't make up the bulk of the cost - it's mainly the Illustration Rares and above that command the Big Bucks.
To put that into perspective, the Collectr app suggests that a master set of Phantasmal Flames will set you back $1,287, Mega Evolution is $1,561.09, and Prismatic Evolutions will cost you around $4,029.87. So, for the price of getting all of Ascended Heroes' Pokémon cards, you could buy master sets of all three of those expansions, and still have three grand left in your pocket.
If anything, that's a good sign that it'll probably come down in price in the future, but the strange schedule of launches may mean this unstable period of value will last some time.
Gods, $9,708. That's a lot of money, and it's times like this where I wish I had the money my character in Pokémon Legends Z-A has. Getting a couple of grand just by whooping someone's butt in a good ol' fashioned Pokémon battle means I could buy it within a few hours. Then again, that's also an economy where a Poké Ball costs a bomb, so I imagine in Lumiose, cards would be even pricier.
If you're hoping to score some Pokémon cards at retail price, you should join our Wargamer Discord. While they don't come up often, there are some listings for normal-priced products, and we'll ping you and other trainers when any pop up. We'll also share some below-market-priced packs if you're willing to shell out a little extra to collect some cards.