Phantasmal Flames, the Pokémon TCG set which released on November 14, 2025, is experiencing some of the fastest price drops we've seen in over a year. Every card that isn't a Charizard is losing value, and products like Collector Boosters are sinking fast.
Traditionally, it's quite normal for the newest Pokémon set to lose value in the first few weeks after release, as inflated preorder prices give way once the products can be bought off the shelves. But around the release of Surging Sparks in November 2024, the pattern changed somewhat. As we entered the latest boom period for the Pokémon card market, sets would start to see a much smaller dip, and explode upwards in price fairly rapidly not long after they came out..
The Mega Evolution era might be when that all changes, as Phantasmal Flames has dropped more quickly than we'd expect. To give you some idea how the bad the value is on this set I'll say Mega Evolution still has eight cards worth over $100. Phantasmal Flames has two. Now, there are more cards in Mega Evolution in general, but it's still significant that only two cards in this set that are managing to hold their value - both of which benefit from the Charizard factor.
Admittedly, those Charizard cards are worth a ton, but it's kind of mad that, when looking at the biggest chase cards in Phantasmal Flames we go from a second place card now worth around $500 to a third place card sitting at $50.
The trend can be seen in boxed products as well. For instance, in the days since Phantasmal Flames came out the booster box has fallen in price by $30: from $305 to $275. In that timespan, the previous set Mega Evolution hardly moved at all, in fact it took an entire month for Mega Evolution to drop as far as Phantasmal Flames did in just 10 days.
And older sets like Destined Rivals never went down as much as Phantasmal Flames already has. It only ever fell by $10 before starting its unhaltable increase in value.
This could be bad news for those interested in trying to make money out of rare Pokémon cards, but it may be great news for collectors, who may have an easier time grabbing the coolest artwork out of this set. But it's impossible right now to know if this is a trend or just a one-off anomaly.
In the next few weeks and months we'll see if the hype truly is cooling off with this set, or if the heat of these Phantasmal Flames is not missing, but just delayed.
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