Pikachu has the deepest catalog in the hobby: 255 English printings against Charizard's 129, which means real signal when prices move. On raw trading volume Charizard still out-trades him, and our cute-versus-strong study puts the two at 29,613 recorded sales to 26,285. We pulled live market data on the Pikachu prints we track and picked six buys spanning $16 to $294. Every figure is a real market price or a recorded sale from August 17, 2026, and the two biggest stories in the data point in opposite directions: the modern flagship is on sale, and the oldest common print is running.
The six picks
The numbers behind each pick
| Card | Market | 30 days | 90 days | Recent sales | Median sale |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pikachu ex SIR (SSP) | $293.55 | -16.9% | -13.1% | 21 | $320 |
| WOTC Black Star Promo 1 | $178.32 | +2.0% | +31.1% | 8 | $206 |
| 151 Pikachu IR | $91.91 | -5.1% | +4.9% | 19 | $100 |
| Paldean Fates Shiny | $80.87 | -6.5% | -7.9% | 9 | $78 |
| Lost Origin TG05 | $48.46 | -15.6% | -23.7% | 21 | $67 |
| Base Set Pikachu | $15.86 | +90.2% | +126.9% | 12 | $22 |
Why these six
The Surging Sparks SIR is the most liquid Pikachu in the modern game: twenty-one public sales in our recent window, more than any other card on this list. It is down 16.9% in 30 days while its sales median still prints at $320, above the $294 market figure. When the tape holds above the ticker on that much volume, the dip is supply catching its breath, not demand leaving.
Black Star Promo 1 is the historic pick: literally the first promo card WOTC ever numbered, and up 31% on the quarter with eight sales behind it. The vintage Pikachu bid has been broad and persistent this summer, and this is its flagship.
The 151 Illustration Rare is the steady one. Nineteen recent sales with a median of $100 against a $92 market, mildly red on the month, mildly green on the quarter. It is the print most collectors of the modern era will eventually want, and it trades so often that entry and exit are never a problem.
Paldean Fates Shiny Pikachu is priced almost exactly at its tape: $81 market, $78 median across nine sales. Shiny-vault style prints have historically aged well once their set rotates out of the spotlight, and this one has already given back its hype premium.
And the sleeper: plain Base Set Pikachu, the card everyone owned and nobody graded. It has doubled in 90 days, up 90% in the last 30 alone, on twelve real sales with a $22 median. The vintage commons rally is the broadest trend in our index this summer, and this is its most famous face. At sixteen dollars, it is also the cheapest mistake on this page if we are wrong.
All figures are moonstone market data pulled August 17, 2026: TCGplayer market prices, price histories for the 30 and 90 day windows, and recorded public sales with medians computed from actual transactions. The Market column is an ASK; the Median sale column is what copies actually traded for. No figure is modeled or estimated. Where a market price and its sales tape diverge, we show both and say so. NOTE ADDED 2026-09-22 on an independent recompute: the per-card weekly series behind all six of these cards was truncated by a later refresh and now begins August 30, 2026, so none of the 30 and 90 day moves on this page can be re-derived from our current tape, and we no longer hold a price of any kind for the Black Star Promo 1. Treat every figure here as a dated August 17 reading rather than a live one. This is market research, not financial advice.