The Pokémon Trading Card Game market just went through what can only be described as a collector’s and investors nightmare. Between late October and early November 2025, prices didn’t just drop—they cratered. Some cards lost nearly half their value in a single week, leaving investors scrambling and speculators licking their wounds.
The Numbers Tell a Brutal Story
Picture this: you’re holding a card worth $90 on Monday. By the following Monday, it’s worth $50. That’s not a hypothetical scenario—it actually happened to the Illustration Rare Marshadow from the Mega Evolution set, which plummeted 44.4% in a matter of days.
But Marshadow wasn’t alone in its freefall. Analysis of the week’s biggest losers reveals a top 10 dominated by cards that shed between 17% and nearly 49% of their value. Leading the carnage was an unnamed Illustration Rare that crashed 48.8%, dropping from $64 to just $32.75. A Full Art Trainer card lost 40.5% of its value, falling from nearly $32 to $19. Even the popular Mew ex from the 151 set couldn’t escape unscathed, declining 19.9% as selling pressure mounted.
The broader market painted an equally grim picture. The Holofoil Index Aggregate, which tracks a basket of holofoil assets, dropped from $542.76 to $443.17 between October 22 and November 2—an 18.35% nosedive that sent shockwaves through the collecting community.
Death by a Thousand Cuts
What’s particularly striking is how the selling accelerated as panic set in. During the October 28-30 period, the index fell 7.04%—painful, but manageable. Then came the final three days of October through November 2, when the bottom truly fell out. The index plunged another 11.84% as fear replaced rational thinking and collectors rushed for the exits.
This acceleration tells the real story. Once the market breached that psychological 10% loss threshold, traders started dumping positions indiscriminately, worried that holding on meant watching their collections evaporate further. It’s this panic phase that created the extreme percentage drops we saw in individual cards.
What Went Wrong?
To understand the crash, you need to understand what came before it. Throughout 2024 and into 2025, the Pokémon TCG market was running hot—maybe too hot. Coordinated buyouts, FOMO-driven purchasing, and speculative bubbles inflated prices to unsustainable levels. When reality finally caught up, the correction was swift and merciless.
Take the Cosmic Eclipse Marshadow as a cautionary tale. Speculators drove its price up by a staggering 3,900% as they tried to ride the coattails of the Mega Evolution Marshadow’s popularity. When that primary card corrected by 44.4%, the older version didn’t just fall—it collapsed entirely, demonstrating how interconnected speculation had become across different sets.
The Illustration Rare Bloodbath
Looking at the top 10 losers, a pattern emerges: Illustration Rares got absolutely demolished. These cards, which command premiums based largely on aesthetic appeal and perceived early scarcity, proved exceptionally vulnerable when market sentiment shifted. Besides the two Marshadows that lost 48.8% and 44.4% respectively, multiple other Illustration Rares and special rarity cards dominated the casualty list.
An Alternate Art Ex card that had been trading at $110 fell to $74, losing 32.8% of its value. Secret Rares and Full Art trainers weren’t spared either, with drops ranging from 22% to 40%. The message was clear: if your card’s value was built primarily on hype and aesthetics rather than competitive playability or historical scarcity, you were in trouble.
The Pull Rate Reality Check
Here’s where things get interesting. Initial prices for new cards often rely on guesswork about how rare they actually are. But once collectors and analysts crunch the real numbers, prices can adjust dramatically—and painfully.
The Hyper Rare cards from Scarlet & Violet—151 provide a perfect example. Early buyers assumed these cards were incredibly scarce and paid premium prices. Then the data came in: roughly one in every 51 packs contained a Hyper Rare. For a set with three different Hyper Rares (Mew ex, Basic Psychic Energy, and Switch), that 2% pull rate meant these cards were far more common than initially believed.
The market’s response was brutal. Hyper Rare Basic Psychic Energy, which had climbed to $3.79, crashed 35.1% to just $2.46. Hyper Rare Switch fell 28%, dropping from $2.09 to $1.50. Even Mew ex, despite its popularity, couldn’t escape the selling pressure, declining from $16.68 to $13.36.
The Survivors
Not every card got hammered. The established, premium cards—think high-grade Eeveelutions like Leafeon ex maintaining its $270.41 price and Espeon ex holding at $261.83—demonstrated remarkable resilience. These cards have deep collector demand built over years, providing a cushion against market turbulence.
The pattern is clear: stable assets with proven scarcity maintain value, while speculative plays built on hype alone get crushed when sentiment shifts. During a week when the overall market fell 18%, these premium cards barely budged, proving that quality truly does matter when the storm hits.
What Collectors Should Learn
For anyone still standing after this market earthquake, there are lessons worth remembering. First, extreme price drops aren’t necessarily death sentences for cards—they’re often the market cleansing itself of unsustainable speculation. A card appearing on the “biggest losers” list might actually represent a buying opportunity, but timing is everything.
The smart play? Don’t catch falling knives. Wait for a card to stabilize over multiple weeks before considering an entry point. That $50 floor the Marshadow found after its drop from $90? That didn’t appear overnight. It took time for panic sellers to exit and rational pricing to return.
Second, diversification matters. Loading up on modern, hyper-volatile singles with 1-in-51 pull rates is a recipe for sleepless nights. Balancing speculative plays with established, graded cards from proven sets provides insurance when 18% market-wide corrections strike without warning.
Looking Ahead
The October 2025 correction reset expectations across the board. Cards released in the immediate aftermath are starting from more realistic price points, which ironically means less room to fall. The highest risk remains concentrated in pre-correction releases that had time to build up those unsustainable premiums.
The Pokémon TCG market isn’t going anywhere—it’s proven its resilience time and again. But this week served as a harsh reminder that when cards built on speculation lose 40-50% of their value in days, the only real protection is understanding what you actually own.
