Mega Dream ex Changes Everything

Once a year, all the good boys and girls receive their most anticipated gift of the season…

For Pokémon collectors, that gift isn't wrapped under a tree… it arrives in the form of Japan's High Class Pack set, released around December each year.

This yearly tradition has become one of my favorite releases in all of Pokémon. Not just because these sets are beautifully designed (they are), but because they represent something rare in modern collecting: a product that genuinely serves players, collectors, AND investors all at once.

With Mega Dream ex releasing November 28th and looking absolutely incredible, now's the perfect time to examine the price history of recent High Class Pack sets (what I’ve seen might surprise you).

For the uninitiated: these once-a-year High Class Pack sets celebrate the past twelve months of Pokémon. They're literally "greatest hits" compilations: made up almost entirely of reprints of the year's most important, playable cards. This makes essential competitive staples widely available (and cheap) for players building tournament-ready decks.

For collectors: these sets add new chase variants of the reprinted cards, often introducing some of the best chase cards of the year.

These are the sets that gave us cards like the Golden Giratina VSTAR, or the Bubble Mew. And many, many more.

These are very fun sets. And, not surprisingly, they’ve become quite valuable over time.

For example: 2019’s High Class Pack set, Tag Team GX All Stars, was a $70 USD box when I bought my copies shortly after they released.

Today those boxes are worth $660 USD.

Since that 2019 release, there hasn’t been a new High Class Pack set that has performed as well as Tag Team GX All Stars, although each release has still appreciated in value. Getting the most from these sets has required you to correctly time your purchases based on a market pattern that has emerged:

1. As hyped products, prices leading up to release are high.

2. Immediately after release, prices rise further as the community buys up more and more boxes.

3. But, The Pokémon Company reprints these sets heavily, almost always resulting in a significant price reset 4-6 months after the release.

4. The Pokémon Company then stops reprinting the set in the latter half of the year, allowing the products to grow steadily in value over the long-term.

We see this pattern clearly in the 2021 and 2023 High Class Pack Sets:

VMAX Climax:

Shiny Treasure ex:

But, it’s not guaranteed.

VSTAR Universe was released in late 2022, right before the Japanese market entered its Boom Phase in 2023. Instead of the typical 6-month bottom, prices surged to all-time highs during the boom, peaking at $120 USD before crashing during the Correction Phase, and bottoming around $65 USD another year later in 2024.

The price has climbed steadily since then.

My experience investing in these sets has led to my most common advice: be patient. History has shown the heavy printing of these sets will drive prices down over the following 6 months. Collectors and investors willing to wait it out will be able to accumulate far more product if they play it safe and wait for their opportunity.

But, in 2024, I was wrong.

The most recent release, Terastal Festival ex from 2024, broke from the established pattern: the price never crashed below it’s launch prices.

In hindsight, the best time to buy this set was as a pre-order or immediately upon release with prices around $70 USD a box. These prices then ballooned to $110 a box before coming down to the 2nd best buying opportunity around $85 a box in June 2025.

Today, the price is back above $100.

This break in the pattern demonstrated something important: even with the large print volumes of Terastal Festival ex, and even though the Japanese Pokémon market is still in the Dormant Phase, demand continued to exceed supply.

This could be explained as simply as: the popularity of the Eeveelution cards drove demand. But I think it’s something else: the demand for Japanese products has been steadily growing, and The Pokémon Company may no longer be able to print enough for the most exciting releases.

As a result, Terastal Festival ex cautions us that, for this year’s release, I’m not sure patience is the right move.

There’s already signs of a ton of demand for Mega Dream ex: pre-orders are expensive, with confirmed sales as high as $154 USD on eBay. These prices are likely to come down as we approach the actual release, but these prices tell us a lot about the state of the market.

And there’s more…

The Japanese market has been in the Dormant Phase of the Collectibles Cycle for the past year and a half. And Japanese sealed products have been steadily rising in value.

The market is building towards yet another Boom Phase.

We’ve typically seen a 4-year Collectibles Cycle for Pokémon cards, and it’s only been about 1.5 years since the peak of the last Japanese boom. Entering the Boom Phase any time over the next year would be early.

But 2026 is Pokémon’s 30th anniversary year, and is likely to build significant attention around Pokémon. These catalysts mean it’s possible demand will continue to grow over the year and no amount of reprints can bring the price of this set back down. Like VSTAR Universe, Mega Dream ex may continue to hit all-time-high prices for the rest of the year.

This puts collectors in a tough spot. These pre-order prices are uncomfortably high for a $40 MSRP product—paying 3x MSRP or more goes against every value-investing principle I teach.

But if the Japanese market enters its Boom Phase early, these prices may look cheap in hindsight.

My approach: I'm waiting to see where prices settle in the first few months post-release. If reprints push prices down to $80-90 range by spring 2026, that's the opportunity. If prices hold firm or rise, that's the market telling us the pattern has fundamentally changed, and I'll adjust.

The truth is, no one knows for certain if Mega Dream ex will follow the old pattern or the new Terastal Festival ex playbook. But understanding both possibilities will help you make the best decision for your collecting strategy.

As usual,

Thanks so much for reading the TCG Buyers Club newsletter. My name’s Grey, I buy cardboard, and I’m on a mission to make collecting and investing in Pokémon simple.

Cheers 🍻

P.S. This is my 53rd weekly newsletter: officially the first newsletter of the 2nd year of this publication! Thanks for being here for it 😊