Evolutions

What Evolutions is

Evolutions is the twelfth and final main expansion of the XY Series, released in English on November 2, 2016 under the set code EVO to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of Pokémon. It has 108 cards in the numbered set plus 5 secret rares, 113 in total. It reprints the cards of the Base Set with most of their original layout intact, moving the Pokédex number, Weakness, Resistance and Retreat Cost into their modern positions and updating types, HP, Abilities and attacks to the current format, and it adds Pokémon EX, Mega Pokémon EX and Pokémon BREAK of the same Generation I Pokémon in a matching design with a gold border.

The checklist holds 22 rares, among them the holofoil Charizard 11, Gyarados 34, Mewtwo 51 and Machamp 59, 25 Ultra rares including Charizard EX 12 and M Charizard EX 13, Venusaur EX, Blastoise EX, Mewtwo EX, Dragonite EX, four Pokémon BREAK and the full art Brock's Grit and Misty's Determination, and 5 secret rares: Exeggutor 109, Flying Pikachu 110, Surfing Pikachu 111, Imakuni?'s Doduo 112 and Here Comes Team Rocket! 113. Water is the most represented type at 15 cards, and the original Base Set artists lead the credits, Ken Sugimori with 34 cards, Keiji Kinebuchi 21 and Mitsuhiro Arita 14.

The cards come from the Japanese Expansion Pack 20th Anniversary, a 103 card concept pack of the XY BREAK era.

What makes Evolutions different

• Base Set, reprinted Evolutions keeps the original card frame, artwork and rarities of the Base Set while updating the game text, so Mitsuhiro Arita's Charizard 11 returned in a modern legal print and became the card most collectors open the set for.
• Prerelease Charizard Holofoil Charizard 11, Gyarados 34, Mewtwo 51 and Machamp 59 with an Evolutions prerelease stamp were the prerelease promos, each with a Staff version, and the Staff Charizard is the most valuable card in the set by a wide margin.
• The Imakuni? secret rares The five secret rares revisit the Japanese oddities of the game's first years: Dr.Ooyama's Exeggutor, Toshinao Aoki's Flying Pikachu and Surfing Pikachu, Imakuni?'s Doduo drawn by Imakuni? himself and Ken Sugimori's Here Comes Team Rocket!.
• Mega Evolutions of the starters M Venusaur EX, M Charizard EX and M Blastoise EX appear in regular and full art prints, with M Pidgeot EX and M Slowbro EX alongside them.
• Two Elite Trainer Boxes Evolutions shipped a Mega Charizard Y box and a Mega Blastoise box with identical contents, and a Korean BASE PACK 20th Anniversary combined the English and Japanese card lists into 113 cards.

How Evolutions arrived

Japan released the Expansion Pack 20th Anniversary on September 16, 2016 and Korea the BASE PACK 20th Anniversary on September 29, 2016. The English Evolutions followed on November 2, 2016 as the last XY Series set, three months before Sun & Moon opened the next series on February 3, 2017.

Prerelease tournaments ran on the weekends of October 22 to 23 and October 29 to 30, 2016, with a kit of four booster packs, a tip sheet and a 23 card Evolution pack holding one of the four holofoil prerelease promos, for a 40 card deck. Toys R Us stamped Cosmos Holofoil Charmander 9 on October 30, 2016 and Electabuzz 41 on November 20, 2016.

Launch day brought the two Elite Trainer Boxes, the Pikachu Power and Mewtwo Mayhem Theme Decks, blisters and a Launch Display for hobby shops with two booster boxes, eight Theme Decks, promos and deck boxes. Mew 53 became the Evolutions Season League Challenge promo in 1st to 4th Place versions, and Double Colorless Energy 90 was reprinted as the 2017 International Championships promo for every region.

Evolutions products and what came in them

Each Elite Trainer Box, Mega Charizard Y or Mega Blastoise, holds eight booster packs, four dividers, 65 card sleeves, 45 basic Energy cards, damage counter and coin flip dice, two acrylic Special Condition markers, a player's guide and a code card. Pikachu Power is a Lightning and Grass deck with a Cracked Ice Holofoil Pikachu 35 and a non holofoil Raichu 36, and Mewtwo Mayhem a Psychic and Fighting deck with a Cracked Ice Holofoil Mewtwo 51, each with counters, a coin, a playmat, a checklist and a code card.

Collecting and grading Evolutions

The live prices above are led by prerelease promos. The Staff Charizard 11, the Staff Gyarados 34, the regular prerelease Charizard, the Staff Machamp 59 and the Staff and regular prerelease Mewtwo 51 are stamped event cards, and the Toys R Us Charmander 9 and the League Challenge Mew 53 are promos too; match the variant label in the checklist before comparing any of them with a pack pull. The Cracked Ice Nidoking 45, Raichu 36 and Mew 53 labelled Holo are Theme Deck prints, and Chansey 70 and Magneton 38 show PSA 10 prices on almost no sales.

Among pack pulled cards the regular Charizard 11 is the card that matters, a cheap raw pull whose PSA 10 carries a large premium because the reprinted holofoil scratches as easily as the original, with its reverse holofoil behind it. The Ultra rares, Charizard EX, M Charizard EX, Mewtwo EX and the full art prints, trade modestly by comparison.

Evolutions was printed in enormous quantities, so sealed product is common for a set of its age. The sealed table above tracks booster boxes, both Elite Trainer Boxes, the Theme Decks, blisters and Mini Packs.