Hidden Fates

What Hidden Fates is

Hidden Fates is a special expansion of the Sun & Moon Series, released in English from August 23, 2019 under the set code HIF. It has 68 cards in the numbered set, one secret rare and a 94 card Shiny Vault subset, for 163 cards in total. The set is built around Shiny Pokémon: the Shiny Vault cards carry collection numbers prefixed SV, the regular Shiny Pokémon use new artwork, the Shiny Pokémon-GX reuse their earlier full art artwork, and all of them have a special embossed holofoil treatment.

The main set holds 12 Ultra rares and the first TAG TEAM trio, Moltres & Zapdos & Articuno-GX, whose secret rare print is card 69. Gyarados-GX, Charizard-GX, Raichu-GX and Mewtwo-GX headline the regular cards, and the blurb promised more than 75 Pokémon in their Shiny forms, including Mewtwo-GX and Charizard-GX.

Unlike regular expansions, Hidden Fates packs were never sold in booster boxes. They came only in set branded products released in waves through August, September, October and November 2019, each with a different number of packs and its own promo cards. Each pack holds ten cards, a basic Energy card and a code card for the Pokémon TCG Online. The core set draws on the Japanese GX Ultra Shiny and Sky Legend subsets, the Sun & Moon Family Pokémon Card Game set, the Trainer Battle Decks and a number of SM-P promotional cards.

What makes Hidden Fates different

• The Shiny Vault The 94 card Shiny Vault is the reason the set exists. Charizard GX SV49 is the most valuable card, followed by Umbreon GX SV69, Sylveon GX SV76, Mewtwo GX SV59, Espeon GX SV60 and Darkrai GX SV70 among the Shiny GX cards, and the Shiny Vault also holds full art Trainers such as Cynthia SV82.
• The first TAG TEAM trio Moltres & Zapdos & Articuno-GX is the first TAG TEAM card to combine three Pokémon. It appears in the main set and as the lone secret rare (69), and a Special Full Art promo (SM 210) came in the Elite Trainer Box.
• No booster boxes Packs reached collectors only through pin collections, tins, the Elite Trainer Box, Poké Ball collections, the Premium Powers Collection and the Ultra-Premium Collection, so sealed Hidden Fates is a set of products rather than displays.
• Reverse holofoils that outrun the set The reverse holofoil prints of Mew 32, Pikachu 19, Psyduck 11, Eevee 49, Misty's Determination 62 and Clefairy 39 all show high PSA 10 prices on thin markets, and Psyduck 11 and Ekans 26 do the same in their regular prints.
• The Japanese record holder GX Ultra Shiny, the Japanese source, had 250 cards with 100 secret cards and was the largest set in any language when it released, with a Reverse Cracked Ice parallel foil set that pushed the master set to 375 cards. Its packs held ten cards with a guaranteed Pokémon-GX and two holofoils.
• Battle Academy stamps Charmeleon 8, Charizard GX 9, Pikachu 19, Raichu GX 20, Mewtwo GX 31, Mew 32, Chansey 46, Eevee 49 and Snorlax 50 exist with Battle Academy 2020 deck stamps, and the checklist below tracks them as separate rows.

How Hidden Fates arrived

Japan released GX Ultra Shiny on November 2, 2018 as the twelfth subset of the Sun & Moon era, a High Class Pack in the tradition of The Best of XY and GX Battle Boost, built largely from reprints and treated as an enhancement of the Super-Burst Impact expansion. Its Shiny Pokémon were all secret cards in the new S and SSR rarities, and it introduced the first secret prints of Stadium cards. Sky Legend followed on April 26, 2019.

The English set arrived in waves. The Mewtwo and Mew Pin Collections opened it on August 23, 2019, three weeks after Unified Minds. The Charizard-GX, Gyarados-GX and Raichu-GX Tins followed on September 6, 2019, the Elite Trainer Box on September 20, 2019, the Great Ball and Ultra Ball Collections on October 4, 2019 and the Premium Powers Collection in European countries on October 18, 2019. Three Hidden Fates Collections with jumbo copies of the tin promos had a limited release on November 1, 2019, and the Ultra-Premium Collection, delayed a week from November 15, closed the run on November 22, 2019, with Ultra Pro portfolios on November 29, 2019.

Demand outran supply for most of that period, and the tins were reprinted from September 2020 with cardboard interior packaging in place of plastic. The Ultra-Premium Collection became notorious for its packaging: the Shiny Rayquaza sculpture inside was poorly secured, and many copies arrived dislodged or damaged.

Hidden Fates products and what came in them

The Elite Trainer Box features the Legendary birds and holds ten booster packs, a Special Full Art Moltres & Zapdos & Articuno-GX promo (SM Promo 210), 65 card sleeves, four dividers, 45 basic Energy cards, two Special Condition markers, a GX marker, six damage counter dice, a coin flip die, a player's guide and a code card.

Each Pin Collection holds three packs, an alternate art Mewtwo (SM 214) or Mew (SM 215) promo and an enamel pin. Each tin holds four packs and an alternate art Charizard-GX (SM 211), Gyarados-GX (SM 212) or Raichu-GX (SM 213). The Great Ball and Ultra Ball Collections hold ten packs each, a plastic Poké Ball container that stores 60 cards and a full art Shiny Zoroark-GX or Shiny Metagross-GX. The Premium Powers Collection holds seven packs, gold full art Solgaleo-GX and Lunala-GX, regular and jumbo Rayquaza-GX and a poster, and the Ultra-Premium Collection holds 15 packs, the same three GX cards, a playmat and the Shiny Rayquaza sculpture with a card holder base. The three Hidden Fates Collections hold four packs and a regular and jumbo copy of the tin promo.

Collecting and grading Hidden Fates

Charizard GX SV49 carries the set, and the live prices above show the gap between a raw copy and a PSA 10. Umbreon GX SV69, Sylveon GX SV76, Mewtwo GX SV59, Espeon GX SV60 and Darkrai GX SV70 form the next group, and Cynthia SV82 is the strongest Trainer. Six tracked singles clear a meaningful raw price, which makes Hidden Fates one of the more expensive Sun & Moon sets to complete, and the Shiny Vault master set is a long project.

The reverse holofoil rows deserve attention. Mew 32, Pikachu 19, Psyduck 11, Eevee 49, Misty's Determination 62 and Clefairy 39 show very high PSA 10 prices as reverse holofoils, built on sparse sales of cards that are cheap raw, and the Battle Academy 2020 stamped prints trade separately again. The checklist below tracks each variant on its own row, so match the label before comparing prices.

Shiny Vault cards use an embossed holofoil that shows surface scratches under angled light, and the GX cards are prone to edge whitening, so inspect both before submitting. Sealed Hidden Fates is a set of tins and collections rather than displays, and the sealed table above tracks what each product trades for today.