Eevee Heroes

What Eevee Heroes is

Eevee Heroes is an Enhanced Expansion Pack of the Japanese Sword & Shield era, released on May 28, 2021 under the set code S6a as the sixth subset of the era and an enhancement of the paired Silver Lance and Jet-Black Spirit expansions. It has 69 cards in the numbered set plus 32 secret rares, 101 in total, and it is built entirely around Eevee: all eight Eeveelutions as of Generation VIII appear as Pokémon V, with Leafeon VMAX, Glaceon VMAX, Sylveon VMAX and Umbreon VMAX in the set and the other Eeveelution VMAX cards sold in separate products the same day. Trainer cards such as the Elemental, Snow Leaf, Moon & Sun and Ribbon Badges support specific Eeveelutions, several tied to the Single Strike and Rapid Strike styles.

The secret rares run from 70 to 101 and hold the cards the set is famous for: full art and alternate art prints of every Eeveelution V and alternate art prints of the four VMAX, led by Umbreon VMAX 95, the Japanese original of the card English collectors call Moonbreon. Each pack holds five cards.

Its cards reached English collectors split between Evolving Skies and Fusion Strike.

What makes Eevee Heroes different

• The first Moonbreon Umbreon VMAX 95, the alternate art of Umbreon under the moon, was printed here before English Evolving Skies, and it is the most valuable card in the set by a wide margin, ahead of Sylveon VMAX 93, Glaceon VMAX 91 and Leafeon VMAX 89.
• Every Eeveelution as a V Leafeon V, Flareon V, Vaporeon V, Glaceon V, Jolteon V, Espeon V, Sylveon V and Umbreon V all appear in the numbered set, each with full art and alternate art secret rare prints, so the set can be collected as eight matching lines.
• The preorder frenzy Preorders opened on the Pokémon Center Online on May 7, 2021 and booster boxes, the Eeveelution Set and the VMAX Special Set sold out almost at once. The Pokémon Company apologized on May 12, limited sales to the Pokémon Center Online and ran a preorder lottery from May 14 to 18, 2021.
• Puzzle cards Japanese packs included one of ten numbered puzzle cards for the Pokémon Card Puzzle campaign, with a hint and QR code on the back leading to a companion website whose puzzles required Eevee Heroes cards to solve, and a lottery for 100 Eevee Flip Deck Cases.
• Split across two English sets The Eevee Heroes cards were divided between English Evolving Skies and Fusion Strike rather than released as one set, which is why the Japanese set is the only place the whole Eeveelution roster sits together.

How Eevee Heroes arrived

Eevee Heroes released in Japan on May 28, 2021, five weeks after Silver Lance and Jet-Black Spirit on April 23, 2021 and six weeks before Blue Sky Stream and Skyscraping Perfection on July 9, 2021. Korean and Traditional Chinese versions followed on June 11, 2021, further Asian releases on June 25, August 11 and October 1, 2021.

The release landed at the height of the pandemic era boom in the card game. Demand for the Japanese product, speculated to have been driven partly by Western buyers using software agents, overwhelmed the Pokémon Center Online preorders on May 7, 2021 and led to the company's statements of May 12, the lottery system for further preorders and a promise to prioritize the most popular products in later production runs. Preorders secured on May 7 shipped on release day.

Alongside the packs came the Pokémon Card Puzzle campaign, whose companion website ran staged puzzles built on the set's cards with a lottery open from May 28 to June 17, 2021 and prizes shipped in late July 2021.

Eevee Heroes products

Eevee Heroes was sold in booster packs of five cards and booster boxes, with the Eeveelution Set, the VMAX Special Set and Gym products released alongside it. The sealed table above tracks the box, pack, Gym Box and promo box.

Collecting and grading Eevee Heroes

Umbreon VMAX 95 leads the live prices above and carries a raw price that most graded cards never reach, with the alternate art Sylveon VMAX 93, Glaceon VMAX 91 and Leafeon VMAX 89 behind it. The alternate art Eeveelution V cards form the next tier, Umbreon V 85 first, then Espeon V 81, Sylveon V 83, Glaceon V 77, Vaporeon V 75, Flareon V 73, Jolteon V 79 and Leafeon V 71, with the full art Umbreon V 84, Umbreon VMAX 94 and Sylveon V 82 following.

Japanese print quality keeps PSA 10 rates high, so the graded premium is modest on most of the set and concentrated on Umbreon VMAX, where the PSA 10 to raw gap is the largest. Because the English cards were split across two sets, the Japanese set is where collectors build the complete Eeveelution run, and complete alternate art sets trade as a unit.

Sealed Eevee Heroes is scarce relative to demand after the preorder chaos of 2021, and the sealed table above tracks what boxes and packs trade for today.