30th Celebration Futuristic Rares: What the $1,000 Cards Are and Who They're For
By Dexhaul Team · September 16, 2026
The 30th Celebration hit shelves today, and the highest rarity in the set is already trading above $1,000 per card.
The card type is called a Futuristic Rare, abbreviated FUR. It is a brand-new rarity tier introduced specifically for ME: 30th Celebration, sitting above the Special Illustration Rare (SIR). SIR was the ceiling across the previous two years of Scarlet & Violet sets.
A Futuristic Rare is what you get when a Pikachu ex or Mewtwo ex appears in an art style distinct from standard SIR foil treatment, in a numbered slot above even the set's special rarity range.
The short version for anyone opening packs today: there are three tiers of ex cards in this set, and the gap between them is not proportional. Knowing the numbering system on the card itself tells you which tier you pulled, before you check a price guide.
The Card Number Tells You Everything
Reading the format instantly
Every Pokémon TCG card carries a number in the format X/Y, where Y is the set's base count. ME: 30th Celebration has 128 cards in its base set.
Any card numbered above 128/128 is a special rarity. The further above 128 the number goes, the rarer the card.
That system gives you three Pikachu ex cards at three completely different price points. Pikachu ex 054/128 is a standard ex, numbered inside the set's range, currently listed at $18.
Pikachu ex 149/128 pushes past that range: it is a Special Illustration Rare, with a full-art illustration style distinct from the standard holo finish, currently listed at $437. The spread between those two is 24x, driven by art and rarity tier, not by any difference in the card's game function.
Mewtwo ex 157/128 goes further still. The card number 157 sits above the SIR range, marking it as the set's Futuristic Rare. Currently listed at $1,026, that represents a 2.35x premium over the SIR Pikachu ex at $437.
The jump from base ex to SIR is the larger dollar gap: $419 separates those two tiers, versus roughly $589 separating SIR from FUR. But the $18-to-$437 percentage jump is the one that surprises most collectors opening their first pulls.
What a Futuristic Rare Actually Is
A new ceiling, not just a new artwork
ME: 30th Celebration is the first English Mega Evolution set to introduce a rarity tier above SIR. ME01 through ME05 all topped out at SIR for their most valuable singles. Adding a FUR tier creates a structural ceiling change: collectors who completed the SIR tier from previous ME sets now face a new category that did not exist when they started.
Early community coverage attributes the Futuristic Rare art direction to YOSHIROTTEN, a Japanese illustrator known for digital and cyberpunk-influenced aesthetics. That attribution has not yet been officially confirmed in The Pokemon Company's published card credits, so treat it as community reporting until the full set list is released. What is confirmed by the cards themselves is that the surface treatment is visually distinct from SIR, identifiable at a glance by the foil type and art framing.
The rarity tier name itself is significant. "Futuristic Rare" is not a marketing description retrofitted onto an existing rarity class. It is a named category with its own abbreviation, logged in the card's official product listing on Pokemon.com, creating a new entry in the franchise's evolving rarity taxonomy.
The Two Confirmed FUR Cards: Mewtwo ex and Mew
Mewtwo and why Mew is the more expensive pull
Two Futuristic Rares are in the primary pull pool at launch: Mewtwo ex and Mew. The Mewtwo ex FUR (157/128) is currently listed at $1,026 on independent storefronts. Early community sales data puts the Mew FUR's first reported secondary market transaction at around $1,400.
The Mew premium has a straightforward cause. Mew has not headlined a major English TCG product in its own right since the 2021 Celebrations set, and the Mew ex SIR cards from standard SV sets have consistently attracted collector premiums above their Mewtwo counterparts. Adding FUR as the new ceiling tier stacks on top of existing character demand.
PSA and CGC population for both cards is effectively zero as of today. The first collectors to submit FUR cards will face no grading competition in the early population windows, which typically corresponds to the widest price spread between raw and graded copies. That window is measured in weeks, not months, for a set this visible.
Opening vs. Buying the Single Outright
What the ETB math actually looks like
The 30th Celebration Elite Trainer Box contains 9 booster packs. The Pokemon Company has not published official FUR pull rates for this set as of today.
Standard SIR pull rates in modern Scarlet & Violet sets have run at approximately 1 in 10 to 1 in 15 packs. FUR rates are expected to be lower.
At $179.95 for an ETB, buying six ETBs costs roughly $1,080. That is close to the current price of one Mewtwo ex FUR single at $1,026, with no guarantee of hitting the specific FUR you want across 54 packs. For collectors who want a specific Futuristic Rare in the best possible condition, the direct single purchase removes variance at the cost of certainty.
That math does not make opening wrong. The ETB delivers nine packs across the full 128-card base set, three Pikachu ex variants on average per nine packs, and set accessories.
Opening is its own thing. But the single price is the correct baseline for anyone treating the FUR card as the target, not the experience.
Where FUR Prices Go From Here
The Futuristic Rare tier is new enough that today's prices are launch-day readings. Secondary market prices for any new rarity compress in the weeks after launch as supply from early openers reaches listings and the initial hype premium adjusts. The Mew FUR at $1,400 and the Mewtwo ex FUR at $1,026 are the starting points, not the settled floor.
What is unlikely to change is the structural position. FUR is the highest rarity in ME: 30th Celebration. The cards illustrated at that tier will always be the set's ceiling, regardless of where the price lands at 30 or 60 days post-launch.
For collectors tracking ME sets over time, FUR occupies the same structural slot that the 2021 Celebrations's Pikachu VMAX Rainbow did in the SWSH era: the rarest card in the anniversary set, from a rarity class that did not exist before that set.
If you are looking to compare current FUR single listings across independent shops without checking each storefront individually, the DexHaul single-cards collection aggregates what is currently listed and updates as new sellers add stock. Search for "Mewtwo ex 157/128" or "Mew 30th Celebration" to pull the current listings.