Could a few of you chime in on what are the lowest print run sets? There is not an exact count but E-series, Power Keepers, etc…
Any input helps out 
Skyridge and VS have the lowest print numbers outside of a subset of base (1st edition/shadowless). One was the last of an era, the final WOTC set when pokemon tcg was temporarily losing interest behind other competative markets, and VS which was a set made in Japan that never ended up making it over to America.
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Japanese no rarity base (i.e. first edition) set too. Look at the psa pop reports for that set.
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Outside of WOTC and the originals. Basically anything after Skyridge. I apologize, my dumbass wasn’t specific with what I was asking haha.
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Alright, that’s wild!
I think EX ruby and sapphire until EX team rocket returns are significantly rarer than people realize. EX dragon and EX team rocket returns are maybe the rarest of the previously mentioned sets but it’s very hard to get accurate numbers. They might just be more popular which gives the illusion of scarcity.
Expedition , aquapolis, and skyridge are very rare as well but most people are aware of that. If you count VS and vending series those are pretty rare too.
I’m not including things like 1st ed or no rarity.
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EX Power Keepers and EX FRLG were probably the two highest printed EX sets
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This. And this is precisely why I picked up a PSA 10 Dragonite Ex holo from the Ex Dragon series for £140 last year… (as well as the fact I LOVE ex Dragon cards).
I REALLY want the Latios and Latias exes from the Ex Dragon set too, but they’re such low pop (30 something) that they’re incredibly difficult to find. I can see a Latios ex PSA 10 currently up for sale over on eBay US for $600, which honestly in my view is a decent price. The only reason I’m not buying it is because of the extra ~35% the UK government will slap on top of that cost to import it…FMLLLLL
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I’m really curious about how many print runs did dragon frontier has. All of the EXs from the set have really low pop (~20s).
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The whole EX-era, as others have mentioned, had relatively low print runs. I’ve invested a lot of time in trying to figure out the relative scarcity of the EX-era sets. @qwachansey is correct that FRLG and Power Keepers seem to have had the highest print runs. For FRLG, though, the ex pull rate was pretty damn low (roughly 3 per box of the ultra rares and 1 per box of the secret rare birds), which makes the exs still pretty desirable. Power Keepers exs, on the other hand, are the least desirable exs from the entire era. Some other sets that seem to have had somewhat higher-than-average print runs (for the EX-era) are Ruby Sapphire and Dragon Frontiers.
The lowest print run EX-series sets, from the data I’ve collected and from having collected them myself, seem to be Delta Species and Team Rocket Returns. Both of those sets are very popular though so that could be contributing to making them appear more scarce relative to less popular sets like Hidden Legends or Unseen Forces. I don’t think that EX Dragon was especially low print run, contrary to what has been stated by others.
Also, another factor in looking at the pop report: the ex pull rates across the different sets vary dramatically. For instance, EX TMTA has a very low pull rate, which is why even an unpopular ex like Cradily is still way more expensive than most of the exs from RS, SS, or DR. The first three sets (RS, SS, & DR), on the other hand, had extremely high pull rates – from what I can tell, roughly equal to your chance of pulling a holo (but the holos from these sets are individually rarer than the EXs because there were ~12-15 unique holos and ~7-9 unique exs in each set). So take the variation in pull rates into account when interpreting pop report data.
Overall, every EX-era set had a lower print run than every Unlimited WotC print run outside of the three e-Reader sets (or at least I’m pretty confident that this is the case). Some WotC sets in just 1st Edition even appear to have had larger print runs than many EX-era sets. One thing that is still unclear to me is whether the e-Reader WotC sets had lower or higher print runs than EX-era sets. From what I can tell, Expedition seems to have had a larger print run than at least some of the EX-era sets, while Skyridge (and Aquapolis in some cases) seems to have had a somewhat smaller print run than some EX-era sets.
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@zorloth, great write up. Nice to see someone else who apprciates the EX series cards and has clerly done some research. Even if some of what you said conflicts with my opinions and data I’ve looked at.
One big thing that I find really just shows just how insanely low the print run on some of these sets really are is that no one can really say for certain which of the sets are the rarest. It’s even difficult to say exact pull rates for some of these cards because the information just isn’t available. It’s just so much speculation.
I can’t speak for everyone else but I find that the serious lack of information is just a sign that these cards are very scarice(for set cards).
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TMTA, TRR and Dragon Frontiers. Basically anything in EX series is super low print (some as low as skyridge is my understanding).
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Thank you! It’s by far my favorite era of the TCG, although WotC e-Reader is close. I’d be very curious about what you disagree with from what I’ve said. These are my impressions mostly from data I’ve gathered, so I 100% could be wrong about some of it.
Agreed. It’s part of why I find the era so collectible relative to Unlimited WotC cards (besides e-Reader obviously). I have to imagine that a set like TRR had less than 1/50th the print run of, say, Unlimited Jungle, Fossil, Rocket, or Base Set. Once you get to Unlimited Neo sets it gets a little more fuzzy, but I think EX-series sets are still vastly more scarce – I’m just not sure if it’s by a factor of 20 or 3.
For pull-rates, I’ve collected data on all of EX-sets from videos of box openings on Youtube (and of various unweighed packs being opened – like from tins/blisters). I have a sample size of 200+ packs for most sets, so there’s obviously some margin of error but I believe that I have a fairly close read on the pull rates for each set. One thing I’ve found really interesting, as far as pull-rates are concerned, is that the pull rate for reverse versions of holo rares seems to be nearly identical to that of reverse versions of non-holo rares. Not that one’s chance to pull either is equal, but that the avg. number of any given holo or non-holo rare pulled are very close. I expected reverse versions of holo rares to have the same relative scarcity to reverse versions of non-holo rares as you see with the non-reverse versions. Another weird one is that there seems to be a nearly equal chance of pulling a reverse holo uncommon or common, with all variation being within the margin of error. Although, of course, the numbers that I’ve recorded themselves have a margin of error, so the margin of error would further shift if it turned out my recorded numbers varied the maximum amount afforded by their margins of error. But, overall, I’m pretty confident that my numbers are in the vicinity of the actual ones. But, of course, there are a variety of factors that I haven’t controlled for, namely that the distribution of pulls among packs of a box differs from that of a set of unweighed packs from varied sources. So there’s less variation, for instance, in the pull rate of exs from a set of 36 packs from the same box than there would be for 36 unweighed packs taken from different sources. There are certain factors like that one that I had to ignore so I had a large enough sample size. So it’s an inexact science, but it’s interesting (to me, at least) regardless.
And yeah, there’s a sort of mystique to the era for me because of how much is unknown about it. It hasn’t emerged (yet) as collectible in the same way that WotC has. But any significant increase in demand would strain the supply and drive prices through the roof. The supply is just not that high, especially for NM cards.
Thanks for sharing your research! Really interesting! May I ask how did you research about the EX era print runs? Is your data source the pop report or do you have other data sources? Thanks in advance!
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I’ve used a variety of sources, none of which alone tell the full story, but give an approximate composite picture. My main info is from scraped Terapeak Research records of eBay listings and TCGPlayer listings (and I’ve used Distill.io to track how often specific sorts of cards from certain sets are listed/sold TCGPlayer). And then a lot of it is just an educated ‘hunch’ lol. I haven’t really used pop reports that much because there are so many confounding variables that make it really tough to draw conclusions from it – one example being that it’s impossible to tell whether higher pops reflect a higher print run or a higher proportion of cards from a set (or a specific card) having been submitted to PSA. In my opinion, it’s very possible to approximate the relative print run sizes of sets. But there are so many factors that just can’t be controlled for (what portion of cards from a given set remain in sealed product, if a certain set is more likely to be owned by a demographic that is more likely to introduce cards into circulation, etc.). But I think that broad conclusions can be drawn that are pretty accurate. I’d be curious to hear others’ perceptions of the relative print run sizes of sets to see how closely they map onto mine.
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Since EX TRR, Deoxys and Delta Species all have three gold stars and, according to the best data I could find, the same 1:72 pull rate for gold stars, the PSA pop report may be a decent approximation for relative scarcity. I’d like to include power keepers in this too since it has three gold stars but apparently the pull rate in that set is much higher so I’ve left it out. here’s the gold star data from PSA. this is for total submissions, it ignores the grade:
TRR:
Mudkip 245
Torchic 223
Treecko 236
Average pop for gold star: 235
Deoxys:
Latias 251
Latios 255
Rayquaza 348
Average pop for gold star (have to exclude our friend Ray for obvious reason): 253
Delta Species:
Groudon 275
Kyogre 282
Metagross 304
Average gold star pop: 287
That’s pretty rough math and it’s certainly flawed, but it does support that TRR is scarcer than Deoxys which is in turn scarcer than delta species. hard to compare to anything WOTC except maybe Dark Raichu 1st edition. the pull rates are not known but are estimated to at least be within 50% of the gold stars, higher or lower. 1395 1st edition dark raichus have been submitted to PSA. even within the margin of error, it would appear each of these three EX sets are far scarcer than team rocket 1st edition. wish there was a comparison to something later WOTC though as that was clearly a very heavily printed set. ah just thought of aquapolis. three crystal rares with a pull rate of 1:36. here’s the pop for those (divide by two to compare with EX series above):
Kingdra 387 (divided by two 194)
Lugia 548 (274)
Nidoking 441 (221)
This is skewed by the relative desirability of the cards, but the average crystal pop excluding lugia is 414, or 207 on an apples-to-apples basis with the EX series above. This would suggest aquapolis is scarcer than all three of the EX series. If skyridge is scarcer than aquapolis, that would likely give it the title for scarcest set but I don’t have the data to back up the skyridge assertion that’s just what everyone seems to state as fact. Of course none of this analysis is perfect. but it’s some of the only data we have. and I think the data for the cards I used is pretty good, even with the outliers of Lugia and Rayquaza in there. If someone has more accurate data for pull rates or a better methodology for accounting for Lugia and Rayquaza this could be refined further. would be great if there was a way to include power keepers but the estimated pull rates seem to be a wide range and to me don’t match with the pops in a way that makes those pull rates seem correct.
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So we can conclude that TRR is slightly more printed than aquapolis from this. And Skyridge is obviously the most scarce.
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I don’t think we can 100% conclude that about TRR. I think jonandek’s analysis is super helpful, but it’s too approximate to conclude that, IMO. On Skyridge, though, I 100% agree that it’s more scarce than Aquapolis and likely more scarce than TRR. Comparing Skyridge and TRR is so tough, though, since Skyridge is much more widely collected/desired (although TRR is obviously one of the most, if not the most, desired ex sets – but there’s still a definite difference in collector mentality toward the sets).
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The main confounding factor in the analysis are the pull rates. If we knew those were accurate we could draw pretty good conclusions. Any variation in those makes a big difference. I think the pops for these gold stars should be pretty stable at this point. Packs/boxes are scarce and I would imagine will largely remain sealed
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@zorloth , “I’d be very curious about what you disagree with from what I’ve said. These are my impressions mostly from data I’ve gathered, so I 100% could be wrong about some of it.”
Definetly agree with the “I 100% could be wrong”, I say that all the time when it comes to these sets. Just so hard to get solid information. So when you read this, keep in mind I am also aware I could be wrong 
As for what I disagree with, I don’t think Delta Species is that rare of a set. I wouldn’t even rank it in the top 5 for rarest EX sets. Pop report is oddly high when you consider the gold stars feature not so popular pokemon and the set is supposed to be one of the rarest ever? Also the set is the 6th last EX series set to be released of the 16 EX sets. And if the last two sets are supposed to have the highest printings of these sets, why would the 6th set be one of the lowest? It doesn’t makes that they would randomly short print a set past halfway into the series deep into 2005 when we generally think around 2003 to be roughly the lowest point in pokemon.
I also definetly don’t think EX fire red and leaf green are one of the higher printed sets, I am personally not a huge fan of this set so I don’t really research it all that much. But the time period this set was released in with the addition of pop reports leads me to beleive this set is in the bottom half in terms of EX set print runs.
And I do beleive EX dragon is one of the rarest EX sets. A thing to note about this set is the secret rare charizard has a total psa submission number of 442. Which is less than charizards from 1st ed base, 1st ed team rocket, 1st ed gym challende, 1st ed neo destiny, reverse legendary collection, skyridge, Dragon frontiers, plasma storm and many more.
On a side note do you happen to know exact pull rate numbers for EX dragon secret rares? I only have a rough estimate at this time. Either EX dragon is rarer than people realize or that charizard has a VERY bad pull rate.
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