Venusaur, Charizard & Blastoise Special Deck SetJPN

What to target in Venusaur, Charizard & Blastoise Special Deck Set

The top 6 cards are 100% of the set’s $267.00 estimated singles cost — plan these first and the rest follows on a normal budget.

Value in this set is unusually flat by chase-card standards — the ten cards our data flags all sit in the same mid band, and together they account for less than a quarter of the total set cost. That tells you something important: there's no single card carrying the release on its back. Instead the money spreads across evolution pieces (Bulbasaur, Charmander, Charmeleon), the useful trainer staples (Boss's Orders, Cynthia's Ambition, Beach Court), and a handful of supporting Pokémon like Carnivine, Dondozo, and Cinccino that collectors need to round out the checklist.

The cards people actually love versus the ones that just cost money split along familiar lines. The starter-line evolution pieces and the secret-numbered Charmander are the emotional pulls — they tie directly into the Kanto nostalgia that makes this product worth owning. The trainer staples cost what they cost because deck builders want playsets, not because anyone frames them on a wall. When nearly every card in a set clears a meaningful value threshold, as is the case here, the takeaway is that scarcity of the sealed product — not rarity of any individual card — is doing the heavy lifting on price.

#	Card	Number	Rarity	Market	PSA 10
1	Charmander	#51	None	$91.56	$322.41
2	Bulbasaur	#50	None	$90.20	$180.52
3	Squirtle	#52	None	$76.43	$203.25
4	Charizard ex	#9	None	$5.01	$55.00
5	Blastoise ex	#16	None	$2.36	$37.00
6	Venusaur ex	#3	None	$1.40	$37.81

How Venusaur, Charizard & Blastoise Special Deck Set is built

The smart way to complete Venusaur, Charizard & Blastoise Special Deck Set

The smart approach is to decide early whether you're chasing sealed decks or building through singles, because there's no in-between hybrid product to lean on. Since almost every card in the set clears a real value threshold, there are no throwaway commons to pad your progress cheaply — you'll be paying attention to nearly every slot. Prioritize the secret-numbered cards and the starter evolution lines first, since those are the pieces that dry up fastest and drag out otherwise-finished runs.

1. Lock down the three starter ex cards and the secret-numbered cards (Charmander #51, Charmeleon, plus the other over-total slots) first — these are the completion bottlenecks.
2. Pick up the evolution-line supporting Pokémon (Bulbasaur, Carnivine, Dondozo, Cinccino) while they circulate together with the decks.
3. Grab the trainer staples — Boss's Orders, Cynthia's Ambition, Beach Court, Energy Sticker — where deck-builder demand keeps supply moving.
4. Fill the remaining commons and uncommons in bulk lots pulled from broken-down deck sets, which is often cheaper than one-by-one.
5. Verify the secret count is complete — the four cards past the printed 49 are the easiest to overlook on a master run.
6. Condition-check everything, since Japanese boxed cards are frequently pack-fresh and grading candidates are hiding in the pile.

Collecting challenges

The card count is small, which fools people into thinking this is a weekend project. The reality is the opposite: because nothing was pack-distributed, every single traces back to a broken-down deck box, and once those boxes stop circulating, the supply of loose singles gets thin and uneven. There are no odds to beat, but there's also no volume to draw from — you're competing for a finite pool that only shrinks. That combination is exactly why the difficulty here rates extreme.

Singles or sealed?

This is a singles-first set by necessity as much as strategy. With no booster box, ETB, or bundle in the product lineup, the only sealed route is buying the deck product itself — and once that's out of print, singles become the practical path for anyone who isn't paying a collector premium for a sealed box. The page shows the live math, but the qualitative read is simple: if sealed deck product is still findable at a reasonable price, it's a fun way to get the core cards plus something to actually play; if it's not, build through singles and target the evolution lines and secret cards early before they thin out.

Sealed product comparison

Which Venusaur, Charizard & Blastoise Special Deck Set cards are worth grading?

Grading only makes sense at the top of this set's value curve, and our EV data points squarely at the Charmander and the Charizard ex as the cards where a high grade justifies the fee. Both benefit from the Kanto-starter demand that keeps Charizard-adjacent cards liquid in graded holders, and both are the kind of clean modern prints that pull strong grades when they come pack-fresh out of a deck box. For the rest of the checklist — the trainer staples and supporting Pokémon — grading costs generally outrun the upside, since these cards are wanted for decks and set completion rather than as slabbed showpieces.

The practical move is to pull your best-centered Charmander and Charizard ex copies, inspect corners and surface under good light, and submit only those. Everything else is better kept raw for a set binder or resold as a playable single.

Tier 1 — grade theseWorth grading

Positive expected value after ~$25 fees at live PSA prices and this set's real gem rates.

Charmander #51raw $91.56 → PSA 10 $322.41 3.5×EV +$144.54

Tier 3 — personal collectionCollection only

Fees eat most of the margin. Grade to preserve a pristine pull, not for profit.

Bulbasaur #50raw $90.20 → PSA 10 $180.52 2×Squirtle #52raw $76.43 → PSA 10 $203.25 2.7×

Premiums and EV use tonight’s PSA prices and this set’s real gem rates — not projections.

Protect your Venusaur, Charizard & Blastoise Special Deck Set cards

Even a modest set deserves basic protection — condition is most of a card’s value.

Affiliate links — purchases support CardPrice at no extra cost. Full guide: how to build & store a master set.

Where Venusaur, Charizard & Blastoise Special Deck Set goes from here

The long-term case rests on two things: the evergreen pull of the Kanto starter trio, and the fact that this set only ever existed as a boxed deck product with no pack distribution. That supply structure is a double-edged sword. It caps the total pool of singles at whatever came out of deck boxes, which supports prices as those boxes disappear — but it also means the cards are, by design, reprints of widely available modern staples, so there's real reprint risk any time the same Boss's Orders or Cynthia's Ambition art recirculates in another Japanese product. The starter ex cards and secret-numbered pieces carry the most durable interest because they're tied to the theme collectors actually chase.

Read honestly, this is a slow-burn completionist set rather than a speculative flip. Its ceiling is limited by the ordinary rarity of its contents, but its floor is held up by finite sealed supply and unkillable Charizard-Blastoise-Venusaur nostalgia. Collect it because you want a tidy, playable Kanto-themed run in Japanese — not because you expect any one card to moon. (As always, collect what you love first.)

Not financial advice — live prices and trends are above, collect what you love.

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Venusaur, Charizard & Blastoise Special Deck Set — frequently asked questions