In April 2011, with the fifth generation and the Unova region debuting on the Nintendo DS, the Pokémon TCG wiped the slate clean. It reset its numbering, changed the card design and, almost without warning, minted the rarity that would define the hobby for the next fifteen years: the Full Art, a card with edge-to-edge artwork, textured foil and none of the usual yellow frame. Between Black & White (2011) and Legendary Treasures (2013), eleven sets turned the Pokémon-EX into the star of every pack, debuted the first trainer Full Art and left behind a handful of secrets that in 2026 became five- and six-figure objects. This is Part 6 of our TCG history: the era that invented the modern chase card.
If you're new to the series, you can start with Part 1: the Wizards era or with Part 5: the HGSS era, which ends exactly where this one begins: with Call of Legends closing out the classic format in February 2011, two months before Unova rebooted the game.
Black & White
114 cards
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About this set Black & White
Noble Victories
101 cards
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About this set Noble Victories
Next Destinies
99 cards
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About this set Next Destinies
Dark Explorers
108 cards
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About this set Dark Explorers
Dragons Exalted
124 cards
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About this set Dragons Exalted
Plasma Storm
135 cards
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About this set Plasma Storm
Legendary Treasures
113 cards
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About this set Legendary Treasures
Prices updated on October 30, 2026 · TCGPlayer via TCGdex
Quick answer: the Black & White era spans eleven sets (from Black & White to Legendary Treasures). Its signature is the Full Art card, which arrived for the legendary Pokémon, then for the Pokémon-EX (which returned in Next Destinies, February 2012) and, from Noble Victories on, also for Supporters: N was the first trainer Full Art in history. The most valuable pieces are the Lugia-EX Team Plasma Full Art from Plasma Storm (≈$2,700 raw) and the secret Charizard from the same set. In PSA 10, the era is living its hottest moment: because of how tiny their graded populations are, 2026 saw sales of tens and even hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Before getting down to the cards, a look at the whole. Here's how the total value of the Black & White base set has moved over the past few months. The chart updates itself with our weekly price snapshot:
Value history
Market value (raw, ungraded) · ~18-month window · source: TCGPlayer via PokéTrace
The return of the EX and the birth of the Full Art
The era's big new thing wasn't a Pokémon or a type, it was a card format. The Full Art debuted in the base set with the legendary Reshiram and Zekrom, but it was in Next Destinies, in February 2012, that it found its definitive role: the return of the Pokémon-EX, gone since 2007, each with a normal version (Ultra Rare, cheap) and a Full Art version (the card everyone wanted). That pattern, normal EX versus Full Art EX, is exactly the mold the game still uses today with the ex, the V and the SIR.
Here a detail for collectors is worth noting: each EX has two different numbers. The normal Mewtwo-EX is 54/99 and costs about $31, while the Mewtwo-EX Full Art is 98/99 and is worth nearly ten times as much. When buying or cataloging, the number is what separates the common pack card from the chase. This curated gallery gathers the most relevant Full Arts and secrets of the whole era, sorted by raw value. The live price refreshes every 24 hours; click any card to enlarge it:
Prices updated on October 30, 2026 · TCGPlayer via TCGdex
The face of the EX's return is the Mewtwo-EX Full Art from Next Destinies, our cover card and one of the most played Pokémon of the decade. Raw it runs around $262, but its real story is in PSA 10, and we'll get there at the end.
The first Supporter Full Art: N
If the Full Art EX were the era's great Pokémon rarity, the Full Art Supporters were the design innovation that lasted longest. And they have an exact starting point: N, the leader of Team Plasma, in Noble Victories (101/101), November 2011. According to the official TCG site, it was the first Supporter printed with edge-to-edge art. Before N, trainers were normal-frame cards; after N, every set brought its trainer Full Arts (Skyla, Colress, Ghetsis, Iris, Bianca) and today they're among the most collected cards in the game.
N in Full Art runs around $234 raw, well above many EX of the same era, proof of how much the character and the historical milestone weigh. It's also the narrative anchor of the whole generation: Team Plasma and its enigmatic "king" N give structure to the Black & White story and reappear, now as declared villains, in the 2013 Plasma sets.
The Secret Rares: Full Art Pokémon numbered above the set
The era also popularized the modern Secret Rare, the card whose number exceeds the set's printed total (that 115/114 that gives away there's something beyond the end of the list). In Black & White, these secrets weren't gold cards: worth clarifying because it's a common confusion. The full-metal gold secrets came later, in the XY era. Here the secrets were Full Art Pokémon, numbered above the set, and today they're some of the most expensive pieces in the block. The four most sought-after, click to enlarge:
The secret Charizard from Plasma Storm (136/135) is the jewel of the group and one of the era's two price grails. Raw it runs around $1,150; in PSA 10, as we'll see, it plays in another league. Following it are the Rayquaza from Dragons Exalted (128/124), the first secret Dragon card in history, and the Blastoise from Plasma Storm (137/135).
The Team Plasma arc and the era's grails
In 2013, the three Plasma sets (Plasma Storm, Plasma Freeze and Plasma Blast) brought the Team Plasma story to its climax, and along the way left behind the block's most expensive cards. A group of Pokémon-EX came out as Team Plasma cards, with a different back than usual, and their Full Art versions are today the most coveted chases: the Lugia-EX (Plasma Storm 134), the Deoxys-EX (Plasma Freeze 111, ≈$791 raw) and the Genesect-EX (Plasma Blast 97).
The absolute king is the Lugia-EX Team Plasma Full Art. Raw it's the most expensive card of the era (around $2,700), but its leap into legend happened in PSA 10. Here's how its raw value has moved over the past year, the recent window, not the full arc since 2013:
Lugia-EX Team Plasma (Full Art · Plasma Storm) · raw market value
Market value (raw, ungraded) · ~18-month window · source: TCGPlayer via PokéTrace
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Radiant Collection: the shiny send-off
The era ended on November 6, 2013 with Legendary Treasures, the block's largest set, which hid a collector wink of its own: the Radiant Collection subset, 25 shiny cards numbered RC1 to RC25. Its most valuable piece is the Mew-EX Full Art (RC24), which runs around $288 raw, followed by the Shaymin-EX (RC21). It was the epilogue of the classic Black & White format, right before the XY era reinvented rarities once again with the full-art EX, the Megas and, now yes, the gold secrets.
The PSA 10s that exploded in 2026
This is where the Black & White era stopped being "cheap modern cards" and became news. The reason is simple and a little cruel: almost nobody kept them in gem condition. They were cards from 2011 to 2013, opened to play with and stuffed into binders, not capsules. The result, a decade later, is tiny PSA 10 populations (there are barely ~21 graded copies of the Lugia-EX Full Art in the world) and, when modern collecting demand arrived in 2026, prices shot up to figures nobody would have imagined for "cards from ten years ago".
The era's four best-documented grails in PSA 10, with their art and a link to the source of each figure. Click any to see it in high resolution:
The 2026 headline was the Lugia-EX Team Plasma Full Art: a PSA 10 copy sold at auction for $660,000 in October, a figure that places it among the most expensive modern cards in history. It's worth reading with a cool head: it's a one-off record sale, not a market value. That same card sold for $3,000 to $5,000 just a few years ago, so the honest thing is to say the "typical" PSA 10 runs around $5,000 and that recent auctions have carried it into territory of tens or hundreds of thousands depending on the bid. The secret Charizard is a firmer case: its PSA 10 sales in 2026 cluster between $80,000 and $108,000 (with a graded population of around 79), versus the ~$15,000 of 2025. The Mewtwo-EX Full Art had a one-off sale of $292,500 in October, though its more typical PSA 10 value runs around $115,000. And the secret Rayquaza, the first secret Dragon card in history, moves between $11,000 and $33,000 depending on the source: one copy sold at Goldin for $32,888 in May 2026, though aggregators place it lower (watch out for the six-figure "asking" prices going around, which aren't closed sales). Below each card we link the source of its PSA 10 figure.
Free tools · Your collection
What is YOUR Black & White worth?
Track what you already own card by card and watch its live value in the collection tracker, or print free placeholders to hold their spot in your binder while you hunt down the Full Arts and the secrets of the era.
About the prices
This article separates two things on purpose. The raw prices (ungraded) are Near Mint market values on TCGPlayer, refresh every 24 hours and are the source for the live galleries and the charts. Those charts show a recent window (our price data begins in early 2025), not the full arc since 2011, so we label them "recent market value", never a complete price history. A detail particular to the era: many of these vintage Full Arts and secrets trade in a thin market, with no stable live price, so where you see a dash in today's price it's to be expected; the "at publish" value we show comes from our own TCGPlayer price tracking.
The PSA 10 prices are something else: they're graded market values as of the publication date (October 2026), and in this era they're thin, very volatile markets. Many figures come from one or two sales, and 2026 brought record auctions that coexist with much lower "normal" prices, which is why we give them as ranges and separate the record sale from the typical value (the Lugia-EX case is the perfect example). Where a figure depends on a single bid we flag it for what it is, and each PSA 10 value links to its source under the card: the auction house or the price aggregator the figure comes from. The "at publish" prices are historical evidence and are never modified after publication. All figures are TCGPlayer USD or eBay only. This is editorial reference, not investment advice.
Series · Part 5
Missed the previous chapter? The HGSS era (2010–2011)
The 26 Prime cards, the 9 LEGENDs split into two halves and Call of Legends' Shiny subset, with the five-figure Umbreon Prime. The era that closes the classic format, right before Black & White.
Read Part 5: the HGSS era →With Legendary Treasures, in late 2013, the Black & White block came to a close: eleven sets that reset the game, brought the Pokémon-EX back to the center of the table and, above all, invented the Full Art card, the mold of the modern chase. What came next was the XY era, with the Mega Pokémon-EX, the gold secrets and the first full-art cards that pushed collecting to the scale we live with today. That will be the next chapter. Until then, the Full Arts and the secrets of Black & White remain one of the hottest spots in the modern vintage market.