2016 Pokémon Card Values & Price Guide

The five English sets of 2016

• XY BREAKpoint (February 3, 2016) continued the BREAK Evolution mechanic, whose cards are printed sideways, in landscape orientation.
• Generations (February 22, 2016) was a special set for the 20th anniversary. It includes the Radiant Collection, a 32-card subset numbered RC1 to RC32.
• XY Fates Collide (May 2, 2016).
• XY Steam Siege (August 3, 2016) brought back dual-type Pokémon, cards with two types at once.
• XY Evolutions (November 2, 2016) closed the era with a near reprint of the 1999 Base Set. Its versions of the original Pokémon reuse the classic artwork with modern HP and attacks.

The year's XY Black Star Promos, numbered with an XY prefix, came from collection boxes, tins and events, among them a Greninja promo. Japanese releases from 2016 also appear here, including the Mythical & Legendary Dream Shine Collection, the PokeKyun Collection and the first Japanese Sun & Moon collections, released ahead of the English Sun & Moon set.

What makes a 2016 card valuable

• Evolutions Charizard (11/108). The set's headline card uses Mitsuhiro Arita's original Base Set artwork and is valued as an affordable stand-in for the 1999 Charizard. See all of its printings in the Evolutions and Charizard guides.
• The Radiant Collection. The RC-numbered cards from Generations are the set's chase cards; the full-art Sylveon-EX (RC32) is among the most valuable 2016 cards in our index.
• Japanese collector sets. The Dream Shine Collection's mythical Pokémon, such as Victini, Shaymin and Celebi, sit near the top of our 2016 values.
• Trainer cards and Mega Evolutions. Evolutions' Misty's Determination (#108) and Generations' M Charizard-EX (#12) are among the more valuable cards in this guide.

How to tell which 2016 printing you have

• Evolutions or 1999 Base Set? The artwork is often identical. Check the number: Evolutions cards are numbered out of 108, Base Set cards out of 102, and Evolutions uses the modern card layout with the Evolutions set symbol.
• Radiant Collection numbers start with RC. RC21 and RC32 are both Sylveon-EX, for example, and only RC32 is the full art.
• Holo, reverse holo and stamps. The Evolutions Charizard exists as a holo, a reverse holo and a prerelease-stamped holo; each is a separate printing with its own value.
• BREAK cards are printed sideways. A standard-orientation card of the same Pokémon is a different, usually cheaper, printing.

Which 2016 cards are worth grading

The anniversary sets were printed in very large numbers, so grading rarely pays for an ordinary 2016 card. It can for the cards above: the Evolutions Charizard in each of its versions, the Radiant Collection full arts and the Japanese collector holos. Because the Evolutions Charizard is so common, its value depends almost entirely on condition: in our data a PSA 9 is worth several times a raw copy, and a PSA 10 far more.

The XY era began in 2014 and reached BREAK in 2015; 2017 opened the Sun & Moon era.