Top Pokémon Ascended Heroes Cards To Grade For Profit
Pikachu, Gengar, and Dragonite are the main targets.
Pokémon Ascended Heroes cards are currently going for borderline unbelievable prices, which naturally means I’m interested. Many of the cards from the top names in the Pokémon IP like Charizard, Pikachu, Gengar, etc. are going for thousands of dollars as PSA 10s right now. This post is going to look at my 4 favorites of these to target right now.
Each of these 4 cards is what I would call a high ticket purchase, although some are more so than others. Depending on your strategy as a card grader, this can be extremely strategic. In our case, our goal is to invest as much capital into cards with the potential to grade as PSA 10s, while targeting an average return on investment of 25% or higher. These cards all allow you to invest solid chunks of money with just one card.
Given that this is a new set (2026), with the first PSA 10s hitting the market at the beginning of February, we will apply a 20% Market Adjustment to our market values. To put this in simple terms, if a PSA 10 is worth $1,000, we will treat it as an $800 card in our calculation. You can read about our framework for doing this here.
Pokémon Ascended Heroes Most Profitable Cards To Grade
Analysis based on Expected Value (EV). Read the full EV tutorial here.
Expected Value = PSA 10 Value x Gem Rate + PSA 9 Value x (100% - Gem Rate) - Grading Costs - Selling Fees
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1. 2026 Pikachu ex 276
Values & Gem Rate
Raw Value | $1,050
PSA 10 Value | $3,500
PSA 9 Value | $1,150
Gem Rate | 72.4%
Profitability
PSA Submission Tier | Regular
Expected Value | $1,790.11
Expected Profit | $740.11
Expected ROI | 70.5%
Available For Purchase (eBay)
2026 Pikachu ex #277
Values & Gem Rate
Raw Value | $420
PSA 10 Value | $1,600
PSA 9 Value | $440
Gem Rate | 62.7%
Profitability
PSA Submission Tier | Value Max
Expected Value | $696.44
Expected Profit | $276.44
Expected ROI | 65.8%
Available For Purchase (eBay)
2026 Mega Dragonite ex #290
Values & Gem Rate
Raw Value | $750
PSA 10 Value | $2,240
PSA 9 Value | $750
Gem Rate | 68.0%
Profitability
PSA Submission Tier | Value Max
Expected Value | $1,117.92
Expected Profit | $367.92
Expected ROI | 49.1%
Available For Purchase (eBay)
2026 Mega Gengar ex #284
Values & Gem Rate
Raw Value | $1,300
PSA 10 Value | $3,500
PSA 9 Value | $1,400
Gem Rate | 68.3%
Profitability
PSA Submission Tier | Regular
Expected Value | $1,787.02
Expected Profit | $487.02
Expected ROI | 37.5%
Available For Purchase (eBay)
Grading & Other Notes
You can find our Complete Guide to PSA Grading here.
If you read this blog this will sound familiar, but one of the strengths of these cards are their abundance. In spite of very low pull rates and high market values, I see quite a few of these every day. This means that knowing these markets will give you a good bang for your buck in terms of actually finding profitable cards.
Another important note on these is that the Gem Rates are really high, but I warn you to still proceed with a bit of caution when it comes to deciding which of these to submit. On the one hand, quality control on these cards seems to be (mostly) pretty good. Corners, surfaces, and edges generally seem to all be well produced on these cards.
But that of course leaves centering. And I’m finding that it’s very very hard to find copies of these four cards that are actually centered. That means you’re going to have to be very picky finding only the best centered of these cards to buy if you’re going to have success grading.
One final thought. We easily could have included two more cards in this post, but I decided against it. Both the Charizard #294 and Dragonite #295 have massive PSA 10 values and could be profitable to grade, but both have relative low Gem Rates and high PSA 8 rates. Given how hard it already is to find PSA 10 candidates for the 4 cards above, I’ve decided that I’m not super interested in these for now.
I’ve attached pics of both of these cards below for your reference.
I don’t think it’s a bad idea to target these (we might even end up buying a couple), but I expect it will be challenging to find gemable copies.
BCG Auctions Tracker
The BCG Auctions Tracker is a tool that allows you to find auctions ending soonest on eBay for all the players and Pokémon that are most profitable to grade.
The most recent updates to this add Chase DeLauter and Sal Steward to the search filter, as both have had hot starts to the MLB seasons and have seen their Bowman First Autos rise significantly.
Try it out at the link below!
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