Chaos Rising Chase Cards: The Gold Greninja Costs the Same

Chaos Rising chase cards start and nearly end with Mega Greninja ex. On October 23, 2026, TCGplayer had the Greninja Special Illustration Rare (116/086) at a $116.38 market price and the gold Mega Hyper Rare (122/086) at $115.29. After them the list drops to Cinccino ex at $40.01.

The gold card is the strange one. TCGplayer's count has it about half as common as the SIR, and the market prices them level. Japan doesn't. So if you're choosing between ripping packs and buying a Greninja, the order of this list matters less than how far apart the two cards sit on rarity and how close they sit on price.

Two Greninjas hold 54% of the secret-rare value

Source: TCGplayer market prices for Chaos Rising, US shipping, read October 23, 2026, 06:42 UTC. Market price is TCGplayer's estimate from recent sales, not a sale price.

Chart: SetPulls. Source: TCGplayer market prices, read Oct 23, 2026.

Chaos Rising has 36 secret rares, numbered 087 to 122, and their market prices add up to $427.40. The two Greninjas are $231.67 of it, 54%, and Cinccino ex brings the top three to 64%. Below the six Special Illustration Rares, the best Ultra Rare is the regular Greninja full art at $8.41, and no Illustration Rare reached $5.50. Past the top three, nothing in this set is a chase card on price.

The market followed the story Pokémon wrote for the set. Its set page casts Mega Floette ex as the threat and Greninja as the hero who "gathers other powerful Mega Evolution Pokémon ex, including Mega Pyroar ex and Mega Dragalge ex, to ward off this growing threat." The hero is first, the villain's SIR is fifth, and Mega Pyroar ex got no Special Illustration Rare at all; its best card is a $2.27 Ultra Rare.

Card image: tcg.pokemon.com

Our Chaos Rising set page counts all seven of these as chase cards, going by rarity; going by price, only the first three stand apart.

The gold card is twice as rare and now costs the same

TCGplayer's Authentication Center opened more than 8,500 Chaos Rising packs. It found one named Special Illustration Rare in 1 in 496 packs and the Mega Hyper Rare, Greninja's gold print, in 1 in 956. In the week of May 18, when the set came out, the SIR's Near Mint market price was $437.99 on 62 sales and the gold card's was $341.47 on 23. The SIR carried a $96.52 lead, 28% above the gold card. On October 23 the lead was $1.09.

Chart: SetPulls. Source: TCGplayer price history, Near Mint, read Oct 23, 2026.

The SIR peaked at $456.75 in the week of May 25 and has been lower than the week before in every week since, 21 in a row counting this unfinished one. That's a 73% fall from release week, the steepest of the six Mega ex SIRs we tracked in our Mega SIR launch study. The gold card fell 66% and had four weeks up along the way. Cinccino ex lost 56%. So the gap closed from the top: the SIR fell faster, and the gold card never had to climb to meet it.

Sales track the pull rates

TCGplayer has logged 1,819 Near Mint copies of the SIR sold since release and 914 of the gold card, 1.99 to 1. The pull rates put the ratio at 1.93 (956 divided by 496). Cinccino ex, pulled at the SIR's rate, sold 1,660. That's what you'd see if the number sold mostly follows how many copies come out of packs, and it's our reading of the data, not something TCGplayer measured.

Two cautions keep it a reading. The gold rate's 95% range runs from 0.03% to 0.17% a pack, and TCGplayer put its own count, which looked kinder than Perfect Order's and Phantasmal Flames', down to luck: "the difference is not statistically significant. Odds are that we were simply more lucky with our pulls this time around." Either way, the gold Greninja isn't scarcer on the market than its pull rate says, and the market isn't paying for the scarcity it does have.

Japan, where this set came out first as Ninja Spinner, does pay for it: on October 23 TCGplayer had the Japanese gold Mega Greninja ex at $432.49, 1.86 times its Special Art Rare, though on just 16 listings, and our Delta Reign ranking found English gold priced well under Japan's in all four Mega sets it checked.

Pulling one costs 21 to 62 times the single

Pokémon's product page says a Chaos Rising Booster Display Box holds 36 packs, and TCGplayer's market price for one was $178.87 this week. That's $4.97 a pack. At that rate, 496 packs, the average wait for one named SIR, come to about $2,464, and 956 packs for the gold card to about $4,750. That's 21 times the SIR single and 41 times the gold one. For Cinccino ex it's 62 times.

Chart: SetPulls. Sources: TCGplayer pull rates and market prices, read Oct 23, 2026. Arithmetic by SetPulls.

A box gives about a 7.0% chance at the Greninja SIR and 3.7% at the gold card. Counting both, and assuming the two slots don't affect each other, which TCGplayer doesn't say, about one box in ten has a Greninja of either kind. Averaged over many boxes, the two Greninjas are worth $12.79 of each $178.87 box at today's prices. If you open Chaos Rising, open it for the fun of it and count a Greninja as a bonus.

GODEEPER: What one Special Illustration Rare slot returns per pack across seven sets, Chaos Rising included. Special Illustration Rare Pull Rates: 7 Sets, Cost per Hit →

Collectors split on the gold card

In July, u/Leather_Bluejay8632 opened a thread on r/PokeInvesting (July 15, about 4 points) naming "Mega Greninja EX #122" as their most underrated card, and "EVERY MEGA GOLD CARD" with it. Of the six top-level replies, the two highest-scored agreed: u/Many_Lengthiness_664 posted a photo with "I concur" (7 points when read on October 23), and u/hobo1256 wrote "My boyyy getting ready or the GOLD RUSH!!" (5 points). A vendor replied the next day and disagreed.

"Maybe these will go up, but I can tell you as a vendor no one seems to want these," u/OkObligation5979 wrote (comment, July 16, 3 points). "From 2 feet away you can't tell what card it is. It's not fun to display." TCGplayer's record backs them on demand: the gold card sold half as many copies, as the pull rates predict, and it's been priced above the SIR in one week out of 23, by 19 cents.

Two more replies, at 2 points each, sided with the vendor; the sixth was about a different card. u/Metaischeap (comment, July 17) wrote that "if they werent hard to pull nobody would care", and the price says even that rarity isn't earning a premium now. Two days after the vendor, u/epic_uriyah (comment, July 18) added: "Though they may be hard to pull they're not limited at all. i'd wait for if the sir Greninja goes under 200 and buy that instead." That worked. The SIR first went under $200 in the week of August 17, at $196.49, and it's about $80 below that now. Waiting has paid at every step so far, which is the one Greninja trick that hasn't stopped working.

Our verdict: buy the Greninja you like, don't rip for it

The call: buy the single. Pulling either Greninja at the box rate costs 21 to 41 times its market price, and nothing else in Chaos Rising is priced above $40.01 to soften a miss. Between the two, the gold card is the better buy if scarcity is what you're paying for, since half as many copies have sold and it costs $1.09 less. Take the SIR if it's the art you want; it has sold twice as many copies, so it's the easier one to sell on later. Neither has shown a floor yet: the SIR hasn't had a week up since May.

What would change our mind: the SIR's weekly market price rising two weeks in a row while Near Mint sales stay at 70 or more a week, as they have for the last four full weeks. Until that happens, a buyer has no reason to hurry. For where Chaos Rising sits among this year's releases, see our guide to every English Pokémon TCG set.

References

• Mega Evolution Chaos Rising, pokemon.com set page
• Chaos Rising product showcase, pokemon.com
• Pokémon TCG Chaos Rising pull rates, TCGplayer Authentication Center, Jun 4, 2026
• Mega Greninja ex 116/086, Mega Greninja ex 122/086 and Cinccino ex 119/086, TCGplayer, price history read Oct 23, 2026
• Chaos Rising Booster Box, TCGplayer, price history read Oct 23, 2026
• Chaos Rising singles, TCGplayer, market prices read Oct 23, 2026
• Mega Greninja ex 120/083, Ninja Spinner and 114/083, TCGplayer
• Chaos Rising, Bill's Archive
• What's your most underrated Pokémon card?, r/PokeInvesting, comments by u/OkObligation5979 and u/epic_uriyah