Celebration, Collaboration and Event Cards, Ranked

By CardSpicy Founder · September 29, 2026

Nothing on this list came out of a booster box. Every one of these 195 cards was handed out around something real — a museum, a brand, an anniversary, a world championship or a city launch — and together they are the most expensive corner of the hobby.

Celebration and collaboration cards sit outside the normal economy of the game. You cannot pull one, you cannot buy it in a pack, and there is no second print run to wait for. Each one exists because of an event that happened once, which is why the top of this list is not the top of any set.

The 195 below are ranked by what a graded copy actually sells for, highest first. Each entry shows the category it belongs to and the event or tie-in behind it, so the list reads as a record of what the card game has been used to celebrate rather than as a price table alone.

Quick answer

CardSpicy’s list has four categories: cards handed out at worlds, tournaments and city launches; brand and character crossovers; anniversaries and milestones; and museum or artist collaborations. They are ranked together on one measure — the recorded PSA 10 sale value — so the order is a price order rather than a judgement of which event mattered most.

171 of the 195 carry a graded PSA 10 value. The remaining 24 are recorded at their raw price. The single most valuable card on the list is a crossover, and it sells for roughly a thousand times what the card at the bottom of the list does.

The four categories

Every card here falls into one of four groups, and the groups behave differently as collectibles.

The first 100, ranked

The hundred most valuable celebration and collaboration cards, in order. The final column is the event, tie-in or release each card came from.

The rest of the list

Entries 101 to 195 complete the 195. Prices thin out sharply from here: the whole second half of the list covers a range that the top ten covers in single cards.

The ten at the top

Four of the ten are crossovers, which is the pattern the whole list follows: the cards tied to a brand or another franchise are the ones with the smallest print runs and the widest audience. The rest are event releases, where the price tracks how long the event ran and how many were handed out rather than how famous the character is.

Why these behave differently from set cards

Three things separate a celebration card from a card out of a set, and all three push the price up.

There is no second printing. A set card that sells out gets reprinted, and the price settles. A card handed out at one event in one city does not, so scarcity is fixed at the moment it is given out. There is also no way to pull one: no amount of opening product produces the card, which caps supply permanently. And the source is documented — an event, a brand or an anniversary — which gives each card a story that a main-set card does not have.

The practical result is that this list is far more volatile than the character pages. A single graded sale can move a card hundreds of places, because so few copies exist and so few of those ever come to market.

Frequently asked questions

What counts as a celebration or collaboration card?

Any card that was not distributed through normal product. That covers four kinds: cards handed out at worlds, tournaments and city launches; brand and character crossovers; anniversary and milestone releases; and museum or artist collaborations. On this list those four groups number 93, 64, 26 and 12 cards.

Why is a crossover card more valuable than a card from an anniversary set?

Because crossovers are printed in smaller numbers and reach a wider audience. A brand tie-in has to be licensed, so the print run is negotiated and finite, and it appeals to people who collect the other brand as well as to card collectors. An anniversary release is usually boxed and sold in shops, so more copies exist.

How are these cards ranked?

By the recorded PSA 10 sale value, highest first, with cards that have no graded sale shown at their raw price. The ranking is a price order only. It is not a judgement of which event or collaboration mattered more, and the categories are shown alongside every entry so the reason behind a card is never lost in the ordering.

Are these cards Simplified Chinese?

Not all of them. Most celebration and collaboration cards were handed out in Japan, and their set codes reflect that. They are collected here because they are the cards Chinese-card collectors ask about most often, and because the Chinese-exclusive gold cards that sit alongside them are covered separately in what a gold UR means.

Does a graded copy always exist?

No. 171 of the 195 have a PSA 10 value on record and 24 are shown at their raw price. For event handouts in particular, many copies were kept as souvenirs and never sent for grading, so the graded population can be very small even where the card is well known.

Sources

Where the cards and values on this page come from

• PriceCharting — printed promo and celebration card records with graded and ungraded sale values, retrieved 27 September 2026.
• Category, event and tie-in details are read from the card record and from the release each card came from.
• Values on this page are the recorded sale price of a graded copy where one exists, and the recorded raw price where none does.

Related reading

The Chinese-exclusive rarities that sit above these are covered in what a gold UR means, and the most expensive Pokémon cards puts the prices on this page in the wider context of the hobby. If you collect by theme rather than by price, collecting one Pokémon per trainer is a different way into the same set of cards.

Explore graded Simplified Chinese cards

Cards like these are the ones worth storing properly. The matte premium sleeves and the 3×4 rigid toploader cover most of it, and the card protection guide covers the rest.

Where to go next

• The CardSpicy card index — every card we track, with its PSA 10 population and market history (195 cards).
• The illustrator index — every artist behind those cards, card by card (110 artists).