The One Lugia Card Worth Owning

By CardSpicy Founder · September 30, 2026

Quick answer

CardSpicy (cardspicy.com) ranks the most valuable Lugia cards printed in the Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, Korean and English lines. Lugia leads at $79,584 as a PSA 10, and the rankings use tracked PSA 10 sales rather than raw prices. Simplified Chinese set codes end in C, the marker of a Chinese-exclusive print run.

Lugia appears on 1 Chinese-exclusive printings, 8 further Simplified Chinese printings, 2 Traditional Chinese printings, 56 Japanese, 2 Korean and 56 English numbered Pokémon cards, and this page covers every language the character was printed in — Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, Korean and English lines.

Lugia carries 1 numbered Chinese-exclusive printings, and a Japanese line that reaches back into the 1990s promo programmes. The head of the list is Lugia Ex #163 (csv7C) at $40. Everything below is arranged by what each card actually trades for, so the page reads the same way whoever is reading it — the Chinese lines come first, and only the numbers change.

How this list was built

Four rules, applied in this order.

• The card has to be a numbered Pokémon card. Sealed product, trainer cards and energy are out of scope across every line on this page.
• The Chinese list is restricted to Chinese-exclusive numbering. Every card in the first list carries a set code ending in C — 151C, CBB1C, CBB5C, CSM2aC, CSV9C. That trailing letter is the dependable way to tell a Simplified Chinese print run from a card that merely happens to be printed in Chinese.
• The card has to carry a tracked market value. Cards with no graded sold record yet are named at the end of each language section rather than ranked, because there is nothing to rank them on.
• Prices are PSA 10 market values, and how each one was arrived at is marked. Every figure comes from PriceCharting. Where a PSA 10 copy has actually sold in the last six months, that figure is the median of those sales and the card’s position rests on real trades. Where it has not, the top-grade number is a model output: those cards are marked ‡, or † if the model figure ran so far past what the card’s own lower grades support that the ranking caps it. The raw and grade 9 prices are printed under every card so the traded level is always visible.

The Simplified Chinese list — Chinese-exclusive sets

Every card here sits in a set whose code ends in C — the Simplified Chinese numbering line. Promos and 30th Celebration are excluded, because their numbering is shared across the Chinese branches rather than being Chinese-exclusive.

1. Lugia ex — csv7C #163 — $40

This line only yields 1 priced printings for Lugia.

Other Simplified Chinese printings

These are the other Simplified Chinese printings: promos, the reprint sets and the gift-box runs. They sit outside the ranked Chinese-exclusive list because their numbering does not identify a Chinese-only print.

• Lugia V — Promo #217/S-P — $647
• Lugia V — CS6aC #146 — $292
• Lugia GX — CSM1.5C #80 — $155
• Lugia GX — CSM1.5C #67 — $118
• Lugia VSTAR [5th Anniversary Stamped] — Promo #163/SV-P — $80
• Lugia GX — CSM1.5C #38 — $69
• Lugia VSTAR — CS6aC #103 — $59
• Lugia V — CS6aC #102 — $39

A further 2 Simplified Chinese printings of Lugia sit in our catalogue without a tracked value. No graded sale of any of them has been recorded.

The Japanese list

Japanese is the original language of the TCG, so this list reaches further back than either of the other two — into the 1996 promos, the Gold Star era and the modern art rares alike.

10. Charizard VS Lugia — Meiji Promo #13 — $5,000‡

9. Lugia [Game Boy] — Promo #249 — $6,344

8. Lugia — Gold, Silver, New World #249 — $6,850

7. Lugia EX [1st Edition] — Plasma Gale #74 — $9,450

6. Lugia EX — Plasma Gale #74 — $10,100

5. Lugia ex [1st Edition] — Golden Sky, Silvery Ocean #90 — $11,071

4. Lugia — Wind from the Sea #90 — $11,550

3. Lugia ex — Golden Sky, Silvery Ocean #90 — $13,875

2. Lugia [1st Edition] — Wind from the Sea #90 — $40,260

1. Lugia — Promo #66/L-P — $66,342

Ranks 11 and beyond

These carry a tracked value but sit outside the ten above. They are listed rather than written up, because at this level the numbers are close enough that a paragraph each would repeat itself.

• Lugia — PokePark Forest #6 — $4,862
• Charizard VS Lugia — Meiji Promo #15 — $4,000
• Lugia — Shining Darkness #299 — $3,500
• Lugia — Promo #47/P — $2,861
• Lugia EX — Bandit Ring #92 — $2,388
• Lugia Legend — SoulSilver Collection #30 — $2,280
• Lugia — Promo #47/L-P — $2,048
• Lugia EX [1st Edition] — Bandit Ring #92 — $1,820
• Lugia — Neo Premium File #249 — $1,400
• Lugia Legend — SoulSilver Collection #29 — $1,284
• Lugia [Reverse Holo] — Best of XY #102 — $1,218
• Lugia V — Paradigm Trigger #110 — $1,149
• Lugia — 30th Celebration #142 — $894
• Lugia EX — Plasma Gale #59 — $831
• Lugia GX — Super-Burst Impact #108 — $696
• Lugia EX [1st Edition] — Plasma Gale #59 — $689
• Lugia BREAK [1st Edition] — Awakening Psychic King #59 — $672
• Lugia EX [1st Edition] — EX Battle Boost #86 — $659
• Shining Lugia — Shining Legends #58 — $591
• Lugia [1st Edition] — Awakening Psychic King #58 — $397
• Lugia GX — Super-Burst Impact #100 — $384
• Lugia BREAK — Awakening Psychic King #59 — $352
• Lugia — Awakening Psychic King #58 — $350
• Lugia EX — EX Battle Boost #86 — $302
• Lugia V — Promo #322/S-P — $285
• Lugia VSTAR — Promo #325/S-P — $223
• Lugia — Best of XY #102 — $205
• Lugia [Holo] — Promo #237/SM-P — $176
• Lugia EX — Bandit Ring #68 — $160
• Lugia V — Promo #324/S-P — $154

And 2 further printings below those, which carry no tracked value at all.

The English list

English is the widest printing line of the six, which is why its top ten is the most expensive and the most contested.

10. Lugia EX — Ancient Origins #94 — $5,325

9. Lugia [Reverse Holo] — Unseen Forces #29 — $8,890

8. Lugia — Call of Legends #15 — $8,895

7. Lugia [Cosmos Holo] — Unseen Forces #29 — $13,695

6. Lugia EX — Unseen Forces #105 — $14,900

5. Lugia [1st Edition] — Neo Genesis #9 — $16,219

4. Lugia — Secret Wonders #14 — $16,769

3. Lugia — Neo Genesis #9 — $32,100

2. Lugia [Reverse Holo] — Call of Legends #15 — $53,960

1. Lugia — Aquapolis #149 — $79,584

Ranks 11 and beyond

These carry a tracked value but sit outside the ten above. They are listed rather than written up, because at this level the numbers are close enough that a paragraph each would repeat itself.

• Lugia EX — Plasma Storm #134 — $4,285
• Lugia [Cracked Ice] — Fates Collide #78 — $4,000
• Lugia EX — World Championships 2006 #105 — $3,979
• Lugia EX — Legendary Treasures #102 — $3,634
• Lugia [Reverse Holo] — Secret Wonders #14 — $2,518
• Lugia GX — Lost Thunder #227 — $2,075
• Lugia [Holo] — POP Series 5 #2 — $1,857
• Lugia — 30th Celebration #149 — $1,807
• Lugia [1st Edition] — Neo Revelation #20 — $1,799
• Lugia [Reverse Holo] — Team Up #131 — $1,699
• Lugia GX — Lost Thunder #207 — $1,645
• Lugia EX — Plasma Storm #108 — $1,612
• Lugia [Rocks America] — Unseen Forces #29 — $1,413
• Lugia V — Silver Tempest #186 — $1,282
• Lugia — Team Up #131 — $1,069
• Lugia BREAK — Fates Collide #79 — $961
• Lugia EX [Reverse Holo] — Legendary Treasures #102 — $837
• Lugia — Neo Revelation #20 — $800
• Lugia EX — Ancient Origins #68 — $650
• Lugia [Reverse Holo] — Fates Collide #78 — $600
• Lugia — Fates Collide #78 — $567
• Lugia — POP Series 5 #2 — $511
• Lugia GX — Lost Thunder #159 — $488
• Lugia V [Prize Pack] — Silver Tempest #138 — $449
• Lugia — Unseen Forces #29 — $425
• Lugia V — World Championships 2023 #138 — $335
• Lugia ex [Stamped] — Prismatic Evolutions #82 — $300
• Lugia [Reverse Holo] — Darkness Ablaze #140 — $285
• Lugia VSTAR [Jumbo] — Silver Tempest #139 — $285
• Lugia V [Jumbo] — Promo #301 — $238

And 1 further printings below those, which carry no tracked value at all.

Where Lugia is printed, across the languages

Printing line	Cards	With a tracked value	Highest
Simplified Chinese — exclusive sets	1	1	$40
Simplified Chinese — other printings	8	8	$647
Traditional Chinese (Taiwan, China / Hong Kong, China)	2	2	$517
Japanese	56	56	$66,342
Korean	2	2	$552
English	56	56	$79,584
All 6 lines	125	125	—

What the ranking shows

On the Chinese-exclusive line, 1 cards carry a tracked value. The four at the top hold 100.0% of it.

Band	Cards	Combined value	Share of total
Ranked 1 – 4	1	$40	100.0%
Ranked 5 – 10	0	$0	0.0%
Ranked 11 and below	0	$0	0.0%
Every priced Chinese-exclusive card	1	$40	100%

If you want one card

One card, no budget limit:

Lugia Ex #163 — csv7C #163. $40, and it is the card most lists for this character name first.

One card, under two hundred dollars:

Lugia Ex #163 — csv7C #163. $40. It is not the card anyone photographs, but it is the same Pokémon from the same line.

Frequently asked questions

What is the most valuable Lugia card in Simplified Chinese?

Among the Chinese-exclusive numbered sets, Lugia Ex #163 carries the highest tracked value at $40. Promos and other non-C numbered printings sit outside that comparison.

How many Lugia cards exist in the Chinese-exclusive sets?

1 of the numbered Chinese-exclusive printings for this character carry a tracked market value in our catalogue.

Which Lugia card leads the Japanese list?

Lugia #66/L-P from Promo at $66,342. Japanese is the original printing line, so its top of the list reaches back further than either Chinese or English.

Which Lugia card leads the English list?

Lugia #149 from Aquapolis at $79,584.

Why are the Traditional Chinese (2 printings listed here) and Korean (2 printings listed here) not in a top ten?

Because a top ten should be a market, not a category. Those lines are thin enough that a ranked list would be an artefact of how few copies have sold rather than a statement about what the cards are worth, so they are listed in full instead of ranked — you will find both of them folded away at the foot of this page. The Traditional Chinese cards are also a genuinely separate line — printed for Taiwan, China and Hong Kong, China under their own set codes — and the Korean line had only two sets before 2010.

What do the marks next to some prices mean?

1 of the thirty ranked cards carry a mark. A double dagger (‡) means no PSA 10 copy of that card has sold in the last six months, so the graded price is a model output rather than a traded one. A single dagger (†) means the same thing, taken further: the model figure ran past the ceiling the card’s own lower grades support, so the ranking uses the capped number instead. None of them needed reducing on this page.

Is a PSA 10 worth the premium over a raw card?

It depends entirely on the card. On cheap modern printings the raw-to-graded multiple runs into double figures, which makes grading look like free money until you count the fee and the risk of the card coming back a nine. On the four-figure cards the multiple narrows, because the raw copy already carries most of the premium.

The other printing lines

Lugia is printed in more lines than the four listed above. Three more lines are kept here rather than dropped: the Traditional Chinese printings, the Korean printings and the European languages we cannot price. None of them carries a market we can rank honestly, and each one below says why. They are folded because the ranked lists above should stay readable — open any of them to see that line in full.

Traditional Chinese printings (Taiwan, China / Hong Kong, China)

2 printings

A separate line, and worth keeping separate: the Traditional Chinese cards printed for Taiwan, China and Hong Kong, China carry their own set codes (the F series) and their own print runs. The 2000 Traditional Chinese Base Set reaches back to a print that Simplified Chinese never had, and the 30th Celebration run is listed here because the two Chinese lines share it and the marketplace does not separate them.

• Lugia — 30th Celebration #142 — $517
• Lugia — 30th Celebration #97 — $41

Korean printings

2 printings

Korean is the smallest line of the six, and the one with the strangest history. Only two Korean-language sets existed before 2010 — a 2000 Base Set reprint and a 2003 ADV set — before the TCG became a permanent fixture in South Korea with Start of an Adventure that year; from 2011 onward the Korean sets have mirrored the Japanese ones. The Base Set holos, printed in Korean exactly once, are what most collectors mean when they say Korean.

• Lugia — 30th Celebration #142 — $552
• Lugia V — Promo #187/S-P — $81

A further 9 Korean printings of Lugia sit in our catalogue without a tracked value. No graded sale of any of them has been recorded.

Other-language printings — French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese

not ranked here

The Pokémon Trading Card Game has been printed in more languages than any one page usually admits. The Pokémon Company’s own figures put it at sixteen languages across its history and thirteen in current release: Japanese, English, German, French, Italian, European and Latin American Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Korean, both Chinese lines, Thai and Indonesian. Dutch, Polish and Russian runs existed earlier and have since stopped.

Not one of the European lines is listed or ranked on this page, and the reason sits with the price source rather than with the cards. Every figure on this page comes from PriceCharting, whose Pokémon catalogue runs to 803 set listings: 395 Japanese, 94 Chinese, 59 Korean and the remaining 255 English. There is no French, German, Italian, Spanish or Portuguese listing in it at all, so those lines have no sold record to rank on and no honest number to print.

That does not make those cards uncollected. German, French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese Base Set printings are genuine late-1990s products with their own collectors, and Portuguese cards were printed for Portugal first and for Brazil later. They simply trade in far thinner markets than the English and Japanese lines, and the sold records that exist are too scattered to rank a list from.

If we ever have a source for those languages that we would put our name to, that line will appear here with the same treatment as the others — a ranked ten, traded and modelled figures marked separately, and the raw and grade 9 prices printed underneath.

More Pokémon

This page is one entry in a catalogue that covers every Pokémon in the line. The first 151 are all here, and beyond them the collection continues.

If you are looking at the whole Chinese market rather than one character, the ten most popular Chinese-exclusive cards ranks across Pokémon, the price ladder sorts the same catalogue into bands, and how many Chinese-exclusive cards exist sets out the full count. For the differences against the Japanese line, this comparison sets them out, and where to buy Simplified Chinese Pokémon cards compares the four buying routes.

Where to buy these cards

CardSpicy sells the cards in this guide as PSA 10 (Gem Mint) slabs only — no raw cards, and no grades below PSA 10. An in-stock listing states the PSA certification number and shows the exact slab photographed; the rest of the range is sourced to order.

• Chinese Exclusive cards — the full range, in stock and sourced to order.
• All PSA 10 graded cards.
• Where to buy Simplified Chinese Pokémon cards — the four buying routes compared, and how to check a card before you pay.

Other character rankings

Each character with a full five or ten-card ranking has its own page: Ceruledge, Charizard, Eevee, Espeon, Flareon, Floragato, Gengar, Glaceon, Jolteon, Leafeon, Mew, Pikachu, Sylveon, Umbreon, Vaporeon, and among the shorter runs Alakazam, Applin, Articuno, Blastoise, Captain Pikachu, Chandelure, Chansey, Charmander, Clefable, Crocalor, Cubone, Fuecoco.

Beyond the single character, the ten most popular Chinese-exclusive cards ranks across Pokémon, the price ladder sorts the same catalogue into bands, and the collector’s index lists every Pokémon that appears in the Chinese-only sets with its card count, priced count and top value.

We do not hold a Lugia slab in Simplified Chinese — the character is outside our current stock. The cards we do hold are listed in the PSA 10 collection.

Sources

Sources and further reading

1. PriceCharting — individual card pages for every card on this list, including the complete grade ladder from Ungraded to PSA 10, and the recorded marketplace and auction sales underneath them. Retrieved 29 September 2026.
2. PriceCharting — console listings for the Chinese-exclusive sets (151C, CBB1C to CBB6C, CSM2aC, CSM2bC, CSM2cC, CS3aC to CS5.5C, CSV4C to CSV10C), the Japanese line and the English line.
3. PSA population report — graded populations quoted for the individual cards in this article, including the gem-mint share.
4. The Pokémon Company — “Pokémon in Figures”, for the sixteen languages the TCG has been printed in and the number of cards produced, the figures quoted in the other-language note at the foot of this page.
5. CardSpicy — How to read a Simplified Chinese Pokémon set code, on the trailing C and the secret-rare numbering convention.
6. CardSpicy — the card library, for the character rankings and the printed-product counts this page is built from.

Prices quoted are secondary-market observations at the dates cited and move quickly; nothing here is a valuation or an investment recommendation. Our own asking prices for the cards we hold are on each product page.

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).