Pikachu has been printed in the Chinese-only sets more often than any other Pokémon: thirty-five cards across seven different products. Four of them hold two thirds of everything those thirty-five are worth.
That concentration is the whole story of collecting Pikachu in Simplified Chinese. If you want one card, and you want the one that matters, the field narrows fast — and the numbers do most of the deciding for you. This is the ranked ten, with the PSA 10 value of each and what a raw copy costs beside it.
How this list was built
Three rules, applied in this order.
- The card has to sit in a Chinese-only set. Every card below carries a set code ending in C — 151C, CBB1C, CBB5C, CSM2aC, CSV9C. That trailing letter marks a Simplified Chinese print run, and it is the dependable way to tell a Chinese-only card from a card that merely happens to be printed in Chinese. Reading a Chinese set code from end to end covers the whole system.
- The card has to have a tracked PSA 10 value. Thirty-five Pikachu cards exist across these sets, and twenty-nine of them have a PSA 10 price on record. The six that do not are recent enough that graded copies have not changed hands yet, and a card with no price cannot be ranked.
- The card has to be a Pokémon card. Sealed product, trainer cards and energy are out of scope.
One exclusion needs explaining, because it is the largest Pikachu printed in Chinese. The 5th-anniversary Pikachu, 153/SV-P, trades in the low four figures and is not on this list. Promo numbering is shared across the Chinese branches — the same promo number is used in Traditional Chinese product as well — so a promo number on its own cannot establish which branch a card came from. Everything below sits inside a numbered set whose code ends in C, which is unambiguous. Chinese promos are a separate part of our catalogue rather than a category inside this list.
The ten, ranked
10. Pikachu & Zekrom GX — CSM2aC #54 — $239
Raw $25 · grade 9 $34
The lowest raw price in this top ten by a wide margin: twenty-five dollars ungraded against $239 in a PSA 10 holder. It is one of two printings of the Pikachu and Zekrom pairing inside CSM2aC, the other being #166 further up this list.
9. Pikachu ex — CSV9C #245 — $273
Raw $155
CSV9C is one of the Scarlet & Violet-era Chinese main sets, and Pikachu’s slot in it is a plain ex rather than an art rare. Graded at $273 against $155 raw, the holder is doing most of the work — but the multiple is the smallest in this list, at under two to one.
8. Pikachu — CSM2aC #153 — $282
Raw $55 · grade 9 $73
A raw copy is a fifty-five dollar card and a PSA 10 is a $282 card. That gap is what a clean example of a mid-tier Chinese print is worth once it is encapsulated, and it is the reason buying this card raw and grading it is a story people tell — with the usual caveat that grading outcomes are not something anyone can promise in advance.
7. Pikachu & Zekrom GX — CSM2aC #166 — $449
Raw $149 · grade 9 $150
Two printings of the Pikachu and Zekrom pairing sit inside CSM2aC, at #54 and #166, and #166 is the stronger of the two by a wide margin: $449 against $239. Raw and grade 9 sit almost level on this card, at $149 and $150, which puts the entire premium on the top grade.
6. Captain Pikachu — Gem Pack Vol. 5 (CBB5C) — $600
Raw $265 · grade 9 $281 · in stock
Captain Pikachu is the Horizons-era Pikachu, the one that flies with Friede, and Gem Pack gave it a group of its own in two separate volumes. This is the Vol. 5 printing, CBB5C 01 07/07 — the top treatment of its group, which in Gem Pack is always the art rare. What is in each Gem Pack volume lists the rest of both volumes.
5. Captain Pikachu — Gem Pack Vol. 1 (CBB1C) — $691
Raw $228 · grade 9 $261 · in stock
The first Captain Pikachu, from the first Gem Pack volume: CBB1C 07 09/09, again the top treatment in its group, and the higher of the two Captain Pikachu cards on this list. Both are in stock, so this pair is where most people start.
4. Pikachu — Collect 151 (151C) #170 — $1,038
Raw $530 · grade 9 $678 · in stock
Journey, the first of the four Collect 151 art rares, and the lowest of the four on price. All four were drawn by one illustrator, Oswaldo KATO, as a single commission — the same Pokémon in four moods — and the printed numbers run in sequence from 170 to 173. The four cards in their own right are covered in detail elsewhere on this site; here they appear only by what they cost.
3. Pikachu — Collect 151 (151C) #173 — $1,200
Raw $697 · grade 9 $891 · in stock
Gathering, the group scene — an open clearing full of Pikachu. It sits third, roughly two thirds of the way to the top of this list and a little over half the price of the card above it.
2. Pikachu — Collect 151 (151C) #171 — $1,545
Raw $775 · grade 9 $730 · in stock
Hope — sunlit grassland, Pikachu beside a sleeping Psyduck. It is the calmest of the four, and on this ranking it is the second card in the game. Note the raw figure against grade 9: raw copies are tracked fractionally above the grade 9 price here, which happens when a particular grade band has thin records rather than because the card is worth less in a holder.
1. Pikachu — Collect 151 (151C) #172 — $3,187
Raw $2,000 · grade 9 $1,717 · in stock
Surprise — the moonlit forest, with Gengar filling the frame behind Pikachu. It is the most valuable Pikachu in the Simplified Chinese line by a margin of more than two to one over the next card, and it holds 28.9% of the value of every Pikachu card in this list on its own. It is also the only card in the set where Pikachu shares a frame with a second headline Pokémon, which is the pairing collectors argue about.
What the ranking shows
Pikachu is a character whose value sits in one place. Thirty-five cards exist, twenty-nine can be priced, and the shape of the distribution is close to all-or-nothing.
| Band | Cards | Combined PSA 10 value | Share of total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ranked 1 – 4 — Collect 151 art rares | 4 | $6,969 | 63.2% |
| Ranked 5 – 10 | 6 | $2,534 | 23.0% |
| Ranked 11 and below | 19 | $1,530 | 13.9% |
| Every priced Pikachu card | 29 | $11,033 | 100% |
Two further patterns run across the whole group.
Every card here is worth more in a PSA 10 than either raw or in a grade 9. That is not universal across Chinese cards in general, but it holds without exception across all twenty-nine priced Pikachu. The median raw-to-PSA-10 multiple is 8.6, and the median grade-9-to-PSA-10 multiple is 2.75 — so the top grade is carrying a real premium rather than a rounding difference.
The supply is concentrated in two products. Gem Pack Vol. 1 and Vol. 5 between them account for sixteen of the thirty-five Pikachu cards in the Chinese-only sets. Gem Pack is the all-foil mini-set family, one volume per release, and it is where Pikachu is printed most.
Where Pikachu is printed
| Product | Set code | Pikachu cards |
|---|---|---|
| Gem Pack Vol. 1 | CBB1C | 9 |
| Gem Pack Vol. 5 | CBB5C | 7 |
| Collect 151 | 151C | 7 |
| CSM2aC subset | CSM2aC | 6 |
| CSV9C | CSV9C | 4 |
| CS4aC subset | CS4aC | 1 |
| Grand Terastal Gathering | csv9.5C | 1 |
| Total | 35 |
The counts are cards, not artworks. Gem Pack prints each Pokémon in a group as a ladder of treatments — a Poké Ball foil, a Master Ball foil, a shiny, and so on, up to the art rare at the top — so a single Pikachu group can contribute eight or nine separate cards to that total while only one of them is a chase.
If you want one card
- One card, no budget limit: the Surprise art rare, 151C 172/151. It is the only Pikachu in the Chinese line that has held a four-figure graded price since release, and it is the card most lists name first.
- One card, a few hundred dollars: either Captain Pikachu. Both are in the $600 to $700 band, both are still in stock, and both are the top treatment of their group rather than a mid-ladder foil.
- The whole character: the four Collect 151 art rares as a set. They were commissioned together, numbered in sequence, and they are designed to be read as one body of work rather than four separate purchases.
Frequently asked questions
Which Pikachu card is the most valuable in Simplified Chinese?
Among the cards in Chinese-only numbered sets, the Surprise art rare from Collect 151 — 151C 172/151 — carries the highest tracked PSA 10 value at $3,187. Chinese promo cards sit outside that comparison, because their numbering is shared between the Chinese branches.
Are these cards Simplified Chinese exclusives?
Only the four Collect 151 Pikachu art rares are exclusive to the Simplified Chinese line. The rest of the list is printed under Chinese-only set codes, but the Pokémon and the card design also appeared in other languages. That distinction is the whole reason a Chinese set code matters: the code tells you which print run you are holding, not whether the artwork is unique to it.
How do I tell a Simplified Chinese Pikachu from a Traditional Chinese one?
Two checks. First, the language printed on the card itself, which is the only definitive test. Second, the set code: codes ending in C — 151C, CBB1C, csv5C — are Simplified Chinese print runs, and promos numbered SV-P are not a reliable indicator because the same number can appear in more than one Chinese branch.
Is a PSA 10 worth the premium over a raw card?
On this list, every card is worth more in a PSA 10 than raw or in a grade 9, and the median raw-to-PSA-10 multiple across the twenty-nine priced Pikachu cards is 8.6. The premium narrows as you go up the list; on the Surprise art rare the raw and PSA 10 prices are much closer together, because raw copies of a four-figure card are already expensive. Grading outcomes are never certain, and nothing here is a prediction about what any individual card will grade at.
Which Chinese sets is Pikachu printed in most?
Gem Pack. Vol. 1 and Vol. 5 account for sixteen of the thirty-five Pikachu cards printed in the Chinese-only sets, followed by Collect 151 and the CSM2aC subset. The volume-by-volume guide covers all six Gem Pack releases.
Other cards in the family
Pikachu is one entry in a wider series on Chinese cards. If you are looking at the whole 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 background on why this branch exists at all, start here, and for the differences against the Japanese line, this comparison.
Sources
Sources and further reading
- PriceCharting — Pokémon Chinese console listings, including 151 Collect, Gem Pack Vols. 1 to 6, CSM2aC and CSV9C. PSA 10 values retrieved 24 September 2026.
- PriceCharting — individual card pages for Pikachu #170, #171, #172 and #173 (151 Collect), Captain Pikachu #709 and #107, Pikachu & Zekrom GX #54, #166, Pikachu #153 (CSM2aC) and Pikachu ex #245 (CSV9C).
- CardSpicy — Collect 151 in Simplified Chinese: the four Pikachu art rares, on the commission, the illustrator and the release sequence.
- CardSpicy — Gem Pack Vol. 1 to 6: what is in each volume, on group and treatment structure.
- CardSpicy — How to read a Simplified Chinese Pokémon set code, on the trailing C and the secret-rare numbering convention.
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.