The Brewdex Lost 15% of Its Value Since June. Most of the Cards Went Up.
Published on October 15, 2026
Former coffee shop owner and Level 4 TCGPlayer seller collecting every Pokémon card with a beverage in its artwork. More about me
Since June 1, PokéBrewdex has recorded the Near Mint market price of every card in the collection, every day. I set that up to keep the price on each card page current, but four and a half months of daily prices turned out to be more interesting than that: they show exactly what happened to a collection of beverage cards over a summer when prices went down.
The headline isn't great. The 131 printings with a price for every day since June 1 were worth $1,390 combined on June 1. On October 14 they were worth $1,179, a 15% drop. The 91 of those printings in my binder fell further, from $815 to $663 (−19%).
But that number hides the more interesting part: 74 of the 131 printings went up. Nearly all of the drop came from a handful of expensive cards.
Both lines peaked in late June and drifted down from there, and the slide picked up speed at the end: the Brewdex lost $68 between September 30 and October 14, nearly twice what it lost in all of August.
How I measured this
Every price is the Near Mint market price from TCGplayer data, recorded once a day. On days the site synced more than once, I used the last price.
I only counted printings with a price on every day from June 1 to October 14. Cards I added to the Brewdex after June 1 are left out, so new additions don't show up as fake gains.
"My binder" means the 91 of those printings I own today, valued as if I'd owned all of them since June 1.
These are Near Mint prices, and not every card in my binder is Near Mint. Read them as what NM copies sell for, not an appraisal of my copies.
One more caveat: 131 printings is a small, unusual slice of the market. Every one of them has coffee, tea, or matcha in the art. I can't tell you what the whole Pokémon TCG market did from this. I can tell you what happened to these cards.
The drop came from the top
This is the stat that surprised me: the 21 printings worth $20 or more on June 1 lost a combined $213. The whole Brewdex lost $211. Everything under $20, all 110 printings of it, finished about even (+$2).
Value in a collection like this is extremely concentrated. Just 13 printings held 61% of the Brewdex's value on June 1, and those 13 account for $207 of the $211 drop.
Which kinds of cards fell
Rarity tells the same story from another angle. The rarities collectors chase fell the hardest:
Special Illustration Rares fell 22% ($117 in total), and 13 of the 15 went down.
Illustration Rares fell 15%, with 14 of 20 going down.
Promos fell 14%, all of it from three cards: Mew ex, Team Rocket's Wobbuffet, and Flareon V lost $37 between them, while the other ten finished up about $5.
Ultra and Double Rares barely moved (−5%).
At the other end, 41 of 53 commons and uncommons went up, for a combined +32%. Before that sounds like a windfall: those 53 cards gained $14 between them, about 27 cents each. Rares and holo rares did the same thing on a smaller scale (+19%, or $4).
Two other patterns stood out:
Finish. Holofoil printings, which include every SIR and IR, fell 17%. Reverse holos (+32%) and non-holo printings (+28%) rose, but they're cheap cards, so the gains are pocket change.
Age. Among the chase rarities, age didn't matter: SIRs and IRs from 2023 (−18%), 2024 (−17%), and 2025 (−16%) fell by about the same amount, so this wasn't just new sets settling. The two from 2026 sets lost nearly half their value, but those sets have only been out since January and March. The bigger split was before and after Scarlet & Violet. The 38 printings worth $5 or more from Scarlet & Violet–era sets fell 20%, while the 9 from older sets finished flat. That's a small sample, though, and the older ones are mostly promos and Trainer Gallery cards, since SIRs and IRs didn't exist before 2023.
What happened in my binder
My own cards followed the same pattern. The 12 printings in my binder worth $20 or more on June 1 lost $136 between them. The other 79 lost $15 combined. In fact, 49 of my 91 printings went up. The binder still lost $151, because the cards that fell are the ones that carry the value.
The three biggest drops were all cards worth between $79 and $98 in June:
Gardevoir ex, the Special Illustration Rare from Scarlet & Violet: $97.66 → $68.50
Morty's Conviction, the Special Illustration Rare from Temporal Forces: $78.94 → $48.94
Eevee, the Illustration Rare from Twilight Masquerade: $96.17 → $69.67
The biggest gain was Sinistcha ex, the Special Illustration Rare from Twilight Masquerade, which went from $27.19 to $34.82 (+28%). It's one of only two of the 15 SIRs that went up, and it's the one I keep in a one-touch.
Why the drop doesn't change how I collect
After four months of watching these numbers, here's my takeaway: the drop mostly hit the cards whose value comes from the market, and mostly spared the cards whose value comes from the collection.
A price only matters when you buy or sell
If you're keeping a card, its market price is a number on a screen. The $151 my binder "lost" only becomes real if I sell, and a themed collection is one you build to keep. The prices that matter are the one you pay and, maybe someday, the one you sell for. Everything in between is noise.
The heart of a themed collection is cheap
Most of the Brewdex is commons, uncommons, and plain rares: 74 of the 131 printings, worth about $63 combined in June. Those are the cards with a teapot on a shelf or a coffee cup in the background, and they're the reason the collection exists. They rose this summer, but by pennies, and they'd belong in the binder just as much if they'd fallen by pennies.
Expensive cards carry everyone else's demand
Special Illustration Rares are priced by everyone who wants them: collectors chasing a set's best art, people opening packs, people buying to resell. When that demand cools, those cards fall, and they fall in dollars. None of that changes why a card is in a themed collection. The french press on the table in Gardevoir ex is still full after the card lost $29.
A falling market is a sale
The 40 tracked printings I don't own yet got cheaper too. They would have cost $575 on June 1 and $515 on October 14, about $60 (10%) less. If you're still working through a want list, a down market is good news.
Collecting for keeps
If you want a collection that doesn't rise and fall with the market, here's what I'd suggest:
Decide what your collection is about before you look at prices. A clear theme tells you which cards you'll keep, and price swings don't matter for those. How to start a themed Pokémon card collection walks through choosing one.
Pay attention to price when you buy, not every day after. Set a price you're happy to pay for each card on your list, and buy when it dips under.
Buy expensive cards because you love them, not to hold value. If a card is in your binder because you love the art, a $29 drop doesn't matter. If it's there as a store of value, it does.
Yes, I built a site that checks prices every day. Keeping the card pages accurate is useful. Refreshing your collection's value every morning isn't.
Every card page shows a daily-updated price if you want to see where things go from here, and the full PokéBrewdex collection has all the cards in this post.
