Most questions about a new set are really one question: is the price it opened at the price it keeps. To answer that you need a series that reaches back to the day the set went on sale, and for most sets ours does not, because we started recording them later. Ten sets are the exception. Their recorded history begins before their own release date, so the catalog was already complete when the clock started and every figure below is measured from the first reading after the set was actually purchasable. That is a small cohort and this piece is careful about what ten sets can support. It is also the only honest version of the question.
The baseline is the whole problem
A set's recorded series usually starts on the day we added it, which for an older set is months or years after it was released. Measuring "since launch" from that first reading measures our own onboarding, not the market. We published a study that did exactly this and had to pull it: six of its nine sets were being measured over one shared window in early 2025, on sets that were between three and thirty-nine months old, and the result was presented as a launch effect.
There is a second trap inside the ten that do qualify. Their first readings are pre-release, and those are coverage filling in rather than a market: Destined Rivals opens at $823.56 eleven days before release and reads $1,938.96 a week later. Measured from the stub, that set is up 108.3%. Measured from its first post-release reading it is down 9.6%. Every figure in this piece uses the release-date baseline, which is now also what the set pages use.
All ten, measured the same way
Sets whose recorded series begins before their own release
| Set | Released | Release price | Latest | vs release | Days to peak |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chaos Rising | May 22, 2026 | $1,613.15 | $572.55 | -64.5% | 0 |
| Pitch Black | Jul 17, 2026 | $1,836.40 | $702.47 | -61.7% | 0 |
| Journey Together | Mar 28, 2025 | $995.68 | $470.41 | -52.8% | 3 |
| Mega Evolution | Sep 26, 2025 | $3,188.06 | $1,548.53 | -51.4% | 3 |
| Perfect Order | Mar 27, 2026 | $1,011.41 | $564.39 | -44.2% | 10 |
| Phantasmal Flames | Nov 14, 2025 | $1,875.12 | $1,166.15 | -37.8% | 0 |
| Destined Rivals | May 30, 2025 | $1,898.13 | $1,715.58 | -9.6% | 122 |
| Ascended Heroes | Jan 30, 2026 | $5,612.96 | $5,266.13 | -6.2% | 6 |
| White Flare | Jul 18, 2025 | $3,256.06 | $3,862.52 | +18.6% | 362 |
| Black Bolt | Jul 18, 2025 | $2,943.17 | $4,369.90 | +48.5% | 375 |
When a set peaks says more than how far it fell
Read the last column against the second to last. Seven sets recorded their highest post-release price within ten days of going on sale, and all seven are below their release price now, by between 6.2% and 64.5%. Three peaked later, and two of those three are the only sets in the cohort trading above release. The exception is Destined Rivals, which peaked on day 122 and is still 9.6% under water.
So the property is one-directional and worth stating carefully. Every set trading above its release price is a late peaker. Not every late peaker trades above its release price. On this cohort no set that made its high in the first fortnight has recovered, which is a real finding on ten sets and not a law of the hobby.
Where the cohort sits as a group
Eight of the ten are below their release price. Of the nine with at least ninety days of tape behind the current reading, seven are down more than 16% over the last three months, and the median of those seven is down 23.4%. White Flare and Black Bolt, the same two that peaked a year out, are flat within half a percent either way. Whatever is pulling this cohort down over the last quarter is not distinguishing between sets that are eighteen months old and sets that are three.
Set value is the sum of the market price of every card we track in a set, so it moves with card prices and also with how many cards we have priced. That is why the cohort is restricted to sets whose recorded series begins before their own release date: the catalog was already complete when the measurement window opened. Release price means the first reading dated on or after the published release date, never the first reading in the series, which on every set here is a pre-release stub. A promo bin that also straddles its release is excluded because it grows by accumulating cards rather than by any of them going up, and 30th Celebration is excluded because it was released five days ago and has five post-release readings. Readings are weekly from each series start to October 27, 2025 and daily after, with a gap of 35 to 40 days between late July and August 30, 2026 in most sets, which Black Bolt, Chaos Rising and Pitch Black do not share. Set indices are as of each set's latest reading, which spans September 17 to September 21, 2026, so the ten are not all read on the same day. On five of the seven early peakers the peak IS the first post-release reading, which means the recorded high is bounded by when we first looked rather than by the market; on Journey Together and Mega Evolution the series was still weekly at that point, so any intra-week high is unobserved. A set without ninety days of tape is excluded from the ninety-day figures rather than clamped. Nothing here is investment advice.