Rocket's Mewtwo 14 price — what is this card worth today?

Over the last 90 days the price moved between $218.78 and $254.95, and it now sits 73% of the way up that range. Measured against the reading 90 days ago it is +12.0%.

On cards that were given several finishes the gap is wide — an early 1st Edition print can run five to eight times the plain one. Same artwork, same number, and the price is decided by a single mark under the picture.

Rocket's Mewtwo 14 is one of those cards: it is on record in 2 finishes — 1st Edition Holofoil and Unlimited Holofoil, and those records run from $245.14 to $323.33. Which finish a listing is offering decides most of what the copy is worth, so it is the first thing to check before comparing prices.

Among the priced prints of this Pokémon this card is number 5 of 12. The top of the list is held by early releases, which is the plainest sign that the year of printing moves the price more than the character does.

The cards themselves are identical. Same 70 HP, same attacks. What splits the price is not the card but which box it came out of — the rarity mark and the size of the set together decide how hard one was to pull.

Put the rarity marks and the set sizes side by side and the order explains itself: the smaller the set and the scarcer the mark, the dearer the print.

Shin-ichi Yoshida is credited on 52 cards in this archive. The prints above are the ones that currently carry the highest prices, which is the quickest way to see the kind of card this artist tends to be given.

An illustrator is a way of sorting cards, not a reason for their price. Buying another card by the same hand does not carry the price across — what makes the price is the Pokémon, the rarity and the year, and the numbers for that sit in the ranking section.

The cheapest total is $248.00 at eBay, and the dearest of the marketplaces that quote a total is $258.40 — a spread of $10.40 on a card whose asking prices sit within $0.27 of each other. Shipping, not the sticker price, is what decides it.

A price quoted in euros moves with the exchange rate, and an order that crosses a border can pick up import duty on arrival, so a European total can change place between one day and the next.

The gap between the cheapest copy on sale and what buyers actually settled at is $25.10. That gap is the room you have to negotiate or to wait out — the market price is the honest middle, and the lowest listing is one seller, on one day, in one condition.

Prices here are for the card alone. Shipping, import duty and marketplace fees are added on top by the seller, and on cross-border orders they can move the order of the marketplaces around.

Grouping by the Pokémon answers "is mine the expensive one". Grouping by the exact name answers "am I looking at the print I think I am". The two questions land buyers in very different places, which is why they are kept apart here.