The 2004 EX Team Rocket Returns Treecko Gold Star is one of twenty-seven Gold Star cards printed between 2004 and 2007, shiny-colored Pokemon with a gold star after the name, pulled at roughly one per two boxes. For most of the past decade it was the cheap one: a starter from a set collectors ignored, trading for a fraction of the Charizard, Rayquaza and Umbreon Gold Stars.
Four sales, one grade
| Date | Price | Note |
|---|---|---|
| January 2025 | about $7,000 | PSA 10 |
| Before August 2026 | $32,790 | PSA 10, record at the time |
| August 22, 2026 | $114,000 | PSA 10, Fanatics weekly auction, second lot |
| August 22, 2026 | $132,000 | PSA 10, Fanatics weekly auction, first lot |
Nineteen months, nineteen times. The move from $32,790 to $132,000 happened in a single auction, which is how repricings at the top of the vintage market tend to arrive: not a drift but a step, when two deep-pocketed collectors decide at the same time that the old price was wrong.
The whole category moved
The same August 22 auction sold five Gold Star lots for $369,000 combined, with buyer's premium:
- Japanese PLAY promo Flareon Gold Star, PSA 10: $60,000, against a prior high of $11,770 in November 2025
- EX Deoxys Rayquaza Gold Star, PSA 6: $43,200, against $25,600 in July 2026
- EX Dragon Frontiers Mew Gold Star, PSA 9: $19,800, against $19,500 a week earlier
The Mew is the tell: a card that had already re-marked a week before added only 1.5 percent. The Flareon and the Treecko, which had not traded at the new level, jumped four- and five-fold. The market is marking the whole set to a new ladder one card at a time, and the cards that have not been through an auction yet are the ones with the gap still open.
What to do with it
If you own a Gold Star in any grade, pull its last three public sales and check whether any of them are from August. If none are, the card has probably not been re-marked yet. If you are buying, the cards that have already re-marked (Treecko, Flareon, Rayquaza, Mew, Umbreon, Espeon) are the ones where the easy part of the move has happened.
Sources: ComicBook.com, August 22, 2026; SI Collectibles, August 23, 2026.
Chart of the Day ran in The Pack Report, August 24, 2026: A $180,000 Koffing, and the Treecko That Went From $7,000 to $132,000. Published by Rip Station.