Mew and Mewtwo in 30th Celebration: The Futuristic Rares

30th Celebration introduces a rarity that has not existed before: the Futuristic rare, a card type designed by the artist YOSHIROTTEN, who also illustrated the set's foil Basic Energy cards. The two revealed Futuristic rares are Mewtwo ex and Mew ex. (sources: expansion page, announcement)

That makes Mew and Mewtwo the pair to understand if you want to know what is genuinely new about this set. They also appear at three other rarities, which is where the confusion starts: there are six Mew and Mewtwo cards in the release and four of them share a name with another.

What a Futuristic rare is

It is a new card type, not a new finish applied to an old one. The official expansion page lists "Futuristic Rare" as one of its own card categories alongside Pokemon ex, Special Art, Pikachu Rare and Classic Collection. (source: card gallery) In our catalogue the two sit at 157/128 and 158/128 — the last two numbers we hold for the set, above its printed total of 128, which is where a set's highest-rarity cards normally live.

What we cannot tell you, because no official page says it: how often a Futuristic rare appears in a booster pack. There is no published pull rate for this rarity, and an estimate from us would be a guess wearing a number. We would rather leave the gap visible.

Look at the two faces rather than the rarity label and the design intent is clear enough: both treat the Pokemon as a graphic object rather than a creature in a landscape, with hard-edged geometry and a flat, poster-like palette that owes more to print design than to the painted scenes elsewhere in the set. Put one next to a special illustration rare and they do not look like the same hobby. That is the point of a new category.

Every Mew and Mewtwo card in the set

The trap here is the name. Mewtwo ex 064/128 and Mewtwo ex 157/128 are both called Mewtwo ex, are both foil, and are not the same card or the same price. The collector number is the only thing that separates them at a glance. The same is true of Mew ex at 066/128 and 158/128. If a listing shows one and its title implies the other, that is a listing to skip.

Mew and Mewtwo outside the packs

The November product wave includes Figure Collections built around these two: each contains five booster packs, a sculpted figure by Kaiyodo Co. Ltd., and a foil promo with an oversize version of the same Pokemon — Mew or Mewtwo depending on which you buy. (source: US product showcase) Those promos are their own cards, separate from the six above, and cannot be pulled from a pack. Which product guarantees which promo is set out in our promo-by-product guide.

Buying one

Each of the six links to its own page above, and the ME: 30th Celebration set page lists everything we track from the expansion with its recent-sold market reference. Those references come from recent sold data and are not guaranteed values; a card appearing there is not a claim that a good deal exists for it right now.

• Check the number before anything else. 064 and 157 are different cards with the same name.
• Foiling proves nothing in this set. Every card in a booster pack is foil, including the Basic Energy. (source: announcement)
• A Futuristic rare is not a Classic Collection card. The reprints keep their original set numbers and are a different thing entirely — see the Classic Collection guide.

For the set as a whole, the main collector's guide is the overview; the other standout artwork in the release is covered in the best cards beyond Pikachu.