Destined Rivals Guide: ETB Contents, Chase Cards & Value (Australia)
Grailborne Set Guide
Destined Rivals (SV10) is the set that finally let Team Rocket and your favourite trainers headline their own cards — and it produced one of the most chased Special Illustration Rares of the Scarlet & Violet era. Here’s exactly what’s in the box, which cards carry the value, and how the market has actually moved for Australian collectors weighing up sealed.
What’s in the Elite Trainer Box
The standard Destined Rivals ETB is the core opener product — nine packs plus an ETB-exclusive promo and the usual accessories:
- 9 booster packs — your shots at the set’s ex, Illustration Rare and Special Illustration Rare line-up.
- Team Rocket’s Wobbuffet full-art promo — its Illustration Rare was cut from the main set and made exclusive to the ETB, so you can’t pull it from boosters.
- Accessories — card sleeves, energy cards, dice, condition markers and a player’s guide.
Note the split: the standard ETB holds nine packs and one Wobbuffet promo, while the Pokémon Center ETB carries eleven packs and two Wobbuffet promos (one with the Pokémon Center logo). If you’re comparing prices, make sure you’re comparing like for like.
What to buy and why
Three ways into the set, depending on whether you’re opening, sampling or holding sealed:
The chase cards
Destined Rivals is carried by its Team Rocket and trainer-owned Special Illustration Rares. These are the cards setting the secondary market (estimates, March 2026):
| Team Rocket’s Mewtwo ex (Special Illustration Rare) | ~US$484 |
| Cynthia’s Garchomp ex (Special Illustration Rare) | ~US$199 |
| Ethan’s Ho-Oh ex (Special Illustration Rare) | ~US$151 |
| Team Rocket’s Nidoking ex (Special Illustration Rare) | ~US$92 |
| Team Rocket’s Crobat ex (Special Illustration Rare) | ~US$66 |
A clean tell on where the demand sits: Team Rocket’s Mewtwo ex SIR is the box-art card and sleeve art — it is not the ETB promo (that’s Wobbuffet) — yet it has run further than every other card in the set.
What the market is telling us
The way to read a set is pull difficulty multiplied by character popularity — the scarce card of a beloved subject is where the money pools. Destined Rivals fits that pattern almost perfectly. Team Rocket’s Mewtwo ex SIR pairs one of the rarest slots in the set with arguably the most iconic Pokémon ever printed, and it has behaved accordingly: it climbed roughly US$70 in the two months to March 2026 to sit near US$484, while softer cards in the same set drifted. That divergence — the marquee chase rising while filler settles — is the signature of genuine collector demand rather than blanket speculation.
Why this set has staying power
Two things give Destined Rivals durability beyond a single hot card. First, the subject matter: Team Rocket is one of the longest-running brands in the franchise — the Jessie, James and Meowth trio have been on screens since the very first anime season — and Mewtwo has anchored fan-favourite lists since the original 1998 film. Second, the design hook: this is the set built around trainer-owned Pokémon, with cards literally named for Cynthia, Ethan, Misty and Team Rocket. That pulls in character collectors as well as set completists, widening the buyer base. Broad nostalgic subjects, a finite Scarlet & Violet print window, and a chase card with real headroom is the combination that tends to separate sets that hold from sets that fade.
The buyer’s call
If you’re opening, the ETB is the sweet spot — nine packs, the ETB-locked Wobbuffet promo and live shots at the Team Rocket SIR line. If you’re holding, a sealed booster box gives you the broadest exposure to a set whose top end is still trending up. A few honest caveats: don’t overpay into release-day hype — sealed product typically takes one to three years to clear its sticker price, and Destined Rivals is now past launch so you’re buying a known quantity, not a lottery. Reprint risk on Scarlet & Violet main-series sets is real, so scarcity here is moderate rather than guaranteed. Store sealed flat, cool and out of sunlight to protect resale condition, and remember Australian allocation runs tight — for the better sealed products, availability is usually the binding constraint, not timing.
Sources: Pokemon.com, PokeBeach, Bleeding Cool Value Watch. Card values are secondary-market estimates and vary by condition and time. Pull results vary.