Great Encounters Set Guide

Overview

Great Encounters came out on February 1, 2008, with 106 cards: 100 Pokémon and 6 Trainers, and no Energy. Its four Pokémon LV.X are Cresselia LV.X, Darkrai LV.X, Dialga LV.X and Palkia LV.X, numbered 103 to 106.

Its holos include Rotom, Darkrai twice, and all three Hoenn starters. It has no secret rares, and its six Trainers include Rare Candy and the Stadium Moonlight Stadium.

Cards and rarities

Great Encounters has 106 cards. Every card shows its number over the printed total along the bottom, as in "4/106". The cards print a set symbol, not a set code; the code here is the short one the catalog and TurnZero HQ file the set under.

The printed total is 106 and nothing is numbered above it. The four Pokémon LV.X are 103 to 106. Set completion in TurnZero HQ counts a set against its printed total and keeps the secret rares apart, so finishing the main set and chasing the cards above it read as two separate goals. How set completion works →

Headline Pokémon

Two LV.X and a holo:

Darkrai LV.X

Great Encounters #104

Put onto your Active Darkrai. Endless Darkness puts the Defending Pokémon to sleep, and two tails Knock it Out.

Palkia LV.X

Great Encounters #106

Put onto your Active Palkia. Restructure switches both players' Active Pokémon once a turn.

Rotom

Great Encounters #7

Astonish shuffles a random card from your opponent's hand into their deck; Telebeam does 60 and Paralyzes on heads.

Trainers worth knowing

A Supporter and an Item:

Felicity's Drawing

Great Encounters #98

Discard 1 card from your hand to draw 3, or 2 to draw 4.

Rare Candy

Great Encounters #102

Evolve a Basic Pokémon in play with a Stage 1 or Stage 2 card from your hand.

The chase card: Darkrai LV.X

Darkrai LV.X

Great Encounters #104

Rarity Rare Holo LV.X

Card number 104/106

Market price, October 22, 2026 $261.17

Illustrator Shizurow

Great Encounters' chase card is Darkrai LV.X, 104/106, illustrated by Shizurow, at $261.17 on October 22, 2026.

Palkia LV.X ($215.36) and Dialga LV.X ($194.01) follow, and the three together are over half of what a complete set costs.

Darkrai is printed three times in the set: two holos, 3/106 and 4/106, and the LV.X.

Only the exact version is worth its price. The number at the bottom of the card and the rarity symbol beside it tell you which one you pulled. Reading the number and rarity symbol →

Chase cards and prices

Four LV.X and two holos, priced as holofoil copies.

These are each card's headline TCGplayer market price on October 22, 2026. Prices can move a long way, most of all in a set's first months, so treat them as a snapshot. Each card's page shows today's price for every variant and its 90-day chart. How Pokémon card prices work →

What a complete set costs

One copy of every card in Great Encounters, bought as singles, cost $1,286.24 on October 22, 2026. That is the fifth most expensive of the seven sets in the Diamond & Pearl series.

The three most valuable cards, Darkrai LV.X, Palkia LV.X and Dialga LV.X, come to $670.54, or 52% of the total. Without them the set costs $615.70. Of the 106 cards, 61 were under $2.00, together $44.86; the other 45 add up to $1,241.38.

Each card is counted at its cheapest priced variant, usually a Normal copy rather than a Reverse Holofoil, or a stamped promo copy where the catalog prices one lower, at its TCGplayer market price. This is what it costs to buy the set as singles. It is not what opening packs returns, and not what a complete set would sell for, which after fees and the many cards worth cents would be noticeably less.

Playing it

Great Encounters is not legal in Standard or Expanded as a set: Expanded starts with the Black & White series in 2011. The catalog marks one of its 106 cards as legal anyway: Rare Candy, in both formats.

That card shares its name and text with a later, legal printing, which is what makes an older copy playable. Every other card in the set is legal in neither format.

Standard, Expanded and deck building rules →

Frequently Asked Questions