Ruby & Sapphire Set Guide

Overview

Ruby & Sapphire came out on July 1, 2003, with 109 cards: 87 Pokémon, 13 Trainers and 9 Energy. It started the EX series with the Hoenn Pokémon of the Ruby and Sapphire games, the starters Blaziken, Sceptile and Swampert among its holos.

Its headline cards are the first Pokémon-ex, written with a lowercase ex. A Pokémon-ex is stronger than a regular Pokémon, and your opponent takes 2 Prize cards when it is Knocked Out. The set has eight, numbered 96 to 103.

Cards and rarities

Ruby & Sapphire has 109 cards. Every card shows its number over the printed total along the bottom, as in "4/109". 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 109 and nothing is numbered above it. The eight Pokémon-ex are the Rare Holo EX cards. 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 Pokémon-ex and a Hoenn starter:

Mewtwo ex

Ruby & Sapphire #101

Energy Absorption attaches up to 2 Energy from your discard pile; Psyburn does 60.

Scyther ex

Ruby & Sapphire #102

Agility prevents everything done to it next turn on heads; Slash does 50.

Blaziken

Ruby & Sapphire #3

Firestarter attaches a Fire Energy from your discard pile to a Benched Pokémon once a turn.

Trainers worth knowing

A Supporter and an Item:

Professor Birch

Ruby & Sapphire #89

Draw until you have 6 cards in your hand.

PokéNav

Ruby & Sapphire #88

Look at the top 3 cards of your deck and take a Pokémon or Energy card from them.

The chase card: Mewtwo ex

Mewtwo ex

Ruby & Sapphire #101

Rarity Rare Holo EX

Card number 101/109

Market price, October 22, 2026 $746.79

Illustrator Katsura Tabata

Ruby & Sapphire's chase card is Mewtwo ex, 101/109, illustrated by Katsura Tabata, at $746.79 on October 22, 2026.

It is worth about four times the next card, Scyther ex ($180.13). The first holo that isn't a Pokémon-ex is Blaziken, at $108.57.

Mewtwo ex is printed once in the set.

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 Pokémon-ex and two Hoenn starter 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 Ruby & Sapphire, bought as singles, cost $2,372.35 on October 22, 2026. That is the 15th most expensive of the sixteen sets in the EX series.

The three most valuable cards, Mewtwo ex, Scyther ex and Lapras ex, come to $1,099.70, or 46% of the total. Without them the set costs $1,272.65. Of the 109 cards, 55 were under $2.00, together $49.24; the other 54 add up to $2,323.11.

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

Ruby & Sapphire is not legal in Standard or Expanded as a set: Expanded starts with the Black & White series in 2011. The catalog marks 13 of its 109 cards as legal anyway, eleven of them in Standard too.

They are the six basic Energy, which are always legal; Energy Search, Energy Switch, Poké Ball, Potion and Switch, legal in both formats; and Lum Berry and Rainbow Energy, legal in Expanded only.

Each card other than basic Energy 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