The rarest card in Darkness Ablaze is Salamence VMAX (#194), a Rare Rainbow.
Why Salamence VMAX tops the list
Darkness Ablaze prints just 7 Rare Rainbows, the thinnest tier in the set, and Salamence VMAX sits at #194 among them. Rarity and price don't always line up. By market value the priciest card is Charizard VMAX (#20) at about $54.31, so the rarest pull and the most expensive one are different cards here.
How Salamence VMAX sits in the wider chase
Darkness Ablaze runs to 201 cards including 12 secret rares, and Salamence VMAX is the scarcest of them. Other cards collectors hunt in the set:
- Charizard VMAX (#20) — Rare Holo VMAX (~$54.31)
- Butterfree VMAX (#190) — Rare Rainbow (~$24.05)
- Scizor VMAX (#193) — Rare Rainbow (~$13.33)
- Eternatus VMAX (#192) — Rare Rainbow (~$11.25)
- Charizard V (#19) — Rare Holo V (~$10.28)
Star Pokémon to chase in Darkness Ablaze
Beyond the single rarest card, these are the headline Pokémon and their prints in the set — each appears in multiple slots, so there's more than one Darkness Ablaze card to hunt per name:
- Butterfree — Butterfree V (#177), Butterfree VMAX (#190)
- Salamence — Salamence V (#185), Salamence VMAX (#194)
- Scizor — Scizor V (#183), Scizor VMAX (#193)
- Eternatus — Eternatus VMAX (#192)
- Rillaboom — Rillaboom (#197)
If you're hunting the rarest pull, Salamence VMAX is the one to prioritise; the rest of Darkness Ablaze's chase fills in from there. With 12 secret rares and 0 full-art cards across the 201-card set, there's a deep bench of rare pulls behind it.
Figures are from the pokemontcg.io dataset (TCGplayer pricing), as of June 2026.