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Celebi & Venusaur GX card art from Team Up

Image courtesy of TCGdex.net

Overview

Celebi & Venusaur GX is a TAG TEAM-GX Pokémon card from the Sun & Moon era expansion Team Up (SM9). This card presents two Grass-type Pokémon, Celebi and Venusaur, united on a single card to form a powerful synergy-centric encounter. With an exceptionally high hit point total for its era and a trio of attacks that balance offense, status disruption, and healing, the card embodies the Team Up design philosophy of pairing strong partners to unleash multi-pronged gameplay. The TAG TEAM-GX designation indicates unique rules and a powerful GX attack that can influence late-game momentum when used judiciously.

Card Information

Name: Celebi & Venusaur GX
Set: Team Up (SM9)
Rarity: Ultra Rare
Illustrator: Mitsuhiro Arita
HP: 270
Types: Grass
Suffix: TAG TEAM-GX
Dex Entries: 3, 251 (Celebi and Venusaur)
Stage: TAG TEAM-GX (not a traditional evolution line; represents a pairing of two Pokémon on a single card)
Attacks:

Pollen Hazard — Cost: Grass, Colorless, Colorless; Effect: Your opponent’s Active Pokémon is now Burned, Confused, and Poisoned. Damage: 50.
Solar Beam — Cost: Grass, Grass, Colorless, Colorless; Damage: 150.
Evergreen GX — Cost: Grass, Grass, Colorless, Colorless; Effect: Heal all damage from this Pokémon. If this Pokémon has at least 1 extra Grass Energy attached to it (in addition to this attack’s cost), shuffle all cards from your discard pile into your deck. You can’t use more than 1 GX attack in a game. Damage: 180.

Weakness: Fire ×2
Retreat Cost: 4
Variants: Normal, Holo, Reverse (First Edition: False)
Legal Formats: Expanded legitimately; Standard format not legal at the time of the card’s listing (Standard: False, Expanded: True)
Set Details: The Team Up expansion features a broad collaboration theme, pairing Pokémon across types and generations; SM9’s symbol and logo are used to identify Team Up cards, with a total official count of 181 in the set and a total print run of 196 cards.
Pricing (as of late 2025): CardMarket data (updated 2025-10-31) shows an average price around €31.53, with a low price circa €6.99 and a bullish trend around €25.51. Subsets and variants have shown additional dispersion (avg1, avg7, avg30 values listed in the source). TCGPlayer data (updated 2025-10-31) for holofoil copies lists a low around $34.19, mid around $49.93, high around $79.97, and a market price near $46.28, with direct low prices near $34.51.

Gameplay and Strategy

The Celebi & Venusaur GX card operates as a multi-pronged tool within Grass-focused strategies, leveraging its high health and the diverse effects of its attacks. Its 270 HP is exceptionally high for a single Pokémon on a TAG TEAM-GX card, which helps it withstand early-game pressure and survive several turns in the face of heavy attacking formats. The card’s attack suite enables a combination of immediate board disruption, substantial damage output, and late-game recovery—elements that can shift momentum in Expanded play where TAG TEAM-GX cards remain legal.

Pollen Hazard supplies early disruption by applying three status conditions (Burn, Confusion, and Poison) to the opponent’s Active Pokémon, which compounds pressure across turns and can influence retreat decisions or trigger other effects in the opponent’s deck. The 50 damage is modest, but the status impact often proves more valuable in matchups where active retreat options are limited or where the opponent’s Pokémon cannot easily remove multiple conditions in a single turn.

Solar Beam delivers a robust mid-game option with 150 damage. This attack gives the card a straightforward route to pressuring opponents with a heavy hit while leveraging Grass energy acceleration to maximize energy attachment efficiency in turn sequences that favor large, energy-dense plays.

Evergreen GX represents the card’s signature strength: healing and potential recycling. By healing all damage from Celebi & Venusaur GX, the card can stall and prolong its presence on the field, especially in matchups requiring staying power. The GX condition adds a strategic layer: if you attach at least one additional Grass energy beyond the attack’s cost, you can shuffle your discard pile back into your deck, effectively restoring resources and potentially extending late-game viability. However, like all GX attacks, Evergreen GX can be used once per game, requiring careful timing and anticipation of opponent responses.

Deck builders typically consider synergy with other Team Up partners and broader Grass-energy acceleration lines. The card’s Fire-type weakness means alignment with resilient Grass deck archetypes or support cards that mitigate vulnerability to Fire-oriented opponents. The Retreat Cost of 4 indicates a need for stable switching options or supporting Pokémon with lower retreat costs to maintain tempo. In practice, Celebi & Venusaur GX can serve as a resilient anchor in mid-game boards, pairing offensive pressure from Solar Beam with defensive utility from Evergreen GX to outlast opponents who rely on single-turn knockouts.

Collector and Market Information

The Team Up set, including this TAG TEAM-GX pairing, is a notable collectible within the broader Pokémon TCG landscape. As an Ultra Rare card, its print runs are limited relative to common and uncommon cards, which contributes to its desirability among collectors and players alike. The holo variant, in particular, is sought after for visual appeal and potential mint-condition valuation.

From a market perspective, CardMarket’s post-2025 data indicates an average market value around €31.53 for non-holo copies, with a broad price range and a visible upward trend in certain submarkets (avg, low, and trend values are provided by the data source). TCGPlayer’s holofoil market data shows low prices around $34.19 and mid prices near $49.93, with market pricing near $46.28 and a high price approaching $79.97. These figures reflect typical supply and demand dynamics for a sought-after Team Up TAG TEAM-GX card in the Expanded format, where collectors and players value both playability and condition-sensitive mint copies.

Cards from this set, including Celebi & Venusaur GX, are commonly tracked by collectors for their rarity, artwork, and role in Team Up’s signature cross-pollination of Pokémon groups. While the card’s power level is situational within game formats, its distinctive artwork and strategic depth contribute to its standing in long-term collections and competitive-relevance assortments.

Art and Lore

The illustration for Celebi & Venusaur GX was created by Mitsuhiro Arita, a veteran Pokémon card artist renowned for shaping the visual language of the early TCG era. Arita’s work on Team Up blends dynamic composition with vibrant color palettes, representing the collaborative pairing of Celebi and Venusaur in a lush, nature-forward setting. The Team Up set emphasizes cross-pollination among Pokémon families, and this card exemplifies that theme by presenting two beloved Grass-types as a single, synergistic unit. The artwork reinforces the symbolism of balance and renewal—ethos aligned with Celebi’s mythic time-travel motif and Venusaur’s enduring presence in the Grass-type line.

In the broader lore of the Pokémon TCG, TAG TEAM cards symbolize cooperative strategies that leverage the strengths of two Pokémon to overcome opponents’ defenses. Their artwork often foregrounds the linked relationship between the paired Pokémon, and Celebi & Venusaur GX is a prime example of this design philosophy, both in its mechanical footprint and its visual storytelling.

Trivia

The card is part of the Team Up expansion’s suite of TAG TEAM-GX cards, a mechanic introduced to emphasize two-Pokémon partnerships and a powerful GX attack that is limited to once per game.
With an HP total of 270, Celebi & Venusaur GX sits among the higher-end HP values for TAG TEAM-GX cards from the Team Up era, contributing to its durability in Expanded play.
The Evergreen GX attack enables a potential late-game deck-refresh by shuffling the discard pile into the deck, which can dramatically alter resource availability if timed correctly with additional Grass energy attachments.
The card’s dual Dex IDs (3 for Celebi and 251 for Venusaur) reflect its composite nature and its place within the broader Pokedex lineage feeding into Team Up’s cross-pollinated strategies.
As a non-Standard-legal card, its primary competitive footprint is in the Expanded format, where players can access a broader set of older expansions and TAG TEAM interactions.

📘 Celebi & Venusaur-GX (Team Up)