Lorcana Money Is Rotating Into Attack of the Vine
The Attack of the Vine presale box is up 47 percent since mid-June while last week's chase winners went red. We tracked the rotation on our own boards, and it has a deadline: the wide print lands July 24.
By Chase Society Desk
Saturdays we go outside Pokemon, and Lorcana holds the slot for a second week. The biggest mover in the game right now is a set nobody can open until next Friday.
Attack of the Vine hits prerelease tables at game stores July 17 and shelves everywhere July 24, per Ravensburger's announcement. It runs 207 cards, the first main set past the standard 204, with two new Iconics and the finale of the year-long Vine storyline. The market stopped waiting around mid-June. The presale booster box has climbed from $166 to $243 since then, up 47 percent, and the box case ran from $693 to $1,072.
At the same time, the cards that carried Lorcana's June rally started handing it back. Last Saturday we measured the collector tiers repricing 20 percent in two weeks. This week, most of those winners are red.
The money is still in the game. It concentrated into the one set nobody has opened yet.
The Unopened Set Leads the Market
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Price discovery on the singles barely exists yet. Only 25 of the set's 249 cards carry a price, most of them placeholder quotes, so sealed is where the market gets to vote. The vote is getting louder: the box added 7 percent this week, the case 14, and the Trove jumped 19 percent in the last seven days alone.
Impatience buys early and flattens out. This bid keeps climbing into the deadline.
Last Week's Winners Went Red
Understand the size of the run these cards are coming off. Across Winterspell, 73 of the 91 entries we track gained over the past month while 9 fell, and one Enchanted more than doubled.
Wilds Unknown caught that rally late, and its leg just ended. Of the 53 entries we track at $3 and up in the set, 24 fell this week against 14 that rose.
The names at the top took the biggest hits.
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None of these are broken. Jessie is still up 49 percent on the month even after this week's give-back, and the Merida Iconic holds a 68 percent monthly gain. A red week after a run like that is what cooling looks like, and it matches what we called in Pokemon on Friday: the most recently opened product wears the correction first.
Winterspell is a step behind, still 47 gainers against 25 decliners on the week, but its biggest Enchanted, Elsa - Ice Artisan, dropped 32 percent in seven days. The cooling is working backward through the catalog, oldest boards last.
The Box Math
Here's the part you can actually use. The Wilds Unknown booster box, two months after launch, trades at $226 and has slipped 10 percent since mid-June. The Vine presale box costs $243. The market is paying more for a box it can't open than for the set it just finished chasing.
Winterspell explains why anyone pays that premium. It left print, and its box case has climbed 33 percent since mid-June to $935. Lorcana boxes have been getting cheap while a set sits on shelves and expensive once it leaves them. The presale bid on Vine is a bet that this set skips the cheap middle.
The Same Curve Runs Through Pokemon
Pokemon sealed rides this exact curve on a slower clock. The Destined Rivals Elite Trainer Box (ETB) is living the shelf stage right now, around $167 after an 18 percent markdown over the past month, while at the out-of-print end the vintage boxes that led June have kept their gains intact.
The difference is the clock. Pokemon runs the arc over quarters. Lorcana compressed it into a single summer, with all three stages sitting on one board at the same time.
That's what makes the July 24 test worth watching from any game. Pitch Black hits shelves next Friday carrying its own launch premium, and the 30th Celebration wave lands September 16 with the same question attached. The Vine box on the far side of a wide print is the cleanest live answer we'll get this month to what a presale premium actually survives.
The Test Has a Date
Two things to hold from all this.
The rotation is real. Winners cooling, money concentrating into whatever is newest, right before a major release.
And the presale premium gets tested on July 24. That's when the wide print hits and supply lands on every shelf. If the Vine box is still holding above the Wilds Unknown box a few weeks after that, the presale bid was real demand and the out-of-print bet is on. If it follows the usual path down, the discount window opens right when the crowd stops looking, the way it did for Wilds Unknown.
Prerelease is next Friday. The wide print lands on the 24th. The box price between those two dates tells you whether Lorcana's money moved early or just moved loud.
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