Mega Darkrai Keeps Falling Before Pitch Black Launches
Pitch Black goes wide July 17 with prereleases already running. The Japanese Abyss Eye tape shows the Mega Darkrai chase and the booster box both still sliding, and Storm Emeralda is dated next.
By Chase Society Desk
Thursday is new releases, and this week the calendar finally has a live one. Pitch Black goes wide on July 17, the prereleases are already running, and the first rip videos start this weekend. For the first time in a month, the Mega Darkrai set is the close one. English boxes aren't on shelves yet, so the Japanese print is the only live read we get. That's where we start.
Darkrai Is Still Falling
Japan has had this set since May as Abyss Eye, and the headline chase, the Mega Darkrai ex Special Art Rare (SAR), has bled the whole way down.
We opened our coverage near $587 in early June. It sat around $388 two Thursdays ago. Today it marks about $328, off roughly 15% in two weeks and about 44% from where we first ran the numbers.
The Box Slipped Under $100
Supply is the reason, same as every Mega set this year. Abyss Eye was printed heavy, the opening frenzy is over, and the boxes that got ripped left a pile of singles nobody is rushing to buy. The box tells the same story from the other side. It's down near $97, off about 24% on the month and roughly back to what it cost at retail.
Even the top of the set has come in. The gold Mega Ultra Rare (MUR), the hardest pull at about one in every 45 boxes, now marks around $750. That's close to where the real sales were clearing back in June while the asks still read $1,200. When the grail softens, the whole board is telling you the same thing.
What English Anchors To
Pitch Black is the English print, and it lands July 17. The English side is still presale, with only ten cards catalogued and no real market on the Darkrai yet, so the Japanese tape is the whole preview.
None of that Japanese number carries over one for one. Demand, allocation, and timing all reset once the set ships here. But wherever that chase settles becomes the level English packs open against, so the slide you're watching now is where the English story starts. Follow it on the Abyss Eye set page as the prerelease sales come in.
Storm Emeralda Is Next
The next Mega set already has a date. Storm Emeralda, the Japanese print of Delta Reign, was revealed June 26 and starts trading July 31, led by Mega Rayquaza ex. English buyers get it as Delta Reign on November 6.
 Mega Rayquaza ex, cover of Storm Emeralda (Japan) and Delta Reign (English). |
That end-of-July tape matters more than the usual preview. Every Mega set this year has run the same arc: launch hype, a flood of singles, then the long bleed you're watching on Abyss Eye right now. Rayquaza is the first name big enough to test whether that has to happen. A set people buy to keep holds differently than one they rip and flip, and the Japanese boxes opening at the end of the month are the first real signal on which way it breaks.
Two things to watch from here. Up close, the Mega Darkrai SAR keeps falling, and July 17 decides where Pitch Black anchors against it. Further out, whether Rayquaza is the release that finally holds. Japan starts answering that at the end of the month.
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