Pitch Black Repriced in 48 Hours

Pitch Black hit shelves Friday morning. By Sunday night, the singles had overshot, bottomed, and started climbing back.

That's the read this week, and it cuts against the launch-day panic. The launch dip on a modern set is a two-day window: the mid-tier chases bottomed over the weekend and have already turned, while sealed a week in still hasn't found a floor. The set's anchor, Mega Darkrai ex's Special Illustration Rare (SIR), sits at $288 off a $397 presale price, and it's the one chase still easing lower.

The Week-One Ladder

The Week-One Ladder Presale price → Now

SIR Mega Darkrai ex $397 → $288 ▼ 27% Mega Hyper Rare Mega Darkrai ex $365 → $198 ▼ 46% SIR Mega Zeraora ex $161 → $72 ▼ 55% SIR Mega Chandelure ex $110 → $52 ▼ 53% SIR Morpeko ex $166 → $115 ▼ 31% Illustration Rare Primarina $41 → $8 ▼ 81%

Start with what these numbers are. The struck-through figure on each row is where the card started, its presale price before a single pack got opened. Those were real sales, thin ones carrying a scarcity premium, and release is when supply floods in and resets them. So the drop you're reading is that early premium deflating as thousands of copies land at once. Click any card through to its own page and you'll see where it settled, a steadier number that moves in far smaller percentages.

The drop was also anything but even, and the unevenness is the rest of the information.

The top card kept the most. Darkrai's SIR lost 27% while every other SIR on the board lost between 31% and 55%. A set's number-one chase has the deepest pool of buyers waiting for exactly this moment, so it gets bought first on the way down.

The rarest card fell hardest. The Mega Hyper Rare printing went from $365 to $198, down 46%, because the set's scarcest pull gets priced in presale before the supply exists to test it. A few early sales set the number, and it barely held once real copies arrived.

And the speculative middle got erased. Primarina's Illustration Rare was trading near $41 on Thursday and sits at $8 now that the set has flooded the market. That's a presale scarcity premium in full: thin early sales held the price up, and supply knocked it straight back down.

The Bounce Already Started

The Bounce Board Weekend low → Now

SIR · Low Sun Morpeko ex $90 → $115 ▲ 27% Ultra Rare · Low Sat Misty's Vitality $25 → $35 ▲ 40% SIR · Low Sat Gladion's Final Battle $27 → $33 ▲ 22% Illustration Rare · Low Sat Slowbro $20 → $24 ▲ 20%

The lows are where this week's story moved.

Morpeko ex's SIR printed its low on Sunday at $90. It trades at $115 now, 27% above that print. Misty's Vitality bottomed Saturday at $25 and has climbed back to $35, up 40%. Gladion's Final Battle is 22% off its low. Slowbro's Illustration Rare is up 20% from Saturday.

The anchor is the exception. Darkrai's SIR fell the least of any chase in the set, down 27% while the mid-tier gave up half, but it never got the snap-back either. It's ticked lower at every check this week, $304 to $288, still settling while the cheaper chases have turned. What's still falling on Pitch Black is at the top of the set; the anchor is the only chase still easing lower.

Sealed is running on a different clock. The booster box has printed a lower price at every check since launch, $247 to $206. The Elite Trainer Box (ETB) went $97 to $80 and is still stepping down. The one exception is the Booster Bundle, which has sat within a dollar of $42 since Saturday after losing close to half its presale price, the first Pitch Black product to stop moving.

Put those side by side and you get the week's lesson. On a modern launch, the singles overshoot clears in about 48 hours: weekend rippers list pulls faster than collectors can absorb them, prices punch through fair value, and the buyers arrive before the next weekend. Sealed has no such deadline, because the supply doesn't stop arriving when the weekend ends.

Eight Empty Weeks

The calendar hands Pitch Black the shelf to itself.

• Pitch Black (EN): out now
• Storm Emeralda (JP): July 31
• 30th Celebration (worldwide): September 16
• Delta Reign (EN): November 6

Nothing else lands on the English Pokemon shelf for eight weeks. That gap gives Pitch Black singles room to settle without a newer set stealing the bid, and it leaves the 30th Celebration presale chart as the only Pokemon release chart left to watch. That chart still points down: the Ultra-Premium Collection has fallen from $1,385 in early July to $680, the ETB from a $345 peak to $217, and the bundle from $180 to $125. Eight more weeks of presale listings arrive before a single pack ships.

Outside Pokemon, the release to watch is Riftbound, Riot's League of Legends card game, whose fourth set, Vendetta, lands July 31. Four sets in nine months is an aggressive cadence, and the chases have kept pace: its top signatures already clear $2,700. The run is recent, too: over the past month Vayne's alt-art chase more than tripled to $279 and Ahri's Nine-Tailed Fox alt jumped 178% to $490. A brand-new game building secondary-market depth that fast is the clearest sign yet that serious collector money is willing to look past Pokemon.

The Outlook

Week one wrote the playbook for the next launch, and the next launch is the anniversary set. If you're shopping singles on a fresh release, the mid-tier dip is a two-day event: Pitch Black's already trade 20 to 40% above their weekend lows, so that window has mostly closed, and the only chase still easing lower is the anchor. If you're shopping sealed, there's no race: every box-shaped product except the bundle printed a new low this week, seven days after release.

The empty calendar is the other thing to carry. Between now and September 16, the 30th presale chart moves alone, with no new set to share the market's attention. We're watching the 30th ETB for its first flat week. That's the tell that the presale slide has run out of sellers.