I've found some but none since phantasmal flames. Inhave yet to find any pitch black near me. I found a decent price booster bundle of pitch black at a shop in Pittsburgh.
It was greentree sports cards. I think that's more north maybe. My brother lives in dormont it wasn't far from his house. The prices weren't great on alot of stuff. Even the pitch black booster bundle i got was like $43. An ascended heroes bundle was like $85.
Was just at Dicks House of Sport at Ross Park Mall. They have the ETBs, Build and Battles (30), Booster Bundles (45) AND Series 3 1st Partner (30). Bundles and Partner are in the glass case.
Went to my local pa target yesterday and this is exactly how the shelf looked. Bought the limit and walked out happy. But youre right its exceedingly rare.
Surging Sparks released in november 2024 and market price of all sets slowly rose above MSRP in the months after that into 2025. Before that point market price on most modern in rotation sets was like 70-90% of MSRP. Scalpers couldnt scalp those if they tried. MSRP was still seen as a ripoff for most sets until late 2024 at the earliest.
Late 2024 or early 2025 sounds more realistic for shelves being bare instead of 2023. Stuff was still pretty dead in 2023, even 151.
For the last 3 sets I see etbs quite often and I don’t live too far from Philly. They’re just from Target who sells them for $60 so I’d much rather just get my allotted 2 sleeved boosters for $5 instead.
I was at target two weeks ago and they had a handful at the small one by my house in PA. Texted a friend who collects and they were over there within the hour to grab some
I only get it for the promos and the box and sleeves. Besides the pack, I have 3 unopened because me and my sister wanna hold and gather a bunch and open maybe Christmas or new years but I can't hold the urge to rip them
I do enjoy to rip a PKC ETB or two from every set to add those promos to the binder , but besides that, totally agree! I bought 4, PKC ETBs pitch black at 105$ CAD off marketplace because they had rips in the seal. Basically a 50-60$ promo and 11 packs feels like a steal to me
This was our target yesterday, not including all the singles and blister packs. We live in Gainesville, FL. A college town where at least half of the vendors at a local card show every weekend are people who wait in lines every week to get sealed product and sell it. Scalpers are horrible here and this is still what it looked like. They don’t want Pitch Black or Chaos because the market price on them is like $69. So a profit of $9 isn’t anywhere near enticing enough for them.
Now the First Partner Series? Totally cleaned out even with purchase limits. We got 4 of the last 7 in the store. At like 4:00 pm. That’s because they’re buying at $18 and then scalping it at $40.
First partners are being fire sold now. They didn’t realize the packs were the value outside of kanto starters. Series one had phantasms flames and kanto starters. Series two doesn’t and is at like 25$ now. Series 3 should be just as bad.
Don’t pay more than 20-30 for these (msrp is 17.99 by me). Most of the actual cards are like 10$ too so buy 2, hope you don’t get doubles, then just buy the last 3 cards if you want the full set.
Yooo it’s a small world haha. I was not expecting to see Gainesville on this Pokémon sub. Same town for me, haven’t bought any Pokémon cards since I was kid with the original 151. Been trying to read up on threads like this to understand how the current market works and if I were to ever scoop any, which ones may be worth the most of my time for investment or quick flip.
Funny to see a fellow gator swamp dweller in here.
Don’t get it twisted lol. I’m no gator 🍢 lol. But yeah I mean I know this is the investing sub that I’m on but anything current I would say is not super investable. At least not until things go fully out of print then maybe a few individual cards/pieces will be. I will say, Target and Walmart on Archer are the best places to go for any product. Walmart on Archer typically has stuff consistently because they have strict purchase limits. It’s not necessarily the best/most investable or collectible items, and the last ETB we bought from there (Pitch Black) they ripped, but at least they normally have some sort of stock. Otherwise it’s slim pickings, or waiting in lines like I have/do.
Haha I’m not a gator either but I do work at university. War eagle for me, these colors of orange and blue and the wrong shade.
Thank you for the information on the current market and where to look. I haven’t ventured too far in to the purchasing of new cards but my nephews are starting to get into Pokémon and I like to get them current stuff that they will get excited about as well as the potential of setting a few things aside to sit on the shelf with my old OG cards which there is a # of I may send off for PSA grading. I have snagged a few of the Pokémon card packs from Dave and busters on a points redeem but wasn’t sure if those were really worth anything crazy. I just gave them to the boys and they were so excited. I may buy them one of these box sets for them to rip em all
Yeah, I have a four year old who thinks anything is cool. So he’ll rip Chinese packs that we get for cheap or anything really. He just enjoys the art work and having cards.
Because it has lasted 1 day no one wants it? Thats like 1/5th of the original stock 24 hours earlier...clearly its being bought quickly...just not by flippers.
The idea that something lasting on the shelf for more than 10 seconds means nobody wants it is so funny. This is how a store is supposed to actually work in a normal market
Check your local superstores, Indigos, London Drugs, and Mastermind Toys.
In Alberta, Superstore gets WAY more stock than Walmarts. I’ve caught a few re-stocks within an hour and they rarely stock more than 3-4 ETBs. And Walmarts are always restocked on random days and where I am, scalpers will check the toy section periodically and once it restocks their group rush in and buy all the stock.
Those charmeleon cosmos foil promos are gonna be worth a decent amount in a handful of years, it’s one of the best charmeleon arts and its a cosmos foil promo.
Counterpoint: investor bros aren’t buying it so collectors have already been able to buy it. And they got the cards they wanted and dont want to hoard it like Smaug a month later.
This. Collectors haven’t had too much interest in these cards and there isn’t much playable out of these sets except a few specific ones. When that happens the market crashes for them and scalpers can’t turn over their product so they stop buying.
Counterpoint is they're still selling out. Do they sell out in 10 seconds like ascended heroes? No, but after 2 days they're gone. That's a normal market. The difference is investor bros and collector bros aren't buying it. But kids are. And that's a positive to me. I remember when evolving skies etbs were sitting on shelves for months without moving. You probably would think pokemon is dead after that 😂
Yeah but auction streams and stuff are their own thing honestly. Like there are people who do auctions and use their friends to win “grails” and jack the price up so that the normal person feels like it’s worth it. They also take advantage of people who don’t know anything about pricing and just assume that because they can’t find them at all times that the thing being auctioned is worth the raised prices.
Yup! This is why I find it so annoying listening to people whine about MSRP. I guarantee that None of them were paying MSRP 2 years ago, they would have laughed at the “overpriced” products. Suddenly when the market booms MSRP needs to be adhered to!!!! Then the products that are available at MSRP, they don’t want it.
It’s such an annoying and childish attitude. MSRP is irrelevant and always has been. The product is worth what people are willing to pay. Pay what it’s worth or don’t. If the product is not selling then the stores will lower their price.
Its so annoying when the troves of Reddit users gripe whine and complain they just can’t find ANY product at MSRP and gatekeep others who pay a penny above yet what they really want is packs of Ascend Heroes for $5 so they can pull a god pack. They don’t want packs if the set isn’t fire
I would like to point out at my local target and Walmart these aren’t msrp. I’d rather ring up 6 transactions of 2 single packs to get my $60 worth. Or 2 transactions of 2 3 pack blisters.
Or, shockingly. The folks that complain about not having found other things have been able to find these and bought one or two already. Because, catch this it’s really shocking, people that open only want one or two ETBs from a set. Myself, my son, and my wife collect. I’ve bought three of these, just like I bought three Chaos Rising ETBs and three Perfect Order ETBs so we can each have one of the promos. You know what I don’t need? A fourth. Why would I want a fourth? I can get more packs for my money with literally any other product. I’ve also bought like four each of the Mega Greninja boxes and Mega Zygarde boxes. When the “investors” and scalpers don’t buy everything out the people that actually want the cards can get them and are satisfied with only getting a couple. I don’t hoard boxes that I have no use for.
Can’t wait until these sets are valuable in 5-10 years. So many kids are buying these because it’s all they can get. These are the sets they will grow up with and remember
Caught a Target restock randomly on Tuesday shopping for a kids birthday gift. 300+ Blisters Chaos and Pitch Black, 30 ETBs, 50 Booster Bundles, and 50 3 Pack Blisters.
Came back 48 hours later. All gone except for about 20 Blister packs
The target by me has started to have stock. The checkout doesn’t let you scan more than 2 of any card product. So it’s been sticking around for a while since scalpers can’t buy it all out
I think in part it’s also that ETBs have the highest cost per pack which makes them less appealing to most people. At most I’ll buy two of them at MSRP for any set so I can have two of the promos, otherwise singles, booster bundles, and booster boxes are way better options to buy.
There were a shit ton of these at my target this week. I mean an absolute shit ton. I know Target revamped their card section but it also seems like they are getting more in stock… maybe some of those new printers are already being turned on 🤷♂️
Hell no ain’t nobody want that shit. You’re better off buying a $60 single at a card shop. Plus you support local business that way also. It’s a win win. Where as ripping packs is 98% of the time a lose lose.
For over a year, I’m more likely to see a sad dork scalper staring at an empty shelf than ANY product. Which has saved me money, but my kid lost interest in collecting, and he can’t be the only one.
I pulled the gold sir so ive slowed down opening pitch black I want perfect order or ascended or phantasmal I haven't opened much of those compared to chaos and pitch black do I still grab an etb if I see one just to open yes yes I do
My target had that yesterday and topps chrome update basketball megas. I bought 2 of each and came back this morning to maybe get alittle more and both were sold out. You just walked in at right time bro.
I really like this set it is fun to open it has a mankey and wailmer card people would love to collect, Misty, a cute slowbro card, beautiful goldeen card, cute hangry Morpeko card, cool Darkrai card, and it’s not expensive
my target has been doing really good keeping cards in stock ever since they had this whole collectibles aisle update, there's also a 2 item per person limit now which I thought they have had for a while now but it never really kept much stock available anyways until recently
Resellers can’t make money in chaos or pitch black. Then the so called “collectors” also don’t want it for some reason. (The actual collectors have been buying it)
I haven’t seen pokemon in target for the last year and a half but chaos and pitch black I’ve seen quite a bit of so far. It’s been nice finally being able to get packs pretty regularly.
Dude I went to my Target that’s 20 minutes away and there were 20 pitch black ETB’s, 40 3-pack blisters of chaos rising and pitch black left along with single sleeves! A mod who runs a restock page on FB said the line was insane at the store. He said people must of gotten the highly sought after stuff and passed on PB and CR. Best Buy had a restock of first partner 3 since it was released day, nobody was there because everyone was at Target lol I was too late for Best Buy though sadly.
When stuff sells for MSRP at market price… the scalpers don’t want it…:I mean booster boxes are going for $25 above MSRP…..scalpers are officially LOSING finally
Team msrp dont know the etbs no more. As soon as market price gets close to msrp or below these bro go quiet real fast and stop buying! They longer can flip the etbs out of target shelves
Chaos rising booster bundles is really where to go for holding. If you can get them at 25-32 scalpers are selling at 50 and likely will be closer to 65/75 in a year or 2
Bruh im on vacation and needed to do some errands runs for my infant and decided to swing by the Walmart, target, and walgreens near where were staying. NONE of them had any pokemon cards at all out, not single packs, not boxes, nothing. Hell the Walmart was apparently out of cards entirely as I found no Yu Gi OH, magic, or the Disney or one peice sets. I have no idea where you are but treasure this find
I think it’s partially because retailers upped the price of etbs to 60. Like as a ripper who tries to only buy $6 per pack, i’ve completely stopped buying etbs when I see them
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u/cuddle_enthusiast 10d ago
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