Portal TCG · Chase Cards
Pitch Black lands tomorrow — 17 July — and it's a near 1:1 English adaptation of Abyss Eye, the Japanese set that dropped back on 22 May. Which means the Japanese market has already had two months to work out what's actually worth chasing, and we get to read the answers before a single English pack gets opened. That's the whole point of this post.
We're counting the JP set down by raw value, dearest to cheapest, with the gem-mint price on every one. Two things to hold onto as you go. First: outside the two Darkrais, every single card here is under £35 raw — the money in this set is almost entirely in the raw-vs-graded gap. Second: the English print renumbers everything and in places renames it outright, so we've put the Pitch Black equivalent on every card. Lights off.
10. Slowbro — Art Rare
JP Abyss Eye · #87 · 2026 · AR
Raw
£10.90GM10
£102.71The one everybody actually likes. PokeBeach called it the favourite illustration rare of the set and it's easy to see why — Mekayu has it grinning vacantly in a lamp-lit back alley, Shellder still clamped on, doing absolutely nothing at all while the rest of the set has a nightmare about it. £11 raw into £103 gem-mint is a 9x jump, bigger than either Darkrai manages. The cheapest card here and quietly one of the best. #090/084 in Pitch Black.
9. Gwynn — SR
JP Abyss Eye · #111 · 2026 · SR
Raw
£11.17GM10
£81.08Gwynn's second entry, this time the plain SR — the same character at a third of the SAR's raw price, still turning 7x graded. If you like the character but not the £32 entry fee at #3, this is the sensible way in. It's #109/084 in English. Two Gwynns in one top ten tells you plenty about who this set's breakout human turned out to be.
8. Gladion's Showdown — SAR
JP Abyss Eye · #116 · 2026 · SAR
Raw
£13.78GM10
£97.78Another trainer SAR, another 7x. Gladion has a devoted following out of the Sun & Moon era and this is the card that ends up in those collections. £14 raw is about as close to the floor as an SAR of anything gets. Note it arrives under a different name in English — Gladion's Final Battle, #118/084 — so that's the one to search once packs are open.
7. Mega Chandelure ex — SAR
JP Abyss Eye · #113 · 2026 · SAR
Raw
£17.43GM10
£109.25The tightest multiple of the cheap SARs at 6x — which, on a list where the average is double that, reads as the market being politely lukewarm. Chandelure's a niche pick, and niche picks in a fresh set are exactly where prices move once an English release doubles the audience overnight. £17 is not a lot to be wrong by. #115/084 in Pitch Black.
6. Misty's Spirit — SR
JP Abyss Eye · #108 · 2026 · SR
Raw
£19.24GM10
£257.89An SR rather than an SAR — the plainer of the two tiers — and it still does 13x into a slab. Misty carries thirty years of goodwill and Gym leader supporters always find buyers. Worth knowing before tomorrow: the English print renames this one completely. It's Misty's Vitality, #111/084 — so don't search for “Misty's Spirit” next week and conclude it never made the cut.
5. Mega Zeraora ex — SAR
JP Abyss Eye · #112 · 2026 · SAR
Raw
£22.27GM10
£328.47The biggest multiple on the whole list: £22 raw into £328 gem-mint. Fifteen times. If you take one card away from this countdown, take this one — it's the clearest statement going of where the money in a modern Japanese set actually sits. Not in the card. In the grade. Zeraora being a genuine fan favourite doesn't hurt either. Becomes #114/084 in English.
4. Morpeko ex — SAR
JP Abyss Eye · #115 · 2026 · SAR
Raw
£30.81GM10
£238.22The set's cute-tax card — cheap raw, nearly 8x graded. Hangry-mode fans have kept a floor under it since May. At £31 it's the sort of card people buy three of, sleeve one and forget the other two at the back of a binder, which is exactly why clean copies aren't as common as the raw price makes them sound. #117/084 when Pitch Black lands tomorrow.
3. Gwynn — SAR
JP Abyss Eye · #117 · 2026 · SAR
Raw
£32.27GM10
£406.42And here's the cliff. Third-dearest raw at £32, but gem-mint clears £400 — a 12x jump, and a completely different world to the two cards above it. Naoki Saito on art duty. Trainer SARs have a habit of being underestimated raw and then quietly turning into the hardest card in the set to find slabbed. £32 to gamble is a very different proposition to £512. English: #119/084.
2. Mega Darkrai ex — SAR
JP Abyss Eye · #114 · 2026 · SAR
Raw
£216.55GM10
£450.76Akira Egawa's brush does the work here — heavy, intricate strokes leaning all the way into Darkrai's nightmare lore. Plenty of collectors will tell you it's the better-looking of the two Darkrais at 40% of the price, and they've got a case. It's also the flattest multiple on the list: barely 2x into gem-mint, because the raw price is already doing all the believing. Becomes #116/084 in Pitch Black.
1. Mega Darkrai ex — Gold Etched MUR
JP Abyss Eye · #118 · 2026 · MUR
Raw
£511.78GM10
£1,145.38Grade 9 · £352.48 — below rawThe set's entire reason for existing. MUR is the Mega era's new top rarity — an all-gold etched finish and pull rates that make it a genuine lottery ticket. It spiked near ¥200,000 on launch hype and has drifted since. Here's the tell, though: a Grade 9 fetches £352, less than a raw copy. You're not buying a slab at that price. You're buying the chance at a 10. English collectors, this is #120/084 — the Hyper Rare.
A word of caution before you go spending. Abyss Eye is two months old. Unlike a twenty-year-old Gold Star, nothing here has a settled price — these are the numbers on 16 July, and a set this young can move on a single tournament result or one loud YouTube pull. Treat this as a map, not a valuation.
The pattern, though, is hard to miss. The two Darkrais barely double into gem-mint. Everything else multiplies seven to fifteen times. That's not a quirk — it's what a modern set looks like before the graded population fills in. Japanese print quality is unforgiving (centering, print lines, edge wear straight out of the pack), so gem-mint stays genuinely scarce while raw copies sit everywhere at £20. The Darkrai MUR makes the point better than any of them: a Grade 9 sells for less than a raw copy does. The market isn't paying for the slab. It's paying for the chance at a 10.
And when Pitch Black opens tomorrow, remember that every number on this page is Japanese. English print runs are bigger and English prices start lower — but the shape carries over. The cards the JP market picked out in eight weeks are the cards worth pulling out of your first box.
One last thing. If you're going to chase this set properly, chase it into something worth opening.
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