Pitch Black bets everything
on one Pokémon

Most sets spread their chase value across a dozen cards. Pitch Black concentrates almost all of it in Mega Darkrai ex — and after the fastest launch correction of the Mega era, we can finally see what the bet was worth.

Set names are usually mood boards. Evolving Skies wasn't about any particular sky; Lost Origin wasn't about any particular loss. Pitch Black is different. The name is a finger pointed directly at one Pokémon, and the set makes no attempt to pretend otherwise.

The fifth expansion of the Mega Evolution era arrived on July 17 — 120 cards, 84 in the base set and 36 secrets, adapted from Japan's Abyss Eye. It is a small set even by modern standards, and a strange one: no Charizard, no Pikachu doing anything cute, a roster that reads like the back row of the class photo. Wailord. Rampardos. Dhelmise. Thievul.

And presiding over all of it, the Mythical that has spent twenty years putting the entire Pokémon world to sleep.

The Darkrai tier

There are two cards in Pitch Black worth more than everything else combined, and they are the same Pokémon twice.

Mega Darkrai ex 116/84, the Special Illustration Rare, is the set. Akira Egawa — whose alt arts have anchored chase lists across multiple eras, and whose work collectors now binder on the artist's name alone — draws Darkrai the way it deserves to be drawn: not as a monster in a frame but as the frame itself, darkness with a silhouette in it. Three weeks after release it sits around the $300 mark, clearly the most expensive card in the set and comfortably ahead of the era's other headline SIRs.

Mega Darkrai ex 120/84, the Mega Hyper Rare, is the all-gold version and the hardest pull in the set. It trades in the $240–280 range — meaningfully below the SIR.

Sit with that ordering for a second, because it has become the quiet rule of the Mega era: the rarer card is worth less. Pull rates say the Hyper Rare should lead. Taste says otherwise, and for the third set running, taste is winning. Gold foil treatments render every card the same color; Egawa's ink renders this card unmistakable. The market has decided which of those it collects.

What the correction taught us

Pitch Black also gave us the cleanest case study yet in how launch pricing now works.

Presale numbers were, as usual, lottery-ticket numbers. Within the first weekend of live product, most of them corrected — hard. The instructive example is Morpeko ex 117/84, the SIR of everyone's favorite hangry hamster. It surged past $100 on cuteness momentum in week one, briefly looked like it might genuinely challenge Darkrai for the top slot, and has since given back more than half of that. It is still a lovely card. It was never a $100 card.

The lesson is the same one Chaos Rising taught in May, just faster: if you are buying singles, the launch-week price is an opening argument, not a verdict. Three weeks is usually enough for the verdict. We are there now, and the verdict is that Darkrai holds and nearly everything else settles into ordinary chase-card territory.

The rest of the binder

Below the mascot, the secret-rare gallery is stronger than the set's oddball roster suggests.

Mega Zeraora ex 114/84 and Mega Chandelure ex 115/84 are the other Mega SIRs, both sitting in respectable double digits — Zeraora crackling in blues, Chandelure doing what a ghost chandelier does best. The trainer SIRs are the sleeper story: Gwynn 119/84 is a brand-new character from Legends: Z-A drawn by one of the hobby's most-collected illustrators, and new-character-plus-beloved-artist is a formula with a long track record of aging well. Gladion's Final Battle 118/84 rounds out the tier for the Sun & Moon faithful.

Then there is the affordable shelf, which is where this set quietly overdelivers. Nine Illustration Rares, most in the $10–20 window, and the picks are genuinely good: Primarina 88/84 in full concert-hall mode, Slowbro 90/84 radiating the exact energy of a Sunday afternoon, Manectric 89/84 drawn all in static. A complete IR run of this set costs less than a single copy of the Darkrai SIR, and it might be the better-looking page in the binder.

The ledger view

Pitch Black, by the numbers: 120 cards, released July 17, 2026. Six Mega Evolution ex — Darkrai, Zeraora, Chandelure, Excadrill, Delphox, Slowbro. A master set with reverse holos runs to 204 cards. Value concentration: extreme, even by mascot-set standards.

That concentration cuts both ways. If you are opening packs, this is a top-heavy lottery — one ticket matters and the rest is scenery. If you are buying singles, it is one of the friendliest sets of the era: the entire supporting cast got cheaper after the correction, and only one card demands real money.

Our take is the boring one that keeps being right: buy the cards you actually want, now that the prices mean something. The set's misfit roster is the charm. Somebody at Creatures looked at Dhelmise — an anchor possessed by seaweed — and gave it a beautiful card in a set named after eternal darkness. That is the kind of decision this hobby exists for.

The full checklist, every variant, and live prices are on the Pitch Black set page.

Pallet tracks every Pokémon TCG set, every variant, and the live market value of what you own — so the math, when it matters, is at least visible. pallet.cards