A $9.99 Zarude card pack reaches shops this month
The pack holds a Zarude card, two booster packs and a coin. It fills the gap before the big birthday set lands in September.
A new 2-pack blister featuring Zarude from Pitch Black releases in stores this August for $9.99, PokeBeach reports. It comes with two booster packs and a coin, and the Zarude promo is expected to be printed as a cosmos holofoil.
Blisters are the least glamorous product in the Pokemon Trading Card Game lineup and among the most consequential. They are the impulse buy on the endcap: cheap enough to add to a grocery run, physical enough to be a gift, and the single most common way a new player acquires their first cards.
What you are actually paying for
At $9.99 the maths is straightforward. Two booster packs at typical retail account for most of the price; the promo card and the coin are the margin the product is sold on. Whether it is good value depends almost entirely on whether you want the promo.
For a Zarude promo specifically, the audience is:
- Collectors completing a Mythical Pokemon run
- Casual players who want a distinctive card for a kitchen-table deck
- Gift buyers who need something Pokemon-shaped under ten dollars
Competitive players are generally not the market. Blister promos are rarely format-relevant, and when they are, singles are cheaper than opening blisters to chase them.
Where it sits in the August lineup
August is a quieter retail month for the Trading Card Game, sandwiched between the summer championship season and the September 16 worldwide launch of 30th Celebration. A cheap blister is exactly the kind of product that fills that gap: it keeps shelf space occupied and gives stores something to sell to walk-in traffic while the anniversary product is still in pre-order.