Follow
Link copied to clipboard
Patricia is the former editor-in-chief of Kotaku, where she spent a decade writing and editing. Prior to that, she served as the Culture Editor at Polygon, and as a reporter at The Verge. Hernandez specializes in Pokémon TCG, Nintendo, and offbeat internet culture stories.
Pokémon Ascended Heroes Elite Trainer Boxes and mini tins are actually selling for under the manufacturer's suggested retail price
Sign in to your Polygon.com account
Before the Pokémon 30th Anniversary collection took over the trading card game world, the hottest set on the market was undoubtedly Ascended Heroes. Finding Ascended Heroes cards has historically been much harder than sourcing other sets, 30th included, thanks to its age. The set is an old one, and recent Pokémon products typically make up the bulk of new distribution shipments. There are two notable exceptions to this trend lately, but Pokémon fans need memberships and patience to take advantage of it.
Over the last few weeks, warehouse retailers like Sam's Club and Costco have been practically flooded with new Ascended Heroes products. Sam's Club has been stocking an exclusive Ascended Heroes Focused Fighters box, which comes with four promo cards and 14 packs for an incredible $54.98. At other retailers, recent Ascended Heroes tins with four packs are often sold above MSRP. In stores like Target and Best Buy, customers pay somewhere between five and six dollars a pack for the same set. Local card shops are increasingly selling the same box at market prices, often double the MSRP.
Sam's Club? A steal at just under four dollars a pack.
More recently, Sam's Club customers have spotted drops for three different versions of an AH Elite Trainer Box bundled with an extra Poké Ball; that's 12 packs total for $54.76.
Meanwhile, at Costco, there's also been a steady stream of Ascended Heroes drops. Some regions have received a 5 mini-tin bundle (10 packs total) for $76.49. The warehouse retailer has also been stocking ETBs of the set that only cost $42.99 — a rare instance where a Pokémon product is being sold for less than the manufacturer's suggested retail price of $49.99.
When are Costco and Sam's Club dropping Ascended Heroes ETBs?
The savings are massive, especially if you already have a membership for either store. Here's the catch: both stores are selling these products randomly, not all at once. Your local store could have multiple pallets of Ascended Heroes on hand as you read this. Weeks of data from restock Discord servers and Facebook groups suggest Sam's Club and Costco are holding on to products at their discretion and making them available at arbitrary times of the day. Both stores are also receiving multiple shipment waves, some of which are expected to happen during the week of Oct. 12.
The practice seems to be in place to prevent scalpers from camping outside the store for days at a time on scheduled drop days. In the past, such releases have been plagued with issues like fights and people ignoring purchase limits. Even with the new system, scalpers are still likely to stake out stores for hours. Some resellers have an inside track with workers who can alert them to drops. And make no mistake: New drops tend to clear out within 30 minutes. Still, by putting out their Pokémon products randomly, Costco and Sam's Club give average people a better chance of stumbling across a TCG drop. Many of these releases are also happening during weekends. Anecdotally, I've seen a wider range of people luck out without having to stand outside a store at 3 a.m.
The best way to keep abreast of drops is to join a regional group on social media sites like Facebook. And, of course, it's always a good idea to stop at nearby stores when you can. As long as you keep your expectations in check, you never know what you might find.