Changes to Magic Booster Packs

 WotC announced a number of changes to its booster packs, starting with the Nautcis release in early 2027. Play boosters are now just boosters, God packs, last seen during the Theros block, make a return with a chance of 1 in 300 in collector boosters and 1 in 1000 in regular boosters.  Collector boosters will lose 2 common and one uncommon card, dropping their card count to 12 and regular boosters will no longer have a guaranteed foil in every pack as only mythic rares and rare cards will now have foil treatments.

Bubbles Burst

 We have seen the current state of the trading card game market before.  At least twice.  After Magic released in 1993, 1994 and 1995 saw a huge number of trading card games hit the market. None of them are widely played today and  players either buy extremely limited print runs that are one and done or play with digital cards.  We saw a second run in the early 2000s with the success of Pokemon and Yu Gi Oh. Once again, no games from that era have survived to the current day.

The big difference between those runs and the current one is that people played those games. Most of the people buying current TCGs are looking at them at investments, rather than games. Wonders of the First,  with its NFT versions of card is making the resalability of the cards a selling point. Unfortunately, the one time we ran a demo session of the game, no one showed up.

Buy TCGs if you want to play them, not as an investment  vehicle.

Games Workshop New Releases

Releasing Oct 17.  If you want any pre-order with us by noon Sept 29th.

 The Adeptus Custodes.

The apex of the Emperor’s genetic achievement.

His Aquilon Terminators, more akin to battleships than infantry, arrive brand new in plastic for the first time.

Also releasing are a number of Adeptus Custodes kits that were previously only available in Adeptus Custodes Support Battle Group.

Codex: Adeptus Custodes, hitting the shelves with new lore & rules. Available in a new battle focused format, fine tuned for battlefield action.

The new Adeptus Custodes Combat Patrol joins the ranks of our current range. Combat Patrols are customer favorites due to their thematic contents and added value. Be sure to ask us how to best stock these popular items

Pokemon Investment

Peter Levin, co-founder of Geffin Gaming Partners, according to the September 2026 issue of Fortune Magazine, has collected Pokemon, sports cards, bobbleheads and comics since he was 4 years old (this year was his 31^st time at San Diego Comic Con) and has a deep love of them but also views them as an investment vehicle, though like Scaramucci, he has no plans to liquidate his collection anytime soon. Both men believe investing in these differ from investments in things like cryptocurrency, NFTs and memecoins as, unlike those items, cards and comics are tangible and the average person knows what a Pokemon card or bobblehead is, a non-fungible token, not so much.

This concerns me because most of the buyers of collectable card games today focus on the collectable aspect and not the game aspect. We like to stream video related to the products we sell and while we can comparatively easily find video of people playing Magic the Gathering, Disney Lorcana and even Yu Gi Oh, almost all the video that comes up for Pokemon shows people opening packs and calculating the “actual” versus “expected” value of the box. Most of our Pokemon sales go to people who have never played and never plan to play the game and will only keep buying as long as they can find a customer. Eventually the market will run out of people willing to buy. What happens then?

Pokemon Investment

 The valuation of high-grade and vintage Pokemon cards since 2004 has grown, according to CardLadder by over 3400%. Compare that to the Standard and Poor 500 stock market index, which has grown by a “mere” 483% over the same time period. The overall value of Pokemon cards has grown this year 28%, compared to “only” 13% by the S&P 500. AJ Scaramucci of Treasure Trove.com says he has already turned down an offer of over $3 million for the Tales of Suspense #39 and, though Treasure Trove has no plans to sell the comic or the Pikachu Illustrator card, he believes these sort of collectibles are vastly undervalued and expects the Pikachu Illustrator card due to the same type of rarity as that of artworks by masters from the 18^th and 19^th centuries to reach a valuation of $100 million sometime in the future.

New Comics for 9/23/26

 A MISCHIEF OF MAGPIES #2

ABSOLUTE BATMAN #24

ABSOLUTE FLASH #19

ABSOLUTE WONDER WOMAN #24 CVR A HAYDEN SHERMAN

BISHOP #4

BLACK STAR #3

BLACK TOWER THE RAVEN CONSPIRACY #2

BUG WARS THE COMING OF THE WARDOOM #2

CONAN THE BARBARIAN TIDES OF THE TYRANT KING #1

CORPSE KNIGHT #6

CRIMES AGAINST NATURE #1

DC W.I.P. BATMAN THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS #1

DEAD ACRE #3

DISNEY TIM NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS: ALL HAIL THE PUMPKIN KING  ISSUE #3

DISPATCHED #3

DO A POWERBOMB BLACK AND WHITE #3

DORC #8

ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK ESCAPE FROM CHICAGO #1

EXQUISITE CORPSES RASCAL RANDY #3

EYE COLLECTOR #4

EYRIE MAGAZINE #14

FERAL #26

FLASH #37

FORGED #13

FORT PSYCHO #2

GAMBIT GONE #1

GENERATION X-23 #8

GHOST OF A GHOST #1

GHOST PEPPER #15

GI JOE A REAL AMERICAN HERO #110

GREATEST AMERICAN HERO #3

GREEN LANTERN #39

GUN HONEY DOUBLES DOWN #4

HARLEY QUINN #66

HELLRAISER: RESURRECTIONS – HELL’S COUNCIL #1

INFERNAL HULK VS. WOLVERINE #1

INVINCIBLE UNIVERSE CAPES #11

JUNK PUNCH #4

JUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED #23

LAST DRIVER #2

LAST STARFIGHTER #3

LAZARUS ORDER #2

M1 MONSTER RACING LEAGUE #4

MADAME TARANTULA MAGAZINE #3

MARVEL MANGAVERSE: GHOSTLOCKE #1

MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE: LEGENDS OF ETERNIA  ISSUE #2

MEGA MAN GEAR MASTERS #1

MIKE HOFFMANS TIGRESS MAGAZINE #1

MILES MORALES: SPIDER-MAN #2

MUPPETS TAKE THE MARVEL UNIVERSE #1

POWER RANGERS GREEN #2

PUNISHER VS. SPIDER-MAN #3

ROCKETFELLERS #14

SMILE: ANY GIVEN SMILE #1

SOLOMON KANE THE LION ERRANT #3

SPAWN SCORCHED #55

SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN: BRAND NEW DAY #5

SPIDER-MAN/HULK: FIRE AND BRIMSTONE #2

STAR TREK (2026) #1

STAR WARS: THE BOOK OF BOBA FETT #2

STREET FIGHTER MASTERS JURI #1

SUPERMAN #141 FACSIMILE

SUPERMAN #42

SUPERMAN FATHER OF TOMORROW #5

TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES: SATURDAY MORNING ADVENTURES #41

TERMINAL #3

THAT TEXAS BLOOD HELL COMES TO ALLISON RANCH #1

THE DOGSITTER #3

THE FOUNDRY #2

THE ROCKETEER: INFILTRATOR! #3

THOR #801

UNIVERSAL MONSTERS BLOOD OF THE WOLF MAN #4

V FOR VENDETTA #1 FACSIMILE

VAMPIRELLA (2026) #6

VOID RIVALS #34

WATCHMEN #1

WOLVERINE #28

YUMI 00EX #2

Pokemon Valuation

 

Remember Logan Paul’s Pokemon card which sold for over $16 million (See “Logan Paul’s Pokemon TCG Pikachu Illustrator Card Becomes Most Expensive Trading Card Ever Sold”)? It went to AJ Scaramucci, who calls himself a “venture collector” and is, according to the September 11, 2026 issue of The Hollywood Reporter, a partner in the Treasure Trove website, which bills itself as “a holding company structured to hold and compound elite culturally-significant real-world collectibles” and spent $2 million in cash on a CGC 9.8 copy of Tales of Suspense #39 (first appearance of Iron Man) earlier this summer. Like many other Pokemon collectors, Scaramucci got interested in collecting the cards during COVID though he apparently had no interest in the game when he was younger and, like many of today’s collectors, has no interest in playing the game but sees the cards, comics and other epherema as artistic and cultural items he expects to grow in value over time.