Black Bolt and White Flare Chase Cards: The Top 10 Across Both Sets
Black Bolt and White Flare have exactly one Pokémon in common. It is Victini, and its all-red Black White Rare, the rarest kind of card in either set, is printed in both with identical art. Cover the bottom corner, where one says BLK and the other WHT, and you could not tell them apart. The market can: the Black Bolt copy sells for $67 more.
The two sets came out together on July 18, 2025, the first time an English Pokémon expansion had been split into two halves and sold side by side, like the two versions of a Pokémon game. Between them they hold all 156 Pokémon from Pokémon Black and White. Black Bolt is Zekrom's set, and Zekrom was the mascot of Pokémon White, so Black Bolt holds the Pokémon you could only catch in White, and White Flare the ones from Black. It sounds backwards until you remember whose face was on which box.
As special sets, released outside the usual run of main expansions, they had no booster boxes and no single packs on the shelf. Every pack came sealed inside something bigger, like the $49.99 Elite Trainer Box, and there were not many of those to go round. Before launch, a big US distributor warned PokeBeach that most stores would receive no product at all.
The critics were not won over. Kotaku called the pair "An Anticlimactic Ending To Scarlet & Violet", and TheGamer's verdict was that they proved you can have too much of a good thing, because collecting every version, down to the extra foil copies with a Poké Ball or Master Ball pattern printed across them, meant chasing more than 800 cards. In Japan, SNKRDUNK reported that the pair had fallen well short of the welcome given to 151, the 2023 set of the original Pokémon. Prices slid through the autumn and bottomed out around the turn of the year.
Then the buyers came back. From the spring, almost every card on this list climbed, and over the three months to July, GempireCards' market index had Black Bolt as the best-performing set in the hobby, up nearly 50 percent, with White Flare up 46 percent. Boxes nobody has opened did even better: a Black Bolt Elite Trainer Box that sat at around $75 until February now sells for about $165.
Three kinds of card make this list. Black White Rares are the rarity these sets introduced: art and border all in one colour, with the lettering in white or grey and a textured foil on top. Zekrom got black and Reshiram got white. Victini got red, which the name does not quite cover. Special Illustration Rares turn the whole card into one painting, usually for a headline Pokémon ex, the extra-strong versions with the little "ex" after their names. Illustration Rares give ordinary Pokémon the same treatment, and these sets hand them out generously. In a sample of about 720 packs from the two sets, TCGplayer found an Illustration Rare in about 1 in 6 packs and a Special Illustration Rare in about 1 in 80. It did not find a single Black White Rare.
A word on the numbers. The prices in the boxes below are live and move with the market; the ones in the writing are accurate as of publication, September 24, 2026. Everything is raw and near mint unless it says otherwise.
Both sets in full are on the Black Bolt card list and the White Flare card list, with today's prices.
Here are the ten most valuable cards across both sets, starting at number ten.
#10 Hydreigon ex 169/086 (White Flare, Special Illustration Rare)
Illustrated by Takumi Wada
This one looks like a boss fight, and SNKRDUNK thinks it knows which one.
Hydreigon swoops down through driving rain, all three heads out and the middle one's jaws open, over crumbling brick ruins under storm clouds lit pale green by lightning. SNKRDUNK reckons the ruins might be N's Castle, where Pokémon Black and White ends, and that Hydreigon is there for a reason: Ghetsis, the villain you face in the castle, sends it out as his strongest Pokémon. The painter, Takumi Wada, has done ruins before, in Hyrule: Wada's name is in the credits of The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword and Breath of the Wild.
Launch week had it at around $150, and it has not been back since. It is $77.89 now.
#9 Keldeo ex 167/086 (White Flare, Special Illustration Rare)
Illustrated by Yuu Nishida
Autumn in Unova.
In Yuu Nishida's painting, Keldeo, the little Colt Pokémon, stands in a shallow stream in an autumn wood, ripples spreading from its hooves, two waterfalls behind it and sunlight slanting through red, orange and yellow leaves that drift down onto the water. It is looking straight out at you with a small, pleased smile. Nishida has named Unova as a favourite generation and got plenty of it here, drawing Fennel, Purrloin and Liepard for these sets as well.
It is $78.46, up from about $62 in launch week.
#8 Oshawott 105/086 (White Flare, Illustration Rare)
Illustrated by OKACHEKE
Oshawott has taken the day off, and chosen its spot well.
OKACHEKE painted it from above: Oshawott curled up asleep in a white hammock with yellow stripes, strung out over the edge of the sea, red hibiscus flowers floating on the water and palm leaves blurring past in the foreground. The sea is turquoise under the hammock and white where it breaks on the sand, and it is the best water in either set. OKACHEKE did visual development on Pokémon: Twilight Wings, the animated series, and it shows.
In March it was about $46. It is $87.57 now, nearly double, and the grading section has a good suspect: a PSA 10 copy is one of the hardest things in either set to find.
#7 Reshiram ex 166/086 (White Flare, Special Illustration Rare)
Illustrated by kawayoo
The softest dragon in either set.
Reshiram twists through a haze of smoke and flame, its head bowed to the left and one blue eye looking down, a wing thrown up to the right and the ring on its tail glowing orange. Pink petals and red embers blow through the air, and streaks of flame cross the bottom of the card. The painter is kawayoo, who did the booster pack art for every HeartGold and SoulSilver era set, and it is loose and warm and looks like oil paint.
Launch week had it at around $230. It is $189.87 now, one of three cards on this list still below its launch-week price.
#6 Seismitoad 105/086 (Black Bolt, Illustration Rare)
Illustrated by Shinji Kanda
A blue toad, mid-song, and the most expensive Illustration Rare in either set.
Seismitoad sits in the grass with its eyes shut and its mouth wide open, hands up, while the card around it bursts into hand-drawn flowers, dots, vines, little white bell-shaped blossoms and rainbow rings. Its attacks are called Round and Hyper Voice, so the singing is in character, and the rings look a lot like the vibrations its Pokédex entry talks about. It is by Shinji Kanda, who also drew the Roaring Moon, the one card from outside the Eevee family in our Prismatic Evolutions chase cards countdown.
It took off within weeks. It went for $60 to $85 in launch week and was past $200 by early August 2025, helped along by a rumour that part of the pattern spelled out 666 and would get the card banned. Wargamer called the theory spurious, no ban ever came, and the price stuck anyway. It fell back to about $125 in January and is $221.32 now.
#5 Zekrom ex 166/086 (Black Bolt, Special Illustration Rare)
Illustrated by danciao
Zekrom, arriving the loud way.
It drops out of a thunderstorm with its wings and arms spread wide, red eyes burning, while white lightning forks all around it and one bolt runs from its feet straight down into the top of a stone pillar. The clouds are navy and teal, and the plain below glows a hazy yellow-green. The painter is danciao, whose Mega Gengar sits at number two in our Ascended Heroes chase cards countdown.
It went for $310 to $375 in the first week, fell to about $205 within a month and has climbed back to $279.97, which still leaves launch-week buyers out of pocket.
#4 Reshiram ex 173/086 (White Flare, Black White Rare)
Illustrated by 5ban Graphics
Fourteen years later, the same studio drew Reshiram again.
The very first Black & White set, back in 2011, ended on two full-art cards of Reshiram and Zekrom, both by 5ban Graphics, the computer graphics team inside Creatures, one of the companies that makes the cards. The Black White Rares are a clear callback (PokeBeach says their one-colour look "evokes the original secret rares"), and 5ban drew this one too: a white card with Reshiram picked out in pale grey lines, roaring to the left with its neck curled and its wings raised.
Anyone who paid about $480 in launch week had a nervous January, when it touched $335. At $485.66, they are now about five dollars up.
#3 Victini 172/086 (White Flare, Black White Rare)
Illustrated by 5ban Graphics
You will meet this card again at number one.
In Japan, the red Victini was never in a pack. It was a promo, handed to the winners of special Victini tournaments through the summer of 2025 and to 2,000 lottery winners. The English sets turned it into a pack card and put it in both. 5ban Graphics drew Victini in mid-air, turned towards you, arms flung wide, grinning and flashing a V sign, with no background at all: just Victini in thousands of fine red hatch marks, like a picture from an old encyclopaedia.
At launch, the White Flare copy was the more expensive of the two, at about $500 against about $450. That has flipped. It is $560.43 now.
#2 Zekrom ex 172/086 (Black Bolt, Black White Rare)
Illustrated by takuyoa
Put this next to the Reshiram at number four.
takuyoa, a former 3D animator who says "I try to make my illustrations as cool as possible", drew Zekrom on a black card in silver lines, roaring to the right with its claws out and its wings up. Lay Black Bolt's Zekrom on the left and White Flare's Reshiram on the right and the two roar straight at each other. The 2011 pair faced the other way, back to back. Even their attacks mirror each other, right down to the drawbacks: Zekrom's big attack hurts Zekrom, and Reshiram's throws away one of its own Energy.
It has climbed from around $470 in launch week to $625.23. Another price tracker, PriceCharting, has it neck and neck with the Victini at number one, and on ours the gap is $2.21, which is a tie by any sensible measure.
#1 Victini 171/086 (Black Bolt, Black White Rare)
Illustrated by 5ban Graphics
Victini again, and this time it takes the top spot, just.
Pokémon has never said why Victini is the one Pokémon in both sets, but there are two good guesses. It is number 000 in the Unova Pokédex, the one that comes before everything else, and it starred in a pair of 2011 films, one with Zekrom and one with Reshiram. The card itself has a sense of humour: its attack, V-Force, does 120 damage, but only if your bench is completely full, and nothing at all otherwise.
At $627.44 it has never been higher in our data. Launch week had it at around $450, and Christmas at about $376.
Is it worth grading Black Bolt and White Flare cards?
PSA has a problem with these sets, and it is not the expensive cards.
| Card | Raw | PSA 10 | Profit | PSA 10 pop | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Victini 171 | $627.44 | $1,448.21 | $735.79 | 2,962 | Gamble |
| Zekrom ex 172 | $625.23 | $1,362.49 | $652.28 | 6,246 | Gamble |
| Victini 172 | $560.43 | $1,279.89 | $634.48 | 2,754 | Gamble |
| Reshiram ex 173 | $485.66 | $1,119.67 | $549.03 | 6,631 | Gamble |
| Zekrom ex 166 | $279.97 | $481.53 | $171.58 | 7,925 | Gamble |
| Seismitoad 105 | $221.32 | $1,942.52 | $1,562.21 | 1,102 | Gamble |
| Reshiram ex 166 | $189.87 | $476.76 | $256.91 | 5,510 | Gamble |
| Oshawott 105 | $87.57 | $858.39 | $700.84 | 452 | Gamble |
| Keldeo ex 167 | $78.46 | $193.87 | $85.43 | 2,673 | Gamble |
| Hydreigon ex 169 | $77.89 | $192.93 | $85.06 | 3,440 | Gamble |
PSA 10 is our market estimate from recent graded sales. Profit is what is left after buying the card raw and paying the grading fee and shipping. PSA 10 pop is how many copies PSA has graded a 10 so far: copies graded, not sold, and the supply a new slab would join. Safe bet means a PSA 9 still turns a profit; Gamble means only a 10 does.
The Black White Rares and Special Illustration Rares are the straightforward part. Between half and two thirds come back a PSA 10, and a 10 sells for about twice a raw copy.
The Illustration Rares are a different game. The Seismitoad and the Oshawott come back a PSA 10 only about one time in six, and the Zoroark just outside this list barely does better. That scarcity is priced in. A 10 of the Oshawott sells for nearly ten times a raw copy and a 10 of the Seismitoad for nearly nine, which puts a PSA 10 toad above a PSA 10 Victini from either set.
Nobody outside PSA knows what it keeps finding. The same paintings printed in Japan come back a 10 around 85 percent of the time, and not every English Illustration Rare in these sets has the problem: the Haxorus gets a 10 more than twice as often. Most of the misses land at a 9, so whatever PSA is marking down is small, and it is on most copies.
A 9 does not rescue you, either. For every card on this list, a PSA 9 sells for less than a raw copy.
One in six is long odds to pay a grading fee on. Show Slab Advisor a photo of your copy first and it will tell you which grade it is likely to get and what that result sells for, so only the promising ones make the trip.
The ones that just missed
The Zoroark Illustration Rare missed the list by ten cents. Iwamoto05 drew it crouched on a dead stump, one knee up and a hand raised to its chest, with the air around it rippling like water, which is about as good a picture of an illusion as you will find. Not far behind are the Kyurem Special Illustration Rare, perched in the frozen Giant Chasm, and N's Plan, with N under the lights of the Nimbasa City Ferris wheel, where he tells you who he really is in the games.
For a cheaper chase, the ordinary Victini also comes as a Master Ball foil, a copy with a shiny Master Ball pattern printed across it, and that one has roughly tripled since March, to about $57.
One thing to watch: the Unova Heavy Hitters box, with six packs of each set, goes on general sale on December 4 after a year as a Costco exclusive, which will put a lot of new packs into circulation.
The Black Bolt card list and the White Flare card list keep track of all 345 cards and what each one is worth.
Kotaku called these sets an anticlimactic ending to Scarlet & Violet. For an ending, they are doing remarkably well.