Unbroken Bonds

What Unbroken Bonds is

Unbroken Bonds is the tenth main expansion of the Sun & Moon Series, released in English on May 3, 2019 under the set code UNB. It has 214 cards in the numbered set plus 20 secret rares, 234 in total, and it is built on Pokémon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon and Pokémon: Let's Go, Pikachu! and Let's Go, Eevee!. Its stars are the TAG TEAM Pokémon GX: Reshiram & Charizard GX, Pheromosa & Buzzwole GX, Muk & Alolan Muk GX, Marshadow & Machamp GX, Greninja & Zoroark GX, Lucario & Melmetal GX and Gardevoir & Sylveon GX, all drawn by Mitsuhiro Arita in their regular prints, alongside Venomoth GX, Blastoise GX, Dedenne GX, Honchkrow GX, Whimsicott GX, Persian GX and Celesteela GX.

The checklist holds 61 rares, 38 Ultra rares and 20 secret rares. The Ultra rares run from the 14 regular GX through 18 full arts, five of them alternate art TAG TEAMs by kirisAki, Masakazu Fukuda, You Iribi, kodama and Atsuko Nishida, to six full art Supporters: Green's Exploration, Janine, Koga's Trap, Molayne, Red's Challenge and Welder. The secret rares are 14 rainbow rare GX, five gold Items and the gold Triple Acceleration Energy. Fighting is the most represented type at 28 cards and 5ban Graphics drew 22 of the set.

The cards come from the Japanese Double Blaze, a 116 card set, with the Night Unison and Full Metal Wall subsets.

What makes Unbroken Bonds different

• Reshiram & Charizard GX Mitsuhiro Arita's Reshiram & Charizard GX 20, with aky CG Works' full art 194 and the rainbow rare 217, was the tournament centerpiece of the set and the card most players opened it for.
• The Gardevoir & Sylveon alternate art Atsuko Nishida's alternate art Gardevoir & Sylveon GX 205 is the most valuable card in Unbroken Bonds by a wide margin, ahead of every Charizard print, with kodama's Greninja & Zoroark GX 201 and You Iribi's Marshadow & Machamp GX 199 the other alternate arts collectors chase.
• Rares that outrank GX Greninja 117, Snorlax 158 and Gengar 70 are ordinary rares whose regular and reverse holofoil prints sit among the set's top fifteen graded cards, above most of the Pokémon GX.
• Welder Hitoshi Ariga's full art Welder 214 was the Supporter that powered Fire decks for the rest of the era, and a Yellow A alternate art Welder 189a was the Cosmic Eclipse Season Regional Championships promo.
• Five alternate arts Pheromosa & Buzzwole GX 192, Muk & Alolan Muk GX 197, Marshadow & Machamp GX 199, Greninja & Zoroark GX 201 and Gardevoir & Sylveon GX 205 are second full art prints by guest illustrators, the format that made TAG TEAM sets a collector's market.

How Unbroken Bonds arrived

Japan released Night Unison on January 11, 2019, Full Metal Wall on February 1, 2019 and Double Blaze on March 1, 2019. The English Unbroken Bonds followed on May 3, 2019, five weeks after Detective Pikachu and three months before Unified Minds.

Prerelease tournaments ran on the weekends of April 20 to 21 and April 27 to 28, 2019, with a Build & Battle Box of four booster packs, a tip sheet and a 23 card Evolution pack built around one of four SM Black Star Promos, Volcanion 179, Stakataka 180, Melmetal 181 or Persian 182, for a 40 card deck; the boxes reached retail on May 17, 2019.

Launch day brought the Reshiram & Charizard Elite Trainer Box, the Battle Mind and Lightning Loop Theme Decks, Three Pack Blisters with a Typhlosion promo or a Yellow A alternate art Sceptile, Single Pack Blisters with Pikachu or Eevee, a Launch Display with 36 packs, eight decks and ten snap bracelets, a Collector's Album and Ultra Pro portfolios, with Stage 1 Blisters featuring the Wailord and Steelix lines at Target later in May and Dollar Tree Mini Packs from late May 2019. A Cosmos Holofoil Melmetal 129 with an Unbroken Bonds stamp was given away with purchases.

Unbroken Bonds products and what came in them

The Elite Trainer Box features Reshiram & Charizard and holds eight booster packs, 65 card sleeves, four dividers, six damage counter dice, a coin flip die, two Special Condition markers, a GX marker, basic Energy cards, a player's guide and a code card. Battle Mind is a Fire and Psychic deck built on Mewtwo with a Cracked Ice Holofoil Mewtwo 75, and Lightning Loop a Lightning deck built on Zeraora with a Cracked Ice Holofoil Zeraora 60, each 60 cards with counters, a playmat, a deck box, a coin and a code card.

Collecting and grading Unbroken Bonds

Atsuko Nishida's Gardevoir & Sylveon GX 205 leads the live prices above, followed by the Greninja 117 and Snorlax 158 rares in regular and reverse holofoil, kodama's Greninja & Zoroark GX 201, You Iribi's Marshadow & Machamp GX 199, Gengar 70, the rainbow Reshiram & Charizard GX 217 and the rainbow Gardevoir & Sylveon GX 225.

The Cosmos Holofoil Squirtle 33 near the top of the list is the Blastoise GX Premium Collection variant of a common, and the Cosmos and Cracked Ice Mewtwo 75 are Mini Tin and Theme Deck prints; match the variant label in the checklist before comparing, and treat the reverse holofoil Togetic 137 as thin market noise.

Unbroken Bonds was printed heavily and raw singles are cheap outside the alternate arts, so grading pays on the TAG TEAM alternate arts and the Greninja and Snorlax rares. The sealed table above tracks booster boxes, the Elite Trainer Box, blisters, Mini Packs and the collections that carried its packs.