Pretend Boss Pikachu
Pretend Boss Pikachu
Friends in Alola
Pretend Grunt Pikachu
Poncho-wearing Eevee
Poncho-wearing Eevee
Poncho-wearing EeveeWhy Sun & Moon Promos matters
Japanese Sun & Moon Promos isn't a set you rip — it's a catalog. These are the SM-prefixed black-star promos that Japan handed out across roughly the 2016–2019 window: preorder bonuses, movie-ticket giveaways, magazine inserts, store-campaign cards, Pokémon Center exclusives, tournament participation prizes, and one-off collaboration items. Because they trickled out through dozens of unrelated channels over several years, there was never a box, an ETB, or any sealed product that contains "the set." You assemble it one card at a time from the secondary market, which is exactly why it lands at the top of the difficulty scale.
The headline attraction is the parade of costume Pikachu and Eevee. The Pretend Boss Pikachu family — Pikachu dressed as villainous-team bosses — spans a run of numbers and commands the top of the price ladder, while the Poncho-wearing Eevee cards carry the same cult adoration that the earlier Poncho Pikachu line built. Friends in Alola, a distribution-limited card, sits alongside them as a genuine key. These are the cards non-Japanese collectors chase specifically because they never had an English equivalent — the costume-Pokémon subgenre is a Japan-only tradition, and this era produced some of its most beloved entries.
Reputation-wise, this is a connoisseur's territory rather than a beginner's. Most of the 400-plus catalog is inexpensive filler — reverse-less promos of Starter Set staples, energy cards, and everyday campaign giveaways — but the value is brutally top-heavy. A handful of costume cards and limited-distribution promos account for the majority of what it costs to "complete," and several of those exist in numbers that make a clean copy genuinely hard to source at any price. Collectors respect this set the way they respect a mountain range: you don't summit it casually, and the people who do earn the view.
