Sports
May 22, 2026
TL;DR: Courtyard is running a week-long event called Press Start: Pokémon 30 — seven daily packs, each inspired by a different classic Pokémon game. Every pack hides bounty cards to unlock sealed anniversary rewards (Celebrations ETBs, UPCs, and more) plus a Grand Prize Giveaway for an $8.6K PSA 10 Pikachu EX.
If you've been anywhere near the hobby this month, you already know: Pokémon's 30th anniversary is here, and the energy is unlike anything we've seen. Prices on the vintage grails are climbing, the community is buzzing, and a whole new wave of collectors is discovering the hobby for the first time.
For us at Courtyard, this one hits different. Pokémon is where our roots are. Watching this side of the hobby evolve over the last five years — grails we once thought were "expensive" now looking like bargains, new collectors flooding in every month, longtime collectors coming back for the nostalgia — has been nothing short of wild. So when it came time to celebrate 30 years of Pokémon, we knew we couldn't just do another pack drop. We had to go big.
Enter Press Start: Pokémon 30
Starting Monday, September 14th, we're kicking off Press Start: Pokémon 30 — a week-long celebration built around the games that started it all. Each day brings a new pack inspired by a different chapter of Pokémon's earliest era, taking you on a journey from Red all the way through Crystal and Silver.
The bounties: nostalgia meets what's happening right now
The vintage grails are the heart of Press Start, but we didn't want this celebration to only look backward. Pokémon's story right now, the new sets, the new collectors, the renewed hype, is just as much a part of the 30th as the classics are. That's where bounties come in.
Every daily pack has 5 bounty cards hidden inside it, mixed in with the rest of that day's pulls. A bounty is simply one of a small, pre-set list of cards for that day's pack.
Pull one of those bounty cards, and hold onto it, and you don't just get the card. You also win a sealed, current-era Pokémon anniversary reward on top of it, things like a Celebrations Elite Trainer Box, a Celebrations Ultra Premium Collection, or a Pokémon Center exclusive ETB, depending on the day. So the vintage card in your hand comes paired with something brand new sitting in the vault for you.
A few things to know about how it works:
- Hold it to win it. To lock in the reward, you'll need to keep the bounty card in your collection through Tuesday, 9/22 at 12AM UTC.
- It's automatic. There's no separate raffle or draw for the bounty reward itself, if the card you pull matches the day's bounty list, it's yours.
Think of it as our way of saying the past 30 years and the next 30 years both deserve the spotlight, you get the grail and a piece of what's exciting collectors right now.
The Bounty Grail: an $8,600 piece of Pokémon history
Sitting at the top of Press Start bounties is an all-time Pikachu grail: a 2016 Pokémon 20th Anniversary #094 Pikachu EX, 1st Edition Holo Full Art PSA 10, with a fair market value of $8,610.70. It's live in the pool from Day 1, meaning every pull across the week has a shot at landing it. Pull it, keep the card, get a 30th Celebration ETB.
Ready to press start?
Thirty years of Pokémon deserves thirty years of celebration, so we're bringing the hobby's history and its present together in one week-long event. Seven packs, seven games, five daily bounties with anniversary rewards attached, and a shot at an $8.6k grail sitting at the top of it all.