Into the Inkdark will be the first Disney Lorcana set to get collector booster packs and numbered cards of a new rarity, Illustrious, but Ravensburger will sell them only at selected Ravensburger Play Hub stores, in its own online store and at Disney locations. Who gets the Illustrious cards will therefore be decided first by access to collector booster packs, and only then by luck when opening them.
Key points
The prerelease, meaning prerelease tournaments in stores, will take place on February 5, 2027, and the release, meaning the start of sales, on February 12, 2027.
A collector booster pack has 12 cards, all foil, and its suggested retail price (MSRP) in Europe is €34.99.
The set will have six Illustrious cards with 23 numbered copies each, so 138 cards worldwide, available only in collector booster packs.
Collector booster packs will go only to selected Ravensburger Play Hub stores, Ravensburger's online store, and Disney parks and stores, in English only worldwide.
What's new: the first premium tier in Lorcana history
Story-wise, Into the Inkdark is a villains set. According to the publisher, Hades' glimmer is plotting something in the depths beneath the land of Lorcana, and his ambitions may bring a new threat upon it. Ravensburger has announced regular booster packs and booster boxes, prerelease boxes, and an Illumineer's Trove with eight booster packs and six damage dice. Nothing changes in this part of the lineup; the novelty is an entirely different product.
The collector booster pack is the first Lorcana booster pack designed specifically for collectors. All cards are foil, and the rarer the card, the richer the embellishments. The publisher says the chance of an Enchanted or Iconic card is much higher than in a regular booster pack, but has not published the odds. The Illustrious rarity will appear only here: a card with new art in the style of a well-known artist, with a prominently displayed artist signature and a serial number. The number 23 refers to 1923, the year the Disney studio was founded.
Illustrious cards are for collectors, not tournament players
The first two revealed Illustrious cards are Maleficent – Biding Her Time and a card the publisher calls The Evil Queen – Commanding Presence; in Rise of the Floodborn it was released as The Queen – Commanding Presence. Maleficent – Biding Her Time was the first Lorcana card shown publicly, at the D23 expo in 2022. According to the announcement, Illustrious cards will come from the game's entire history, not just the current set. They will not be legal in Core Constructed, only in Infinity.
That is good news for players. Anyone who needs these characters in a deck will buy their regular versions, and their current prices are shown in the block below. The value of an Illustrious card will come solely from its print run, art and number, not from its strength in the game.
Where to buy collector booster packs: the biggest unknown of the set
Regular Into the Inkdark booster packs will go to the same channels as previous sets. Collector booster packs have different distribution: selected Ravensburger Play Hub stores, Ravensburger's online store, and Disney parks and stores, in limited quantities and in English only worldwide. The publisher has not said which Play Hub stores in Europe will receive stock or by what criteria they will be selected.
The publisher has not said in which countries collector booster packs will appear or how many Play Hub stores will receive an allocation. On October 18, Into the Inkdark products did not yet have prices on the European secondary market.
The price raises questions too. A single collector booster pack has an MSRP of €34.99 in Europe, £31.99 in the United Kingdom and $34.99 in the United States. A box of 12 packs costs $420 in the US, practically the same as 12 individual packs. Anyone buying a whole box gets no discount, and in return gets 144 foil cards and an unknown chance of an Illustrious card, probably a very small one with only 138 copies worldwide.
Booster boxes of previous sets on the European secondary market
On the European secondary market, older Lorcana booster boxes are more expensive than newer ones. The cheapest Winterspell booster box offer cost €179.95 on October 16, and on October 17 the cheapest offers for Wilds Unknown, Attack of the Vine and Hyperia City cost €165, €148 and €139.95 respectively. Hyperia City goes on sale on October 23, so its price is still a pre-release price.
Concerns: what could go wrong
Allocation instead of shelves. Collector booster packs will go to selected stores in limited numbers. Commentators point out that such a model easily turns a store into a service point for scalpers rather than regular players. Players, Disney memorabilia collectors and people looking to profit from resale will all compete for the same 138 Illustrious cards.
A rarity race. Magic: The Gathering introduced collector booster packs in 2019, and the only copy of The One Ring card from the set based on The Lord of the Rings later sold for about $2 million. Part of the community fears that Lorcana, a game with a family-friendly image, is going down the same road and will become associated with cards out of reach for almost everyone.
Pressure on regular booster packs. If the biggest pulls move to collector booster packs, regular boxes may lose some of their appeal to collectors. The opposite scenario is also possible, in which the buzz around Illustrious cards increases demand for the whole set. This is a hypothesis; it will be tested by the price of the regular booster box in the first weeks after February 12, compared with Attack of the Vine and Hyperia City.
Unknown odds. Ravensburger has not said how often an Enchanted, Iconic or Illustrious card appears in a collector booster pack, and cards from the set do not yet have market prices. So the expected value (EV) of a collector booster pack cannot be reliably calculated today.
What it means for buyers
A player who simply wants to play with the new cards can skip collector booster packs, because Illustrious cards are not legal in Core Constructed, and regular booster packs keep their existing formula. Without a store comparison, all that can be said about the regular booster box is that on the European secondary market, older Lorcana sets have not become cheaper than newer ones. If Into the Inkdark follows this pattern, its booster box will not get cheaper with age; this is a hypothesis that its price a few months after February 12 will test.
For a collector, the first question is whether their store is part of Ravensburger Play Hub and whether it expects an allocation. A full booster box with no discount for buying the box is a purchase for those who value the foil cards themselves, not a lottery with a real chance at an Illustrious card.
Sources
Ravensburger: Into the Inkdark on the official Disney Lorcana website, prerelease and release dates, collector booster packs and Illustrious cards.
Ravensburger: Disney Lorcana announcements from the D23 expo, Illustrious card print run and collector booster pack distribution.
Lorcana Player: Into the Inkdark Collector Booster Pack and Toonado, suggested prices of collector booster packs as reported by the publisher.
Card prices in the card block are mTCG prices, the same ones we show on card pages.
Prices in euros are the cheapest offers on the European secondary market on October 16 and 17, 2026.
