Blade and Banner Games

Temple's latest-closing card counter — midnight Friday and Saturday — pairing MSRP Pokemon sealed with a Magic singles wall and no-haggle trade values.

Opened in 2025 and already stitched into the local scene, Blade and Banner Games sits at the western end of Adams Avenue with a straightforward pitch: sell at fair prices, host events people actually want to attend, and stay open late enough to matter. Weekend hours run to midnight on Friday and Saturday, the latest of any Temple card shop, which has made the place a default gathering spot for the Temple-Belton crowd.

Inventory splits cleanly between Pokemon and Magic: The Gathering. Booster packs, bundles, boxes, and Elite Trainer Boxes fill the Pokemon side; commander decks, draft boosters, and singles anchor Magic. Around them sit the practical goods — sleeves, toploaders, binders, playmats, dice — plus a small RPG shelf for the Dungeons & Dragons regulars. Sealed product is priced at MSRP rather than marked up against scarcity, a policy customers mention repeatedly.

The singles handling is worth noting. Cards leave the counter sleeved and top-loaded, checked for condition, and priced against current market rather than an optimistic guess. Trade-in and cash offers have been called the most competitive in the area by collectors who shop the whole Central Texas corridor. The owners are visibly open to suggestions, which is why the event schedule has expanded steadily since opening.

Monday is the one dark day; the shop runs Tuesday through Thursday until 10PM, the long weekend nights, and a shorter Sunday from noon to 6PM. If you want a quiet look at the case, midweek afternoons are the window. If you want the room full, show up Friday night.

The storefront also runs an online shop that ships without sales tax outside Texas, but the in-store experience is the point — the owners know their stock, they will talk you through a purchase honestly, and they treat the shop as a community space first and a register second.