Nobody Is Running Out of Charizards
Pokémon is printing more cards than ever and PSA is grading more than ever. Since August, PSA 10s of newer chase cards kept sliding while the 1999 Charizard held its price through a reprint.
Are you primarily buying a Charizard, or its grade?
A 1999 Base Set Charizard in a PSA 10 sold for $26,750 to $37,966 from mid-August to mid-September. The same card in a PSA 9 has been going for around $3,500 since June.1
Grade | Median price | Sales | Dates |
|---|---|---|---|
Ungraded | $300 | 100 | Sept. 30 to Oct. 19 |
PSA 8 | $1,350 | 102 | Aug. 18 to Oct. 19 |
PSA 9 | $3,476 | 76 | June 21 to Oct. 18 |
PSA 10 | $27,250 | 5 | Aug. 17 to Sept. 12 |
That's a gap of more than $23,000 for one grade on the same card. A 1999 Charizard cannot be printed again. A PSA 10 can still be made any day PSA grades a raw copy a 10. PSA has graded 107,747 Unlimited Base Set Charizards so far. Only 490 came back 10s.2
Most of the Pokémon market since 2020 works the same way. You may think you're buying a scarce card, but much of what you're paying for is the scarcity of one grade.
That matters more every month because PSA keeps getting faster. It graded about 2 million items in 20203 and nearly ten times that in 2025.4 The cards feeding that line keep multiplying too. The Pokémon Company printed about 10 billion cards from March 2025 through March 2026.5 Roughly 60 percent of every Pokémon card ever made came off the press in the last five years.6
So when someone says Pokémon cards hold their value because they are scarce, the useful question is: scarce in what sense?
For a 1999 card, the print run is fixed. For a 2023 card, The Pokémon Company can print more whenever a set sells out. In both cases the number of PSA 10s keeps growing as long as collectors keep submitting.
Nobody is running out of cardboard
The Pokemon Company publishes a cumulative production figure once a year.5
FY ending 31 March | Cumulative | Printed that year |
|---|---|---|
2020 | 30.4B | |
2021 | 34.1B | +3.7B |
2022 | 43.2B | +9.1B |
2023 | 52.9B | +9.7B |
2024 | 64.8B | +11.9B |
2025 | 75B | +10.2B |
2026 | 85B | +10.0B |
Before 2019 the company printed something like 1.5 to 2 billion cards a year.7 It now prints five times that.
A vintage collector can point out that new printing adds nothing to a 1999 print run. But the company's own words show what it does when one of its cards gets expensive. Its support site said this on May 26, 2026:
"We are actively working to print more of the impacted Pokemon TCG products as quickly as possible and at maximum capacity … we will continue to reprint impacted products to replenish stock at participating retailers."8
The company has posted nearly the same statement at least three times since January 2025, each time a set sold out. It's a toy company that wants more kids to be able to buy its toys. Anyone holding these cards as an investment holds an asset whose maker has promised in writing, more than once, to print as many as it can. And they are living that vision.
Pokemon Card 151 was treated as scarce and then reprinted or re-released at least four times in 18 months9; Prismatic Evolutions got a reprint announcement two days before launch10; the Van Gogh Museum Pikachu went from scarcity phenomenon to free-with-purchase at more than 1,000 Dutch retail locations11.
It happened again in September. The 30th Celebration set came out on Sept. 16 and was TCGplayer's best-selling set of the third quarter.12 Kotaku reported that it has the largest print run of any Pokémon set, with more printing planned for months to come.13
One constraint is genuine and physical: the company bought its own printer in 2022 and its new 1.27 million square foot campus does not reach full operation until late 2028.14 Until then, printing capacity limits how much new product reaches shelves.
PSA grades more cards every year
PSA is owned by Collectors Holdings, which also owns two of its three largest competitors.15 A private antitrust suit puts their combined share at roughly 80 percent of every card graded anywhere and asks the court to force Collectors to sell SGC and Beckett. Two more collectors joined the suit in August. Collectors calls the claim devoid of substance and has asked a judge to dismiss it at a hearing set for Dec. 11.16
Graders handled a record 26.6 million cards in 2025, with Pokémon cards making up 16.1 million of them.4 PSA alone graded 19.26 million that year. It passed that total in the first nine months of 2026, grading 2.46 million cards in September.17
On June 2, PSA closed its four cheapest service tiers to new submissions because its backlog was "rapidly approaching 10 million" cards.18 Its goal is to get the backlog down to 5 million before they reopen.
Date | PSA's backlog |
|---|---|
May 28 | About 10.0 million |
June 30 | About 12.0 million |
July 28 | 12.4 million |
Aug. 11 | 11.85 million |
Sept. 8 | 9.9 million |
Sept. 22 | About 9.0 million |
Oct. 6 | 8.2 million |
The backlog peaked at 12.4 million in late July and has fallen in every update since, down to 8.2 million on Oct. 6.19 PSA opened a $60 Standard tier on Sept. 14 with a 90 to 100 business day estimate, but the Value tiers stay closed.20
PSA is spending $200 million to double its footprint and hire roughly 1,000 people.21 Its sixth grading hub, in Frankfurt, opened in September.19
Population counts also run high. When people crack a slab and resubmit the card, one copy can show up twice. Collectors runs a "Pop Report Hygiene" program to clear those duplicates.22
There are two Pokemon markets and only one of them is scarce
The commonly quoted figures say modern cards gem around 60 percent and vintage around 10.23 Card by card, the range is much wider.24
Card | Gem rate |
|---|---|
Typhlosion, Neo Genesis (2000) | 0.11% |
Vintage average, pre-2003 | 9.9% |
English chase cards, 151 and Prismatic | ≈30% |
Modern average, 2023 onward | 60.3% |
McDonald's Pikachu, Japanese promo (2025) | 87.8% |
Mega Starmie ex, Japanese (2025) | 94.83% |
Typhlosion from Neo Genesis gems at 0.11 percent and the Japanese Mega Starmie ex at 94.83 percent. A single "Pokémon gem rate" averaged across both tells a buyer nothing about either card.
The two Base Set Charizards split the same way. The 1st Edition has real scarcity: it had 120 PSA 10s in 2019 and GemRate counts 123 today.252 A 1st Edition PSA 9 sold at auction for $108,000 on Oct. 9.1 Six earlier sales from July through September went for $60,000 to $78,000.
The Unlimited printing looks like the same card. Its PSA population grew from 10,165 in 2019 to 107,747 today. Its PSA 10 count rose from 403 to 490 over the same years.252
The modern side moves faster. The Prismatic Evolutions Umbreon ex added 33 percent to its Gem Mint population in under six months, on a set that had a limited print.26
The English chase cards people speculate on are hard grades. The 151 Charizard ex Special Illustration Rare gems at 27 percent.2 Its supply grows through volume instead. PSA has graded 106,181 copies and 28,855 came back 10s. That's 2,412 more PSA 10s than in March27 and 59 times the PSA 10 count of the 1999 Unlimited Charizard.
So does a PSA 10 get cheaper next to a PSA 9 as more 10s exist? Nobody had published sales that test it.28 We pulled our own in August and again this month.
We measured the PSA 10 premium twice
In August we pulled 522 completed eBay auction sales of three cards from 2021 and 2023 in PSA 9 and PSA 10, from May 10 to Aug. 24.29 This month we pulled the auction sales of the same cards since Aug. 25, from eBay, Fanatics Collect and Alt.1 Every record is a dated, completed sale with a PSA grade on the slab.
Card | Gem rate | PSA 9 | PSA 10 | Premium, Aug. | Premium, Oct. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Charizard ex #199, 151 (2023) | 27.2% | $360 | $1,380 | 3.74× | 3.83× |
Rayquaza VMAX #218, Evolving Skies (2021) | 67.7% | $1,005 | $2,313 | 2.33× | 2.30× |
Umbreon VMAX #215, Evolving Skies (2021) | 69.0% | $1,962 | $3,850 | 2.07× | 1.96× |
Base Set Charizard #4, Unlimited (1999) | 0.5% | $3,476 | $27,250 | 7.45× | 7.84× |
Harder grades carry bigger premiums
Going in, we expected the premium to shrink as the PSA 10 count grew. It didn't. The 151 Charizard ex has the most PSA 10s of the three newer cards at 28,855.2 It still carries the biggest premium, with PSA 10s selling around $1,380 since late August against $360 for a PSA 9. Ranked by gem rate, the order held in both pulls. The 1999 Unlimited Charizard gems at 0.5 percent and carries the biggest gap of all.
A PSA 10 buyer pays for how hard the grade is to get. PSA sets that standard and applies it to more than 100,000 cards every business day.17
All six newer series sold for less this fall
Card and grade | May 10 to Aug. 24 | Since Aug. 25 |
|---|---|---|
Charizard ex #199, PSA 10 | $1,590 | $1,380 |
Charizard ex #199, PSA 9 | $425 | $360 |
Umbreon VMAX #215, PSA 10 | $4,301 | $3,850 |
Umbreon VMAX #215, PSA 9 | $2,078 | $1,962 |
Rayquaza VMAX #218, PSA 10 | $2,800 | $2,313 |
Rayquaza VMAX #218, PSA 9 | $1,204 | $1,005 |
This end of the market is more liquid than the headline stories suggest
The Umbreon VMAX in a PSA 10 sold at auction 80 times from Sept. 10 to Oct. 18. The middle half of those sales landed between $3,750 and $4,000.1 Only one Pikachu Illustrator PSA 10 exists.30 It sold for $16,492,000 in February 2026, the most anyone has paid for a trading card.31 A 2021 card with a big population sells every week at a tight price. The vintage top grades sell a few times a year.
The test needs more cards and more time
Three cards over two pulls can't show whether one card's premium shrinks as its own PSA 10 count grows. That test needs dated population counts against sales, card by card, for two years or more.
The monopoly has substitutes now
For most of its life Pokémon had no serious competitor for what it sells: the feeling of opening a pack. That changed. Magic: The Gathering outsold Pokémon on TCGplayer again in the third quarter, with One Piece third and Riftbound fifth a year after its launch.12 Magic did more than $1.7 billion in 2025 and then posted its first half-billion-dollar quarter.32
Lorcana shows what happens when the investors leave. Ravensburger said its sales fell 5.9 percent in 2025 and blamed the exit of buyers "with a primary interest in investment."33 That doesn't mean Pokémon follows Lorcana. The money Pokémon pulled in during 2024 and 2025 now has four or five other games it can go to. That wasn't true in 2021.
A price for a top-tier Pokémon card usually comes from fewer than 10 sales a year on a population of a few dozen.30 The venues reporting those sales are owned by the same companies that grade the cards and publish the prices:
Parent | Grading | Marketplace / auction | Price data |
|---|---|---|---|
Collectors Holdings | PSA, SGC, Beckett | The eBay Vault | Card Ladder, PSA Auction Prices Realized |
eBay | eBay, Goldin, TCGplayer | ||
Fanatics | PWCC, Fanatics Collect | ||
Blackstone | CGC |
Besides PSA and two of its largest rivals, Collectors owns the auction price database and the index everybody quotes. Card Ladder indexes now appear on eBay listing pages.34 A congressman has asked the FTC to investigate.35
Then there is what it costs to trade. Heritage charges buyers 25 percent of hammer36; Goldin charged 24 on the Illustrator.37 On those, August 2026 rates a buyer at a $100,000 hammer pays $125,000, and after a 5 percent consignor commission38 the card has to hammer at $131,579 next time, 31.6 percent above where it last sold, before that buyer breaks even. eBay runs about 13.6 percent on the sell side.39 None of that includes grading fees, shipping, insurance, or the months the capital sits in a queue.
The price history has been disputed too. eBay removed more than 71,000 PWCC listings in 2021 over shill bidding.40 Alt later sued PWCC over bid handling.41 PWCC denied wrongdoing in both matters and neither produced an adverse finding. Those years are still part of the price history every chart starts from.
The 1999 Charizard was reprinted again in September
The Pokémon Company reprinted Base Set Charizard on Sept. 16 in the 30th Celebration set,42 as one of 30 cards in its Classic Collection.43 It's the second reprint in five years.44 Ungraded reprints have sold for around $167 since Oct. 11.1
The reprints carry a "30" Pikachu stamp and a different holofoil. They also aren't tournament legal.45 Nobody will confuse a stamped 2026 reprint for a 1999 holo. The original held its price through the release, with PSA 9 copies selling around $3,450 from June to mid-September and around $3,540 since.1 Each reprint still makes the image a little more common. The effect is small per event. But it compounds.
The bigger change got less attention. At Nintendo's shareholder meeting in June, president Shuntaro Furukawa said The Pokémon Company would bring in made-to-order sales, buyer ID checks and stricter retailer agreements, starting in August with the anniversary release.46 Made to order means supply rises to meet demand. ID checks steer product toward people who open it. Both are aimed at the speculators whose bids have been setting the price.
Counterfeits and fake slabs are rising
PSA's 2025 fraud report found counterfeit Pokémon submissions up more than 125 percent in a year.47 All ten of the most-altered cards it saw were Pokémon cards.48 PSA's president said some fakes can only be caught by hand: "There are things you can only detect physically, the feel of the cards or the smell."49 That check now happens at a company grading more than 100,000 cards every business day.
Fake slabs are the other risk. In January 2026 Anthony Curcio was convicted in a scheme worth more than $2 million built on genuine PSA labels reprinted with made-up grades and cert numbers.50 PSA's own buyer's guide says its holders show tampering but can't prevent it. Checking a cert number confirms that the number exists. It doesn't confirm that the slab in your hand is the one PSA issued.
Japan is looking at regulating the market. A caucus in the ruling party began studying trading card rules in July, citing counterfeiting, scalping, organized theft and money laundering in a domestic market that grew 90 percent in four years.51
Where the bear case breaks
- The premium stops following the gem rate. If the 20 most-graded modern cards break the pattern, or single cards hold the same premium for two years while their PSA 10 counts grow, the case here is wrong.
- PSA's growth misses the cards that matter. If PSA keeps grading more while the PSA 10 counts of the top 20 English chase cards barely move, the extra grading won't push their prices down.
- The Pokémon Company starts limiting print runs. A public promise to cap printing would weaken the whole supply case. It's the least likely of the three and would matter most.
Two objections don't break it. The 1st Edition PSA 10 count has barely moved because that card is truly scarce. Record prices at the top also fit a supply boom: in 2001, Hasbro's games revenue fell by $469 million in a single year, mostly from trading cards.52
What I'd do with Pokémon cards now
- Treat Pokémon as four markets. Pre-2003 top grades, pre-2003 mid grades, modern English chase cards and modern mass promos behave differently. Pre-2003 cards gem at 9.9 percent, against 87.8 percent for mass promos.
- Check the PSA count and its date before buying anything graded. Then look up what it was two years ago. If the 10s are piling up fast, you're buying a card PSA keeps making.
- Compute the round trip before the upside. Roughly 30 percent at auction, 13 to 14 on eBay, 20% at card shows. A thesis that does not survive a 20-30 percent haircut is not a thesis.
- Check two or three price sources before you trust one number. Most of them are owned by companies that grade or sell the cards.
- On high-population cards from the last five years, know your bet. You're betting that demand grows faster than PSA can grade. That's a real position. It's a different one from owning a scarce card.
- My buy: I'd take a 1999 Unlimited Charizard in a PSA 9 at around $3,500 before I'd pay $1,380 for a 151 Charizard ex in a PSA 10. The 1999 card held its price through a reprint, while the modern card dropped from around $1,590 this summer.
- Skip expensive raw cards. Counterfeit Pokémon submissions are up more than 125 percent in a year.47 The last check is a person handling the cardboard.
Pokemon is here to stay, but the mechanics for collecting have changed
Nothing here says Pokémon cards are going to zero. The brand turned 30 this year and posted its best financial year on record in the year to February 2026.53 The vintage top grades are as scarce as anything in collectibles.
The scarcity story applied to the whole market is true if only for a sliver of it. Most collectors are buying grades that PSA makes more of every day, on cards The Pokémon Company has promised in writing to keep printing.
All of that can be true while Pokemon cards remain worth owning. The question is what they are owned for, at what size, and what kind of ROI a collector can expect from a round trip.
CardWire sales records, completed sales on eBay, Fanatics Collect and Alt, retrieved October 19, 2026. 1999 Base Set Charizard #4 Unlimited: 100 ungraded sales from September 30 to October 19; 102 PSA 8 sales from August 18 to October 19; 76 PSA 9 sales from June 21 to October 18, excluding one autographed copy; PSA 10 sales of $26,750, $27,000, $27,500, $29,995 and $37,966 from August 17 to September 12, excluding an $8,000 Best Offer sale. PSA 9 copies sold for a median of $3,450 from June 1 to September 15 (60 sales) and $3,538 from September 16 to October 19 (16 sales). 1st Edition PSA 9: $108,000 at Alt on October 9; six earlier sales from July 10 to September 30 at $60,000 to $78,000. Auction sales since August 25 for the three-card tables: Charizard ex #199 PSA 10, 23 sales, PSA 9, 33; Rayquaza VMAX #218 PSA 10, 5, PSA 9, 4; Umbreon VMAX #215 PSA 10, 80 sales from September 10 to October 18 with the middle half between $3,750 and $4,000, PSA 9, 8. The Base Set Unlimited row uses all sale types because only one PSA 10 sold at auction. Unlike the August pull, these include Fanatics Collect and Alt auctions as well as eBay. 30th Celebration Charizard #4 reprint: 101 ungraded sales from October 11 to October 19, median $167.↩↩2↩3↩4↩5↩6
GemRate PSA population counts, read October 19, 2026. 1999 Base Set Charizard #4 Unlimited: 107,747 graded, 490 PSA 10. 1st Edition: 5,816 graded, 123 PSA 10. Pokemon 151 Charizard ex #199: 106,181 graded, 28,855 PSA 10, a 27.2 percent gem rate. Evolving Skies Rayquaza VMAX #218: 22,624 graded, 15,317 PSA 10, 67.7 percent. Evolving Skies Umbreon VMAX #215: 31,666 graded, 21,860 PSA 10, 69.0 percent.↩↩2↩3↩4↩5
PSA, 14 May 2026 announcement: $200 million over 18 months, a doubling of physical footprint, roughly 1,000 new hires, following a prior $100 million investment. PSA states capacity is up fivefold since 2021 and that it graded roughly 2 million items in 2020. The ordinal comes from PSA's own July 2026 release on the Plano opening, which calls it the company's fifth global grading facility and names Frankfurt as the next, making Frankfurt the sixth; PSA writes New Jersey rather than Jersey City for the eastern site. Also Sports Illustrated, "PSA Opens New Texas Facility," 28 July 2026, on the Plano hub, with Frankfurt announced for summer 2026.↩
GemRate 2025 Year in Review, reported by Ben Burrows, cllct, January 2026. Industry total 26.6 million; PSA 19.26 million; CGC Cards 4.92 million; SGC 1.42 million; Beckett 824,000; TAG 440,000. Pokemon 16.1 million against 10 million for all sports categories combined.↩↩2
Derived from the company's published cumulative series: 34.1 billion as of 31 March 2021 against 85 billion as of 31 March 2026, a difference of 50.9 billion or 59.9 percent. The company rounds, so the annual deltas carry roughly half a billion of rounding error each. Full series compiled by PokeBeach, 22 May 2025, and reproduced independently by ComicBook.com, 28 May 2026.↩↩2
Derived from the company's published cumulative series: 34.1 billion as of 31 March 2021 against 85 billion as of 31 March 2026, a difference of 50.9 billion or 59.9 percent.↩
PokeBeach, "Pokemon TCG Printed 10.2 Billion Cards in 2024, Less Than the Previous Year," 22 May 2025, which carries the full historical series back to 2004.↩
Pokemon Support, "Update on Pokemon Trading Card Game Product Availability," support.pokemon.com, page last updated 26 May 2026. Substantially identical language was issued on 15 January 2025 for Prismatic Evolutions and on 27 March 2025 for Journey Together. Nintendo Life documented the repetition in "Huh, The Pokemon Company's Statement On TCG Shortages Sure Looks Familiar," 28 March 2025.↩
Japanese reprints shipped 18 April 2024, 16 June 2024 and December 2024; English re-releases via the 5-Pack Mini Tins Bundle on 21 October 2024 and the Blooming Waters Premium Collection in February 2025. SNKRDUNK Magazine, 27 March 2024, and subsequent product announcements.↩
PokeBeach, "TPCi Promises to Print More Prismatic Evolutions Amid Unusual Demand," 15 January 2025. The set launched 17 January 2025.↩
PokeBeach, "Van Gogh Museum Cancels Pikachu Promo Distribution," 13 October 2023; TheGamer, "Pokemon's Van Gogh Pikachu Card To Be Printed En Masse For Upcoming Re-Release," 5 February 2024. The Netherlands re-release ran from 10 February 2024 across seven chains, free with any in-store purchase of €29.99 or more. Volume estimates of 100,000-plus cards are PokeBeach's, not an official figure.↩
TCGplayer, "Best-Selling Trading Card Games, Q3 2026," October 14, 2026, ranked by sales from July 1 to September 30, 2026: Magic: The Gathering, Pokemon, One Piece Card Game, Yu-Gi-Oh! and Riftbound. 30th Celebration was the quarter's best-selling set, ahead of Magic's The Hobbit.↩↩2
John Walker, "Pokemon's 30th Celebration Cards Are Causing Scalpers To Spectacularly Crash Out," Kotaku, September 21, 2026.↩
PokeBeach, "The Pokemon Company International to Buy Millennium Print Group," 18 April 2022; WRAL, "Pokemon card maker to fill 1.3 million-square-foot North Carolina factory," 18 December 2025; PokeBeach, 31 December 2025. Millennium officials state upfit of existing buildings begins in early 2026, construction completes in 2027, and full-scale operations begin in late 2028.↩
Collectors Holdings acquired Collectors Universe, PSA's parent, at $92.00 per share, roughly $853 million, completed early 2021, in a group led by Nat Turner with D1 Capital Partners and Cohen Private Ventures. It acquired Card Ladder in December 2021, SGC in February 2024, the eBay Vault in 2024, and announced a definitive agreement to acquire Beckett on 15 December 2025, per Collectors' announcement of that date. eBay acquired Goldin in April 2024 in the same transaction that sold it the Vault, and owns TCGplayer. Fanatics acquired Topps in January 2022 and PWCC in May 2023. Blackstone took a majority stake in CGC's parent in 2021.↩
Michael Rasmussen v. Collectors Holdings, Inc. et al, US District Court for the Central District of California, case number 8:26-cv-00897, filed 14 April 2026 before Judge John W. Holcomb, docketed as an antitrust action. The complaint alleges roughly 80 percent combined grading share and seeks divestment of SGC and Beckett. Collectors filed a motion to compel arbitration and a motion to dismiss on 8 June 2026, describing the complaint as "long on rhetoric but devoid of substance" and arguing that expanding capacity through acquisition amid surging demand is "a textbook example of a procompetitive response, not an antitrust violation." Plaintiffs amended the complaint in August 2026, adding Erick Azarian and Andrew Fedynyshyn and California Unfair Competition Law claims. Collectors filed renewed motions to compel arbitration and to dismiss on 21 September 2026, set for hearing on 11 December 2026, per Value Added Resource, 23 September 2026. Docket via Justia; motion practice as reported by Value Added Resource.↩
GemRate monthly grading recaps, January to September 2026. PSA graded 1.91 million cards in January, 1.86 million in February, 2.17 million in March, 2.21 million in April, 2.07 million in May, 2.50 million in June, 2.49 million in July, 2.20 million in August and 2.46 million in September, 19.87 million in all. The September recap was published October 1, 2026, and counts 21 business days in the month.↩↩2
PSA, "Service Level Update," psacard.com, 28 May 2026: "Effective Tuesday, June 2, 2026 … Value Bulk, Value, Value Plus, and Value Max will be closed to new submissions." The announcement cites a backlog "rapidly approaching 10 million" and a target of 5 million units, "with our current projections anticipating it will take up to four months to achieve this goal."↩
PSA Backlog Tracker, psacard.com/info/backlog-tracker, read 19 October 2026. Entries: approximately 12.0 million on 30 June 2026; 11.0 million on 14 July; 12.4 million on 28 July; 11.85 million on 11 August; approximately 10.9 million on 25 August; 9.9 million on 8 September; approximately 9 million on 22 September, when PSA reported its Frankfurt facility newly opened; 8.2 million on 6 October, across six global hubs.↩↩2
PSA, "PSA Opens New Standard Service Level and Begins Grading in Europe," psacard.com, September 9, 2026: Standard at $59.99 per card from September 14, an estimated 90 to 100 business days, a $1,000 maximum insured value, processed behind existing Value and Bulk orders. The Regular tier was renamed Priority at $79.99.↩
PSA, "$200 Million Investment in the Grading Experience," psacard.com, 14 May 2026; PSA Backlog Tracker, psacard.com/info/backlog-tracker, entry dated 11 August 2026.↩
Ryan Hoge, President of PSA and Collectors, describing the "Pop Report Hygiene" program addressing duplicate submissions from cards flipped between services and holders, reported by Ben Burrows, cllct.↩
PokeInvest gem rate data, pokeinvest.io/gem-rates, updated 24 August 2026, built from PSA population data covering 15,339,436 graded cards. Modern (2023 onward) 60.3 percent; vintage (pre-2003) 9.9 percent; all-era 43.9 percent; highest Mega Starmie ex #111, Japanese Nihil Zero, at 94.83 percent; lowest Typhlosion #17, Neo Genesis, at 0.11 percent. Corroborated at the category level by GemRate, which put first-half 2025 TCG gem rates at 50 percent and ultra-modern at 59 percent.↩
Misprint, "Most Graded Pokemon Cards," 22 March 2026, from PSA data: 2025 Japanese McDonald's Pikachu M-P Promo #020 at 273,159 graded and 239,939 Gem Mint, an 87.8 percent gem rate. Base Set Charizard Unlimited at 94,731 graded and 488 Gem Mint at that date.↩
September 2019 and September 2020 figures from the Elite Fourum pop-tracking thread on Base Set Charizard. August 2026 figures from PriceCharting population pages. 1st Edition: 2,202 total and 120 Gem Mint in 2019, against 5,191 and 125 now. Unlimited: 10,165 total and 403 Gem Mint in 2019, against 99,246 and 486 now.↩↩2
PokeInsider, "Prismatic Evolutions PSA Population Report," 4 March 2026, reporting 4,418 Gem Mint of 14,276 graded for Umbreon ex #161. PriceCharting, August 2026, reporting 5,880 of 18,811.↩
Misprint, 22 March 2026: Pokemon 151 Charizard ex Special Illustration Rare #199 at 90,861 graded and 26,443 Gem Mint.↩
The mechanism is widely described. See for example Business of Card Grading, "Understanding Gem Rates and Multiples," 18 January 2026. No published quantitative study regressing the 9-to-10 multiple against population growth over time for Pokemon could be located.↩
CardWire dataset. Completed eBay auction records only, PSA as grading company, structured grade values of 9 and 10, retrieved 24 August 2026. 524 records across four target cards, of which 522 are used here; the fourth card returned a single sale at each grade and was dropped. No duplicate listing URLs, no fixed-price listings, no other grading companies, and no records flagged for lots, quantities, altered slabs, proxies or reprints. Multiples are ratios of medians; confidence intervals are the 2.5th and 97.5th percentiles of 20,000 bootstrap resamples. Drift figures are ordinary least squares of log price on date, per card and grade, reported per week and deliberately not annualized.↩
PSA census for Pikachu Illustrator: one PSA 10, fifteen PSA 9, roughly 47 copies PSA has handled in total, per cardsnpacks, 18 February 2026. 1st Edition Base Set Charizard: 5,325 graded with 124 at PSA 10 at the time of the December 2025 record sale, per cllct; PriceCharting shows 5,191 and 125 in August 2026. Booster box volume per PriceCharting.↩↩2
1996 Japanese Base Set No Rarity Charizard PSA 10 at $1,700,000 on 3 March 2026, the first Charizard above $1 million, per Card Ladder data compiled by Sports Illustrated, 3 April 2026. Pikachu Illustrator PSA 10 at $16,492,000 at Goldin on 16 February 2026, the most expensive trading card ever sold at auction, per CNN and Guinness World Records.↩
Hasbro fourth quarter and full year 2025 results, 10 February 2026: Magic: The Gathering revenue of $1,720.1 million, up 59 percent. Hasbro second quarter 2026 results, 21 July 2026: $545.3 million, up 32 percent, the first quarter above $500 million in the game's history. Prior years: $1,072.5 million in 2023 and $1,039.6 million in 2024, per ICv2, 24 February 2025.↩
BoardGameWire, "Disney Lorcana Sales Fell In 2025, Settle At High Level After Initial Hype," 28 January 2026; ICv2, same period. Ravensburger total 2025 sales €744 million, down 5.9 percent, its first decline since 2022, while core games, puzzles and books grew 3 percent.↩
eBay second quarter 2026 results commentary, 5 August 2026, noting Card Ladder indices on view-item pages and a record quarter at Goldin.↩
Representative Pat Ryan, press release, patryan.house.gov, 19 December 2025.↩
Heritage Auctions terms of sale: 25 percent of the hammer price, minimum $49 per lot.↩
Derived from the sale itself: $13,300,000 hammer producing a $16,492,000 total, which is 24 percent. CNN, 16 February 2026; Hypebeast, February 2026.↩
The Hobby Wire, 11 August 2026, on Goldin consignor terms; commission is negotiable at six figures and above.↩
eBay Collectible Card Games final value fees: 13.6 percent up to $7,500 and 2.35 percent thereafter for non-store sellers, plus a per-order fee. Store subscribers pay 12.35 percent up to $2,500. eBay seller fees page.↩
Axios, "eBay suspends PWCC over shill bidding," 20 August 2021. eBay removed more than 71,000 listings; PWCC had generated over $200 million in eBay sales the prior year and denied wrongdoing.↩
Alt v. PWCC, Supreme Court of the State of New York. Alt alleges shill bidding, breach of auctioneer duties, and access to confidential maximum bid information, and states it spent more than $10.7 million on cards between 2021 and 2023. PWCC, now owned by Fanatics, has called the claims baseless. Reported by Sports Collectors Digest, 1 May 2025.↩
PokeBeach, "30th Celebration TCG Set Officially Revealed for Worldwide September Release," 1 June 2026. Roughly 150 cards after secret rares, six-card all-foil packs, one of thirty illustrator Pikachus per pack, and a new "Futuristic Rare" rarity by the artist YOSHIROTTEN.↩
PokeBeach, "All 30 Classic Collection Cards from 30th Celebration Likely Revealed," 1 June 2026. The full thirty-card list was assembled from a promotional video rather than a published checklist; the inclusion of Base Set Charizard is separately confirmed in PokeBeach's main reveal coverage and in product imagery.↩
Celebrations released in English on 8 October 2021 with a 25-card Classic Collection reprint subset including Base Set Charizard as 4/102, carrying a 25th anniversary stamp and etched holofoil, and not Standard legal. PokeBeach, 7 October 2021; Bulbapedia.↩
PokeBeach, "30th Celebration Full English Product Lineup Revealed," 30 June 2026. The Ultra-Premium Collection at $179.99 releases 6 November 2026 and contains 29 regular packs plus one three-card Classic Collection pack; those packs also appear in regular boosters as rare chase pulls. The main set releases 16 September 2026.↩
Shuntaro Furukawa, President of Nintendo, at Nintendo's annual shareholders meeting, 26 June 2026, reported by Sports Illustrated, 12 July 2026.↩
PSA 2025 Fraud Report, published May 2026. Pokemon counterfeit submissions up over 125 percent year over year; overall counterfeit submissions up 45.3 percent; more than $200 million in fraudulent collectibles intercepted; 19.2 million cards examined. Reported by Sports Collectors Daily, 7 May 2026, and ICv2, 8 May 2026. Note that the frequently repeated "56 percent of counterfeits are Pokemon" figure is a misreading: 56.3 percent is the entire trading card game category, against 43.1 percent for sports.↩↩2
ICv2, 8 May 2026, reporting the PSA fraud report finding that all ten of the most-altered cards in 2025 were Pokemon cards.↩
Ryan Hoge, quoted in USA Today syndication, 7 May 2026.↩
United States Attorney's Office, Southern District of New York, "Perpetrator of Nationwide Sports and Pokemon Trading Card Fraud Convicted," conviction 28 January 2026. Charges were unsealed 23 May 2024 against Anthony Curcio and Iosif Bondarchuk, who pled guilty. The scheme exceeded $2 million; documented sales include a 1986 Fleer Michael Jordan rookie at $170,000 in May 2022, resold three separate times under different forged grades.↩
Bloomberg, "Japan's Government Weighs Regulating Pokemon Cards Amid Trading Mania," 23 July 2026; Japan Times, 23 July 2026; figures as reported by IBTimes UK, 24 July 2026. The caucus is chaired by Seiji Kihara. Japan's domestic trading card market is put at ¥338 billion, roughly $2.1 billion, with the global industry at $13 to $15.8 billion. The growth figure traces to the Japan Toy Association's annual series, whose card category ran ¥177,646 million in fiscal 2021 against ¥338,414 million in fiscal 2025, a gain of 90.5 percent.↩
Hasbro Form 10-K405 for fiscal year 2001, filed 2002: Games segment revenue declined $469 million, primarily trading cards, with further declines of $71 million in US Toys and $288 million internationally. Hasbro total revenue fell from $3.79 billion in 2000 to $2.86 billion in 2001. ICv2, 8 May 2001, reports first quarter US Games division revenue falling from $398 million to $190 million year over year.↩
The Pokemon Company, fiscal year ending 28 February 2026: net sales ¥531 billion, up 29.3 percent; operating profit ¥144 billion, up 43.0 percent; net profit ¥120 billion, up 70.7 percent. Compiled from Japanese gazette filings by Dr. Serkan Toto, 1 June 2026.↩
