Machamp Prime's PSA 10 still has room to cool after the Triumphant Prime run

On Monday, the collector account tcgberg posted that PSA 10s of 2010 Triumphant's Machamp Prime #95 were "correcting hard, down 50%" while PSA 9s were "ripping and making new highs." That reads like collectors giving up on the top grade. A PSA 10 sold for $4,980 on Oct. 29.

Look at the rest of the set first. Mew Prime and Gengar Prime, the two biggest names from 2010 Triumphant, ran with Machamp this fall and have cooled off since mid-October too. When three Primes from one set fade together, I read it as a hot set catching its breath, not collectors walking away from 10s. The one Prime that didn't fade is Celebi, whose PSA 10s have held their October highs while Machamp, Mew and Gengar came down together.

A breath can take a while, though. Through the spring and into early August, a PSA 10 Machamp sold for $2,300 to $3,500. Six of the seven PSA 10s sold since mid-October went through Alt and Fanatics, the kind of consignment wave that keeps pushing a card down until it finds where buyers used to live.

Raw copies sat the whole thing out. A raw copy of Machamp Prime #95 still sells for about $70, roughly where it was in September. The run and the slide both lived in the slabs, where a few big consignments can push a thin market around in either direction. If you just want the four-armed menace in a binder without paying for a slab, the reverse holo Machamp #26 from the same 2010 Triumphant set sold for $17 raw on Oct. 30.

I'd keep all four hands in my pockets until a PSA 10 gets back to $3,500, where the spring buyers topped out. With only 141 graded against 700 9s, these mid-era Pokemon grails are primed to be sought after by collectors for years to come.