Hottest Sales of the Week: A $375,000 Latias

A PSA 10 Latias Gold Star sold for $375,000 this week, one of only 22 that exist in the grade.

Two weeks ago a Rayquaza Gold Star in that same grade brought $682,500. There are 47 of those. The scarcer card took the smaller number, and that gap is the most useful thing on this board. Here is what July 20 to 26 looked like.

The graded grails

Count the Gold Star headlines with us: a $682,500 Rayquaza in PSA 10, the same card back at $168,000 in a CGC 10, a PSA 9 at $108,000, and now this $375,000 Latias out of EX Deoxys. Four inside a month.

Now put the two side by side. The Latias is the scarcer card by a wide margin, 22 copies in PSA 10 against the Rayquaza's 47, and it sold for a little over half the money.

The simple version: a pop report counts how many copies exist. How many people want one is a separate question, and people want them very unevenly.

Everyone is chasing Charizard, Rayquaza, Gengar, Umbreon. Nobody is building a collection around Shiftry. A genuinely rare card of a Pokemon nobody wants just sits there, because rare only costs money when somebody else is reaching for it too. More people love Rayquaza, and it has a set landing in November with its Mega on the cover.

We track how many copies exist and what they sell for on 8,568 English Pokemon cards, so we ran it ourselves. Same set, same card type, same grade, same number of copies out there, and the only thing we changed is which Pokemon is on the front.

The name people love is worth up to fifteen times more. Gengar 3.7x. Rayquaza 3.5x. Umbreon 3.3x. Charizard 2.5x.

Behind the Latias, a Crystal Lugia at $120,000 put Aquapolis near the top for the second Monday running, and two Pikachus cleared six figures on the same board: the Flying Pikachu at $120,000 and the Poncho Pikachu riding Mega Charizard X at $114,000 in a BGS 10 Black Label. A Shadowless 1st Edition Charizard closed the five at $114,000 in a CGC 10, which put PSA, Beckett and CGC on one board in the same week.

On the sealed side

Third week, third 1st Edition Fossil box on top. The trail now reads $41,604, then $33,064, then $36,615. Three prints inside an $8,540 band.

A 1st Edition Jungle box followed at $32,940. That makes back-to-back Mondays with a pair of Wizards of the Coast (WOTC) 1st Edition boxes above $30,000, and the unlimited Fossil box still took $19,520. Sealed keeps bidding like the 30th anniversary in September is already on the calendar, which it is.

Modern needed a group effort. Seventy-two sealed 151 booster bundles went as one lot for $10,900, which works out to about $151 a bundle. We promise we didn't make that up. An XY Flashfire box at $8,769 rounded out the five.

Where it points

Four Gold Star sales in a month, and the scarcest of the four came second. If you price vintage chase off population reports alone, that is the half of the equation you're holding. The count and the money run in opposite directions often enough that we can put a number on it.

The cleaner signal is on the sealed side. Three 1st Edition Fossil boxes in three weeks have settled into the low-to-mid $30,000s instead of chasing that first $41,604 print, and three prints inside a range is the closest thing to a quote this end of the market gives you.