9 months of Charizard grading at PSA

This week a new PSA 10 1st Edition Base Set Charizard card appeared on PSA’s population report. This is the first new PSA 10 for this card to have been graded by PSA since March 2019, which is probably something to be mildly excited about.

I figured this would be a good excuse to look at how many Charizard cards have been graded in the past 9 months, from just before Covid became a worldwide problem until today.

Totals

Statistic Feb 25th 2020 Nov 25th 2020 Increase
Charizard cards graded 106,276 137,718 31,442
Unique Charizard card variants 288 306 18
PSA 10 Charizard cards graded 37,388 48,640 11,252

Charizard makes up 10.37% of all Pokémon cards PSA has graded (that is to say, 1 in 10 PSA-graded Pokémon is a Charizard card).

Base Set Charizard Cards

Statistic Feb 25th 2020 Nov 25th 2020 Increase
1st Edition 2,401 2,753 352
… PSA 10s 120 121 1
Shadowless 2,547 3,448 901
… PSA 10s 53 54 1
Unlimited 11,573 15,826 4,253
… PSA 10s 417 435 18
Japanese No Rarity Symbol 165 193 28
… PSA 10s 6 6 0
Japanese 1,750 2,167 417
… PSA 10s 385 436 51

PSA 10 grades account for 4.4% of 1st Edition, 1.57% of Shadowless and 2.75% of Unlimited Charizard cards graded. For the Japanese sets, PSA 10 grades account for 3.11% of the No Rarity Symbol population and 20.12% of the regular release.

Hidden Fates Charizard Cards

Statistic Feb 25th 2020 Nov 25th 2020 Increase
Charizard GX (9) 462 1,356 894
… PSA 10s 290 929 639
Charizard GX (SV49) 827 2,556 1,729
… PSA 10s 617 1,705 1,088

Champion’s Path Charizard Cards

Statistic Feb 25th 2020 Nov 25th 2020 Increase
Charizard Vmax (74) 0 1,635 1,635
… PSA 10s 0 1,207 1,207
Charizard V (79) 0 1,506 1,506
… PSA 10s 0 1,081 1,081
Charizard V (SWSH050) 0 1,078 1,078
… PSA 10s 0 730 730

Despite a massive backlog of cards, PSA has graded a combined 3,871 Charizard cards from Champion’s Path since the set was released exactly 2 months ago. We can assume that these were all the submitted using at minimum PSA’s ‘regular’ $50 plan to beat the backlog, which means PSA will have made at least $193,550 from these 3 cards alone.

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Nice job.

I can’t wait to see the increases to all these and just overall Pokemon cards in general the next 12 months. It’s going to be insane.

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Neat data thanks! The most surprising thing to me is only 18 out of 4,253 Base Unlimited Zards graded a 10?!?!? I figured everyone and their mother were sending in copies but expected a few multiples more 10s than that.

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Dataaa *drools*

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Nice work! I’d also want to see evolutions Charizard data! Prices spiked 1000% on those raw cards since last year.

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So many different variations! Here you go:

Evolutions Charizard Cards

Statistic Feb 25th 2020 Nov 25th 2020 Increase
Charizard (11) 4,326 6,008 1,682
… PSA 10s 149 162 13
Charizard (11, Reverse) 2,041 2,789 748
… PSA 10s 493 580 87
Charizard EX (12) 770 961 191
… PSA 10s 425 506 81
M Charizard EX (13) 1,378 1,700 322
… PSA 10s 873 1,039 166
M Charizard EX (101) 3,106 3,678 572
… PSA 10s 2,282 2,602 320
Charizard (11, Prerelease) 630 707 77
… PSA 10s 70 73 3
Charizard (11, Prerelease, Staff) 337 367 30
… PSA 10s 37 38 1
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Charizard collectors are wild…

@qwachansey, I think you are spot in your ‘everyone and their mother’ assumption. The problem is that ‘everyone and their mother’ is new to grading and blindly sends Charizards thinking they are PSA 10 worthy.

This latest craze with Pokemon is setting up a lot of people for some serious disappointment. I fully expect a lot of anger at PSA once the backlog starts getting resolved and the new wave of ‘investors’ start getting back entire submissions with loads of PSA 6’s. Hopefully I am wrong.

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Feeling better and better about buying a no rarity charizard lol.

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Also, it has only recently become worthwhile to send in random binder copies / lower grade Charizards, so that could be part of why 10s account for such a small percentage of new grades. For example, I included an Unlimited Charizard in my most recent submission which I expect will get something like a PSA 5. A year ago it wouldn’t have been worth sending in, but now it is. It’ll be interesting to see if it still turns out to be worthwhile when it comes back next year.

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Nice post.
Now I can see why it’s been so hard to accumulate more shadowless. Though it’s been my main focus for the past 12 months, I’ve only managed 3. I’ve lost more 1st Editions than that:(

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I been saying this to friends for months as there are tons of posts/youtube vids/comments scared of a wave of psa 10 s to hit the market over the next few months “once everyone gets their submissions back” .

the facts are mostly everyone is sitting on 7-8s and it will very uncommon to randomly find 10s after being out of the hobby for 20 years.

on pokemonmarketcap, a highly data-driven site, you can clearly see over 50% of submissions are coming back 7-8, mainly 8.

imo this will allow people to build 7-8 collections while the 9-10s remain in constant demand

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