I think it’s safe to assume that all English set cards (even rarer ones like EX Deoxys gold stars) had at least five-figure numbers of copies printed (but if anyone disagrees with this, I’d be curious to hear). The general consensus seems to be that gold stars or 1st Ed. Base holos are "“scarce but not rare.” I think everyone would agree with this characterization. But I’m curious what people’s thoughts are on the rarity of POP Series ultra rares, given that POP Series wasn’t a set but also not a super limited promo release. I’ve heard Scott refer to Espeon/Umbreon gold stars, for instance, as "actually rare."
It is it possible that there are less than a five-figure amount each of the POP Series 5 Espeon/Umbreon gold stars in existence? What about the Deoxys ex from POP Series 4? The pull rates on all of these cards were excessively low, and the POP Series obviously had much smaller print runs than normal sets. But were the print runs small enough to where it’s conceivable that there are <10,000 copies each of any of these cards?
Disclaimer: I realize any answer given to this question will be speculation. I’m just genuinely curious what people’s thoughts are on this.
From what I saw over the years watching the market, there were always less POP gold stars than any of the regular gold stars available, counting every condition. I remember even back in 2016-17 they were already scarce whereas you could find the others rather easily. No idea about the actual number though, but if I had to guess I´d say there are less than 10k.
Oh yeah, zero question they’re rarer than the set gold stars. By a gigantic margin.
The Deoxys ex from POP Series 4 seems even rarer than the Espeon/Umbreon gold stars, though. There are 3 that are listed on eBay and a grand total of 2 that have sold over the past 3 months. That’s much lower volume than the gold stars, but it’s also worth less so there’s less incentive to list it.
From my experience. I opened over 1000 POP 5 packs. I knew of someone who had a hoard of 1500 and bought another 100 off someone who had a hoard of 2000 POP 5 packs. This was 2014-2015. Even back then the packs were hard to come across apart from these folks who had access. The pull rate IS 1:40 for a gold star. I’d say in total from the years I was initially collecting I saw less than 8,000 POP 5 packs available (that includes the above).
That would be less than 100 of each gold star. You would need 80,000 POP 5 packs produced to have 1,000 of each and to have 10,000 of each gold star you’d need to have 800,000 packs produced. I find that number very unlikely. I could see 80,000 having been produced. Overall, I’d say the POP 5 gold stars are probably rarer than the other gold stars, but that the PSA 10s are not that rare. They grade much easier because they lack the holo and I had well over a 50% PSA 10 rate with this gold stars. I find it strange the are paying $20k for these when they have a super high pop rate.
Another thing we can take a look at is the unseen forces gold stars. 5000 (1700 of each one) of them were obtained from methods that didn’t involve the booster box or packs. As of right now there are over 1000 of each gold star in psa population report from all grades. Power keepers gold stars are 500 each in the population report. In a best case scenario only an extra 500 of the 1700 each gold star from stolen lot made it in for grading. We can use that information to make assumptions on the percentage of cards that got submitted from the total number of copies produced.
Let’s say PSA population represents 10% of all cards produced. For unseen forces that would mean 30,000 total were produced. If we subtracted the 5,000 from that number and then multiply it by the number of boxes needed to pull a gold star (2) we get the amount of boxes produced. 50,000 unseen forces boxes produced. How many base set boxes do we know or assume were produced? does this number of assumed boxes printed seem realistic compared to the drop in popularity pokemon and card games in general had from 1999/2000. At the end of the day this all speculation and by playing out these assumptions we can see if the numbers seem plausible for that time period.
Been in the hobby since the tail end of 2014 and I can attest to the scarcity of Umbreon/Espeon GS. At one point or another I’ve had every English Gold Star outside of Umbreon. The Espeon I was able to get in a PSA 4 for $250 last year. It is currently at PSA getting regraded because to me it looks like a 6. I’d estimate that there is somewhere between 500-1000 of each card out there somewhere. The packs are so scarce at this point that unless someone comes out of nowhere with thousands of packs, what the market currently has is all it is going to have.
Very valuable info; thank you! I have to imagine that a lot more than 80,000 POP Series 5 packs were produced. That would mean 1000 of each gold star. And I doubt that 25% of all copies printed have been graded. So I have to imagine that there significantly more than 1000 copies of each printed. Do you disagree with this?
I’m not sure we can extrapolate that because of two reasons:
Power Keepers seemingly had a higher print run than Unseen Forces
The eeveelutions are much more popular than the legendary dogs and so would be more likely to be graded
So if the whole scandal didn’t happpen, there would probably be fewer than 500 of each dog in the pop report. So it seems likely that more than half of the pop report is comprised of the illicit dogs.
I think that the PSA pop reports generally represent much fewer than 10% of a print run. Look at the WB Poke Card creator cards. We know that exactly 5250 of each were produced, yet the PSA pop only has ~50 copies of each. Even the Pikachu only has 55 copies graded. That’s only ~1% of the print run. Gold stars may be more likely to be graded, but it seems unlikely that they would have 10x the representation.
I think that significantly more than 50,000 boxes worth of Unseen Forces product was produced. Much of the print run, however, would’ve be in the form of packs that were distributed via blisters, big box store value packs, etc. If only 50,000 boxes worth of product of, say, TRR were produced, that would mean that only 8333 of each gold star were printed. And I have to imagine (but I could be wrong, of course) that significantly more than 8333 of each of those gold stars were produced. I was under the impression that the number would be mid-five figures.
Thank you for the input! It’s tough to imagine that there were only 500-1000 of each produced, because the pop report alone has nearly 250 for each of them.
Then again, I could be wildly overestimating the quantity of these out there. Both you and Hisoka seem very confident that there are significantly fewer than 10,000 copies, which is interesting to hear. I will say that acquiring even the regular rares from many of the POP Series sets has been brutally difficult. I’ve been trying to find a non-holo Plusle from POP Series 3 for like 2 months now and I literally can’t find a single one! So the POP Series print runs may have just been lower than I realized.
The POP packs were given at tournaments and league first. It was hard to find all rares even during those days.
Later the POP packs showed up in tins/collector boxes but still you cannot compare them with regular boosters.
I don’t think you will get a good answer. This one is even more speculative than Base. Besides all the various promotional products with pop series packs, you also have the LGS distribution and event distribution. And just so much anecdotal info that is impossible to quantity. For example there ware side tournaments one year at Nationals where the gold stars were given out as prizes.
What made me curious about it was the remarkable difficulty I’ve had finding certain POP Series cards. It was much easier to find the WB Creator cards, for instance. And those are “rare” with only 5250 copies of each released. I realize that scarcity and rarity aren’t the same thing; there may be other reasons for why some of the POP Series rares are so difficult to find (although I’m not sure what those reasons would be). But the remarkable scarcity of some of the rarer POP Series cards makes me feel like they’re also genuinely rare (i.e., under 10,000 copies in existence rare).
Difficult to find does not always mean rare. Sometimes it just means people don’t bother to list or advertise them.
I just searched lottery promo charizard on eBay and got seven hits. I’m sure there are a ton more on Yahoo. The card has distribution 5,000 and is twenty years old. By all accounts “rare” but I can BIN a dozen if I’m willing to pay. There is enough demand for an established market.
I searched Deoxys ex pop series on eBay and found one ex. But I can’t extrapolate anything from that. There could be 1,000 or 10,000. I see twelve pop series Umbreon gold on eBay but I can’t take that to assume Deoxys ex is 12x rarer.
This is the difficulty with tracking down niche cards (and ugh, I know it first hand).
So you do think it’s possible (if not likely) that there were fewer than 10,000 of that Deoxys ex printed? Based on its scarcity, I think it can concluded that there were likely under 10,000 copies printed. Of course, that number could be 2000 or 8000. No one knows. But does it not seem likely, based on its scarcity, that it is not only scarce but rare?
Because I think we both believe that it’s a safe assumption that, for instance, more than 10,000 GS Rayquazas were printed. But what I’m getting at is that this doesn’t seem to be an assumption we can make for some of these rarer POP Series cards.
I realize that, but I feel like we can draw very general conclusions based on factors such as market volume. For instance, we could conclude the following: based on the sales volume of P4 Deoxys ex, there are not more than 100,000 copies in existence. This is a conclusion that everyone on this forum would accept. But it’s also not a very interesting conclusion – it doesn’t actually say much. The question is how much more can we narrow down a conclusion like this? Does it seem fair to conclude that there are fewer than 20,000 copies? Or 10,000? Or 5,000? Based on the very small amount of information we have, how much can we narrow down the print run? I’m not sure, which is why I was curious for others’ inputs.
Re; cut-off number – my personal number is 10,000. But there’s no good reason for that cut-off. It could just as well be 5,000 or 20,000.
