The back-centering is not even a problem (looks like it meets PSA’s 75/25 guideline)…that inner-border front-centering is pretty atrocious though (at least to me and my OCD).Īs someone who owns every released rainbow rare card in PSA 10 (minus the early-released Shining Legends four and Gardevoir and Tapu Bulu from Burning Shadows, which all will be on their way to PSA next week), it’s pretty clear that PSA seems to have decided to give a ton of leeway to that inner-border centering, period…they don’t seem to believe it detracts from the appeal of the card, which, i’ll admit, is somewhat true…although the front-centering as bad as the Charizard you linked crosses a line for me and imo shouldn’t get a 10. I picked up a minimum 9 copy today, at probably higher than I should pay but oh well… I’d say at the end of the day, to jump on what churlocker was saying, the demand for this card in PSA 10 will far outstrip the supply, so it will age + rise in value rather gracefully there’s so many rainbow rares out there in the SM sets to collect that regardless of how much product is seemingly being printed there’s plenty of rainbows that are still going to be exceedingly rare to pull + grade a 10, and this is one of those cards.ĭefinitely will be holding on to my second copy for the long haul to see how high this baby can go.Īre cards like this really getting 10s…? Look at that back centering. Yes, the PSA 10 pop for this card is already tremendously high (POP 61 (!) w/ a 47% PSA 10 rate) but all that tells us is how popular this card is and how great the demand to get it graded and to own it graded is. I do think this card is a largely “safe” bet to increase in value as it’s got all the hallmarks of a great card…it’s a Charizard, the artwork is great even if it’s just a variant of the normal FA (looks amazing with the Rainbow effect/print), the pull rate is rather low and grading a 10 still isn’t as easy as it seems… I ended up listing one of them on eBay for $800 OBO since that seemed to be the trend and I took a $675 offer (only because there was another card I needed to buy that was being sold at the time and I needed the cash right then and there). Comparing this to cards with 5-10x the pull rate won’t cut it as valuable analysis.īought two of these at their “lowest point” on eBay for $60 each, sent both in to PSA, both graded 10s… But it’s a great card and it would take a significant event to tank the value. And I’m saying that as someone who has in writing my skepticism toward the card. If you’ve held a few of these, you know that they look better in person than it seemed beforehand. I expect this card will have the same patterns we see with a lot of stuff, but I’d be shocked if it didn’t also earn a premium in the long run.

Modern cards have a ton of demand and for some singles, that demand exceeds the supply. It’s also worth noting that the number of people collecting just modern cards right now is probably higher than the number of people collecting Pokemon cards period during the Great Pokemon Recession (2006-2009). They can print 10x as many cards overall as a set in the late 2000s and not hurt the value on cards like these so long as the relative rarity is adjusted accordingly. But the number of commons and uncommons floating around doesn’t matter. The increase in the number of Ultra Rares per set helps the value of specific cards because the number of packs needed to pull a specific UR gets increasingly high.Ī lot of times, people get caught up in the number of Pokemon cards printed.

This is a good example of the point I’ve tried to make a few times now with modern Ultra Rares.

Charizard gx rainbow price