Research

Source-backed guides, price analysis and market explainers across the covered card universe.

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151 Card Values: The Complete Guide

Pokemon TCG: 151 concentrates almost all of its value in 42 secret cards. This guide prices every rarity tier from TCGplayer market data read on September 1, 2026, ranks the ten chase cards, and shows why print rarity does not set the order.

5 min read

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Market Analysis

Absorption and Depth: What Happens When You Sell Into a Thin Market

Depth measures how many listings sit near a card's best price, and absorption measures how much of that depth a specific trade actually uses. Delivered price, item plus shipping, decides which listing is really cheapest, and an auction result should never be read as a fixed-price floor.

6 min read

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Sealed & Investing

Sealed Pokemon Products and Long-Term Value, 2022-2023

Published TCGplayer market data, as reported by ICv2, covers seven sealed products between December 2022 and December 2023. Boxes from Evolving Skies and XY Evolutions rose. Boxes from Obsidian Flames and Paradox Rift fell in the month tracked, and two further products fell during presale months before their release dates. This is a review of what the data shows, grouped by documented release date, not a buying recommendation.

6 min read

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Grading

Centering, Surface, Corners, Edges: The Four Grading Criteria

PSA, CGC, and BGS each grade a Pokemon card on centering, corners, edges, and surface, and every grade's published definition describes all four at once. Here is what each company actually publishes, where their numbers agree, and where they do not.

6 min read

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Grading

Gem Mint 10 Odds by Set: Which Sets Grade the Hardest

Gem mint 10 rates are not one hobby-wide number: PSA's Population Report puts Neo Genesis at roughly 3.2 percent PSA 10 and 2021's Evolving Skies near 59.2 percent, an eighteen-fold spread inside the same grading company's own data. PSA publishes the counts behind each rate but no cause for the gap. Even within a single set, one chase card can grade far harder than the set's own average.

5 min read