{
  "url": "https://www.moonstonehq.com/articles/chase-card-halo-effect",
  "slug": "chase-card-halo-effect",
  "title": "The Chase-Card Halo: Does a New Set Lift the Old Prints of Its Star?",
  "summary": "A reader's hypothesis, when a new set's chase card revives an old Pokémon, that Pokémon's vintage prints rise, put to two real launches with our daily data, then applied to Delta Reign's Mega Rayquaza. The effect is real, sharp, and shorter-lived than it looks.",
  "section": "Investment Research",
  "published": "2026-07-30",
  "readMinutes": 13,
  "publisher": "moonstone",
  "findings": [
    {
      "value": "+26%",
      "measures": "Old Zekrom/Reshiram prints, announce → release",
      "basis": "vs +8% for the market · Black Bolt/White Flare, 2025"
    },
    {
      "value": "+15.4%",
      "measures": "Old Rayquaza prints over the reveal window",
      "basis": "Jun 1 to Jul 26, 2026, a window that opens three weeks before the late-June reveal · vs −1.5% Groudon, −1.6% Kyogre"
    },
    {
      "value": "≈0",
      "measures": "Halo on old Charizard from the Mega set",
      "basis": "the pattern vanishes on saturated names"
    }
  ],
  "tables": [],
  "charts": [
    {
      "title": "The halo, measured against the market: Black Bolt / White Flare",
      "unit": "%",
      "note": "Median % change of old Zekrom+Reshiram prints (n=7) vs the whole 520-card universe, per window. moonstone daily TCGplayer data.",
      "points": [
        {
          "label": "Pre-window (Mar 15 → Apr 20)",
          "value": 9,
          "basis": "before the announcement"
        },
        {
          "label": "Announce reaction (Apr 20 → Jun 6)",
          "value": 19.2,
          "basis": "market: +1.7%"
        },
        {
          "label": "Announce → EN release (Apr 20 → Jul 18)",
          "value": 26.1,
          "basis": "market: +8.0%"
        },
        {
          "label": "Post-hype (Sep 1 → Jan 1)",
          "value": 11.3,
          "basis": "market: +8.3%, leadership gone"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sections": [
    "Define the pattern so it can fail",
    "Black Bolt & White Flare, the cleanest natural experiment",
    "Moonbreon, the halo that ate its buyers",
    "Charizard, where the halo disappears",
    "Delta Reign, what is actually confirmed",
    "How much halo is left to buy?"
  ],
  "method": [
    "Universe: the 520-card moonstone graded-study universe, daily TCGplayer market prices via the Pokémon Price Tracker API, history spanning January 27, 2025 – July 26, 2026. Baskets are name-matched within that universe (old Zekrom+Reshiram prints n=7, excluding the 2025 Black Bolt/White Flare prints themselves; Rayquaza n=17, Groudon n=8, Kyogre n=8; Charizard n=28; Eeveelutions n=43). Window returns are the median of per-card percentage changes between nearest daily prices within ±20 days of each anchor date; the control is the median change of the entire universe over the identical window. Event dates: Black Bolt/White Flare announced May 6, 2025 (press.pokemon.com), international release July 18, 2025 (PokeBeach); Mega Evolution set September 26, 2025; Prismatic Evolutions January 17, 2025; Delta Reign/Storm Emeralda Japanese reveal late June 2026, full main set revealed July 23, 2026, Japanese release July 31, 2026, English release November 6, 2026 (PokeGuardian, PokeBeach, Serebii, Bulbapedia). Caveats, stated plainly: samples are small (the cleanest case rests on seven cards) and were measured inside a broad vintage bull market, so excess-over-control is the load-bearing statistic, not raw magnitude; vintage raw daily prices carry condition-mixing noise (see our accuracy note), so individual vintage prints are cited only where the daily path is clean and steady, spike-and-revert artifacts (e.g. a Neo Discovery Umbreon series swinging $700→$1,800→$160, and two thin Rayquaza prints) were excluded from per-card figures and survive only inside the robust medians. The Prismatic pre-launch run-up predates our history and is cited from contemporaneous reporting (dotesports, ScreenRant, The Gamer), not measured here. Set-content claims are scoped to the confirmed column as of July 30, 2026; unconfirmed details are labeled. Delta Reign rating language is forward-looking analysis, explicitly not a data point. Linked product pages price live and will drift from captured figures. Nothing here is financial advice."
  ],
  "terms": "Figures are moonstone's own recorded measurements, dated as published. Quote them with the population stated beside them. The article at `url` is the human form of this file."
}