Every card page on Moonstone now shows its other-language printings side by side, English against Japanese, with both prices. Building that feature produced a number that deserved its own article: 8,858 Japanese cards in our catalog have no English counterpart at all. No English print run, no English price anchor, a market that moves on Japanese supply and worldwide demand. So we did what we do with markets we want to understand: we built an index and let the data talk.
A year of Japan-only prices, measured
The index sits at 104.83 today: up 4.8 percent over the year, down 1.8 percent over the last 30 days, up 1.4 percent over 90. That is a calmer profile than the English blue-chip index we track, which rose every month this year, and the reason is composition. The exclusives list is top-heavy with trophy promos, Mario Pikachu at $5,399, Pretend Team Skull Pikachu at $3,500, and trophies move in steps when a copy trades, not in trends. Underneath that calm surface, individual constituents moved 20 to 30 percent. An index tells you where the tide is; the constituents tell you where the boats are.
The top of the book
Largest holdings by value
Three buys from the movers, labeled as analysis
These are the three constituents whose year and quarter both point the same direction, with our reasoning attached. This is analysis of real price series, not a promise about the future.
The picks
Rocket's Entei is the cleanest story: the Glory of Team Rocket set turned this year's nostalgia cycle toward Team Rocket, the card is Japan-only, and it posted both the strongest year, up 33.7 percent, and the strongest quarter, up 10.4 percent, in the entire index. Poncho-wearing Eevee is the structural pick: Eevee-line collectors are the hobby's most reliable buyers, the promo is a fixed, closed pool, and its 30.3 percent year came on steady steps rather than one spike. Mega Greninja is the momentum pick and the riskiest of the three: modern JP SARs can retrace when reprint waves land, which is exactly what the Storm Emeralda Rayquaza's negative year shows two lines up. Its 8 percent quarter, best of the modern SAR cohort, is why it makes the list anyway.
What we are watching
Two things will move this index. First, English reprints: when a Japan-only card finally gets an English printing, it leaves the exclusives pool by definition, and history says the Japanese original usually rises on the attention. Second, the 30th anniversary wave now arriving: anniversary sets mint new Japan-only promos every cycle, and the strongest of them will earn index seats. The index rebuilds daily and its constituents page updates with it; we will rescore these three picks against today's exact prices in future issues.
Exclusivity is computed against our catalog on a cleaned-name plus printed-HP join and disclosed per card. The index is equal-weight over the 25 highest-value exclusives with live prices, each normalized to 100 at its series start one year ago; daily levels average the constituents present that day. Prices and per-card moves are Moonstone market data pulled August 19, 2026. Everything forward-looking is analysis, labeled as such.