{
  "url": "https://www.moonstonehq.com/articles/japanese-slabs",
  "slug": "japanese-slabs",
  "title": "Japanese Registries Are Twice as Deep, Their Slabs Trade a Third as Often, and the Gem Premium Is Flatter",
  "summary": "On September 4, 2026, across 346 Japanese cards with a usable PSA ladder against 337 English ones, the median Japanese PSA 10 population was 645 against 270, lifetime verified comps 4 against 13, and the 10 over 9 premium 3.20x against 4.28x.",
  "section": "Grading economics",
  "published": "2026-09-04",
  "readMinutes": 6,
  "publisher": "moonstone",
  "findings": [],
  "tables": [
    {
      "title": "The two graded markets, side by side, September 4, 2026",
      "columns": [
        "Measure",
        "English",
        "Japanese"
      ],
      "rows": [
        {
          "Measure": "Cards with a PSA ladder",
          "English": "337",
          "Japanese": "346"
        },
        {
          "Measure": "Median PSA 10 over PSA 9",
          "English": "4.28x",
          "Japanese": "3.20x"
        },
        {
          "Measure": "Median PSA 10 over raw",
          "English": "9.53x",
          "Japanese": "10.32x"
        },
        {
          "Measure": "Median PSA 10 population",
          "English": "270",
          "Japanese": "645"
        },
        {
          "Measure": "Median PSA 10 lifetime comps",
          "English": "13",
          "Japanese": "4"
        },
        {
          "Measure": "Median PSA 10 price",
          "English": "$162.75",
          "Japanese": "$125.50"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "charts": [],
  "sections": [],
  "method": [
    "Population: the same flattened graded ladder used across this batch, split by the catalog's language field. 337 English and 346 Japanese cards carry a usable PSA ladder. Rows are deduped on the TCGplayer product id before counting, because 972 Japanese and 240 English product ids are each claimed by two catalog rows and an undeduped count is about 3% high and double-counts its extremes. Every figure is a median with its n stated; no matching between the two populations is attempted and none is implied. The store behind this is a current-state cache with no history, so these figures are a cross-section of September 4, 2026 and cannot be rebuilt for that date later. Raw prices resolve through the shared canonical printing rule. Population counts are registry figures as reported by the grading feed. No regression is run and no ratio is built from a shared term."
  ],
  "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."
}