{
  "url": "https://www.moonstonehq.com/articles/pokemon-reprints-and-the-original",
  "slug": "pokemon-reprints-and-the-original",
  "title": "What a Reprint Does to the Original Card",
  "summary": "Across 543 same-rarity reprint pairs the original trades at a median 1.13x the reprint. Reprinted one tier up, the original is worth 0.32x the newer card.",
  "section": "Set economics",
  "published": "2026-09-22",
  "readMinutes": 8,
  "publisher": "moonstone",
  "findings": [
    {
      "value": "1.13x",
      "measures": "median original over same-tier reprint",
      "basis": "543 pairs"
    },
    {
      "value": "0.32x",
      "measures": "median original over a reprint one tier up",
      "basis": "85 pairs, the original is the cheaper card"
    },
    {
      "value": "3.80x",
      "measures": "median original over a reprint one tier down",
      "basis": "52 pairs"
    },
    {
      "value": "446",
      "measures": "distinct artworks matched across two or more sets",
      "basis": "687 pairs, 72 sets"
    }
  ],
  "tables": [
    {
      "title": "687 reprint pairs, split by where the reprint landed on the rarity ladder",
      "columns": [
        "Reprint tier against the original",
        "Pairs",
        "Median original over reprint",
        "Share where the original is dearer",
        "Median original",
        "Median reprint"
      ],
      "rows": [
        {
          "Reprint tier against the original": "Same tier",
          "Pairs": "543",
          "Median original over reprint": "1.13x",
          "Share where the original is dearer": "58.2%",
          "Median original": "$0.79",
          "Median reprint": "$0.73"
        },
        {
          "Reprint tier against the original": "One or more tiers up",
          "Pairs": "85",
          "Median original over reprint": "0.32x",
          "Share where the original is dearer": "20.0%",
          "Median original": "$1.33",
          "Median reprint": "$5.95"
        },
        {
          "Reprint tier against the original": "One or more tiers down",
          "Pairs": "52",
          "Median original over reprint": "3.80x",
          "Share where the original is dearer": "90.4%",
          "Median original": "$2.27",
          "Median reprint": "$0.40"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "title": "The fourteen widest same-tier gaps, in order, and Charizard for contrast",
      "columns": [
        "Card",
        "Original",
        "Ask",
        "Reprint",
        "Ask",
        "Original over reprint"
      ],
      "rows": [
        {
          "Card": "Fire Energy",
          "Original": "[Gym Heroes](/card/gym1-128)",
          "Ask": "$0.40",
          "Reprint": "[Neo Genesis](/card/neo1-107)",
          "Original over reprint": "8.68x"
        },
        {
          "Card": "Venomoth",
          "Original": "[Jungle](/card/base2-13)",
          "Ask": "$4.72",
          "Reprint": "[Base Set 2](/card/base4-31)",
          "Original over reprint": "7.94x"
        },
        {
          "Card": "Fire Energy",
          "Original": "[Gym Heroes](/card/gym1-128)",
          "Ask": "$0.47",
          "Reprint": "[Gym Challenge](/card/gym2-128)",
          "Original over reprint": "7.38x"
        },
        {
          "Card": "Water Energy",
          "Original": "[Gym Challenge](/card/gym2-132)",
          "Ask": "$0.61",
          "Reprint": "[Neo Genesis](/card/neo1-111)",
          "Original over reprint": "6.92x"
        },
        {
          "Card": "Impostor Professor Oak",
          "Original": "[Base Set](/card/base1-73)",
          "Ask": "$3.76",
          "Reprint": "[Base Set 2](/card/base4-102)",
          "Original over reprint": "6.58x"
        },
        {
          "Card": "Hypno",
          "Original": "[Fossil](/card/base3-8)",
          "Ask": "$6.48",
          "Reprint": "[Legendary Collection](/card/lc-25)",
          "Original over reprint": "6.48x"
        },
        {
          "Card": "Voltorb",
          "Original": "[Base Set](/card/base1-67)",
          "Ask": "$0.62",
          "Reprint": "[Base Set 2](/card/base4-98)",
          "Original over reprint": "6.44x"
        },
        {
          "Card": "Magneton",
          "Original": "[Fossil](/card/base3-11)",
          "Ask": "$3.27",
          "Reprint": "[Legendary Collection](/card/lc-28)",
          "Original over reprint": "6.11x"
        },
        {
          "Card": "Electrode",
          "Original": "[Jungle](/card/base2-2)",
          "Ask": "$4.34",
          "Reprint": "[Legendary Collection](/card/lc-22)",
          "Original over reprint": "5.87x"
        },
        {
          "Card": "Archeops",
          "Original": "[Noble Victories](/card/bw3-67)",
          "Ask": "$1.87",
          "Reprint": "[Plasma Blast](/card/bw10-54)",
          "Original over reprint": "5.86x"
        },
        {
          "Card": "Fighting Energy",
          "Original": "[Gym Challenge](/card/gym2-127)",
          "Ask": "$0.40",
          "Reprint": "[Neo Genesis](/card/neo1-106)",
          "Original over reprint": "5.55x"
        },
        {
          "Card": "Mr. Mime",
          "Original": "[Jungle](/card/base2-6)",
          "Ask": "$6.91",
          "Reprint": "[Base Set 2](/card/base4-27)",
          "Original over reprint": "5.54x"
        },
        {
          "Card": "Pidgeot",
          "Original": "[Jungle](/card/base2-8)",
          "Ask": "$10.12",
          "Reprint": "[Legendary Collection](/card/lc-33)",
          "Original over reprint": "5.41x"
        },
        {
          "Card": "Snorlax",
          "Original": "[Jungle](/card/base2-11)",
          "Ask": "$27.97",
          "Reprint": "[Base Set 2](/card/base4-30)",
          "Original over reprint": "5.40x"
        },
        {
          "Card": "Charizard (rank 91 of 543)",
          "Original": "[Base Set](/card/base1-4)",
          "Ask": "$512.90",
          "Reprint": "[Base Set 2](/card/base4-4)",
          "Original over reprint": "1.79x"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "title": "Sets by reprint role, pairs above the artwork bar",
      "columns": [
        "Set doing the reprinting",
        "Pairs",
        "Set being reprinted",
        "Pairs"
      ],
      "rows": [
        {
          "Set doing the reprinting": "[Legendary Collection](/set/legendary%20collection)",
          "Pairs": "158",
          "Set being reprinted": "[Base Set](/set/base%20set)"
        },
        {
          "Set doing the reprinting": "[Base Set 2](/set/base%20set%202)",
          "Pairs": "77",
          "Set being reprinted": "[Base Set 2](/set/base%20set%202)"
        },
        {
          "Set doing the reprinting": "[Ascended Heroes](/set/ascended%20heroes)",
          "Pairs": "55",
          "Set being reprinted": "[Jungle](/set/jungle)"
        },
        {
          "Set doing the reprinting": "[Prismatic Evolutions](/set/prismatic%20evolutions)",
          "Pairs": "25",
          "Set being reprinted": "[Fossil](/set/fossil)"
        },
        {
          "Set doing the reprinting": "[Call of Legends](/set/call%20of%20legends)",
          "Pairs": "20",
          "Set being reprinted": "[Twilight Masquerade](/set/twilight%20masquerade)"
        },
        {
          "Set doing the reprinting": "[Neo Genesis](/set/neo%20genesis)",
          "Pairs": "20",
          "Set being reprinted": "[Mega Evolution](/set/mega%20evolution)"
        },
        {
          "Set doing the reprinting": "[Gym Challenge](/set/gym%20challenge)",
          "Pairs": "19",
          "Set being reprinted": "[Temporal Forces](/set/temporal%20forces)"
        },
        {
          "Set doing the reprinting": "[Paldean Fates](/set/paldean%20fates)",
          "Pairs": "18",
          "Set being reprinted": "[Stellar Crown](/set/stellar%20crown)"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "charts": [],
  "sections": [
    "Finding a reprint without trusting a name",
    "The tier is the whole story",
    "Where the reprint premium is real",
    "Which sets reprint and which get raided",
    "What would overturn this",
    "What this study cannot show"
  ],
  "method": [
    "Population: English catalog cards carrying both a name and an illustrator credit, grouped by lowercased name plus illustrator. Within a group, one print is kept per catalog set, the one with the highest last recorded market ask. Every ordered cross-set pair from a group is a candidate; a candidate becomes a reprint pair when both sets carry a release date from `report:spread:setsmeta`, both cards carry a stored `emb3` SigLIP embedding, and the cosine between those embeddings is at least 0.70. That leaves 688 pairs over 447 artworks in 72 sets, from 1,251 candidates; 687 of them over 446 artworks carry a price on both sides and are the population every figure here is computed on. The artwork group key is the card name lowercased plus the illustrator credit lowercased, with no other folding, so the four catalog rows spelling Farfetch'd with a curly apostrophe form their own group; folding apostrophe variants adds 5 pairs to the 688 and moves the same-tier median ratio by one hundredth, which is why it is disclosed rather than applied. The original is the print from the earlier-released set. The rarity ladder collapses 43 of the catalog's 46 English rarity labels into seven tiers, printed in the tables as same, up and down; the three with no place on a scarcity ladder (None, Jumbo and Code Card) are left off it, which is why 680 of the 687 pairs carry a tier on both sides. A second ladder drawn independently, collapsing the same labels into six tiers instead of seven, returns the same 543, 85 and 52 pair counts and the same three medians, so the split is not an artifact of where the tier lines were put. Ratios are original ask over reprint ask; medians take the upper middle value on even samples and are used throughout because the ratio distribution has extreme tails in both directions. Prices are the last recorded TCGplayer market ask from the daily `price_history` tape as of 2026-09-22, the same figure the card pages publish. Not 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."
}