{
  "url": "https://www.moonstonehq.com/articles/pokemon-type-card-value",
  "slug": "pokemon-type-card-value",
  "title": "Are Fire Type Cards Worth More Than Water?",
  "summary": "Across the 21,754 products in our provider's English catalog that carry both an energy type and a Near Mint quote, Fire's median price is $1.82 and Water's is $1.745. Hold the set, the rarity and the printing still, and the gap across 632 matched buckets is two cents. Strip each type's most concentrated name and Fire falls to $1.365 against Water's $1.60, so the order reverses on 155 Charizard rows. The type is not the thing being priced.",
  "section": "Quant research",
  "published": "2026-10-12",
  "readMinutes": 8,
  "publisher": "moonstone",
  "findings": [
    {
      "value": "$0.02",
      "measures": "median gap between the Fire and the Water median, per bucket",
      "basis": "632 matched set, rarity and printing buckets"
    },
    {
      "value": "53.6%",
      "measures": "of those buckets where Fire's median is the higher one",
      "basis": "339 of 632; a coin flip is 50%"
    },
    {
      "value": "0.512",
      "measures": "chance a card drawn from Fire is dearer than one drawn from Water",
      "basis": "2,057 Fire against 3,044 Water Near Mint quotes, tied pairs split in half"
    },
    {
      "value": "39.4%",
      "measures": "of Fire's summed quoted prices sit in rows named Charizard",
      "basis": "155 of 2,057 Fire rows"
    }
  ],
  "tables": [
    {
      "title": "Where each type ranks of eleven, cut seven ways",
      "columns": [
        "Type",
        "Everything",
        "Common",
        "Rare",
        "Holo Rare",
        "Ultra Rare",
        "Normal",
        "Holofoil"
      ],
      "rows": [
        {
          "Type": "Dragon",
          "Everything": "1",
          "Common": "8",
          "Rare": "10",
          "Holo Rare": "10",
          "Ultra Rare": "4",
          "Normal": "9",
          "Holofoil": "2"
        },
        {
          "Type": "Fairy",
          "Everything": "2",
          "Common": "1",
          "Rare": "2",
          "Holo Rare": "11",
          "Ultra Rare": "1",
          "Normal": "1",
          "Holofoil": "1"
        },
        {
          "Type": "Lightning",
          "Everything": "3",
          "Common": "4",
          "Rare": "4",
          "Holo Rare": "6",
          "Ultra Rare": "7",
          "Normal": "2",
          "Holofoil": "7"
        },
        {
          "Type": "Fire",
          "Everything": "4",
          "Common": "5",
          "Rare": "7",
          "Holo Rare": "3",
          "Ultra Rare": "3",
          "Normal": "6",
          "Holofoil": "3"
        },
        {
          "Type": "Water",
          "Everything": "5",
          "Common": "3",
          "Rare": "3",
          "Holo Rare": "4",
          "Ultra Rare": "6",
          "Normal": "4",
          "Holofoil": "5"
        },
        {
          "Type": "Psychic",
          "Everything": "6",
          "Common": "7",
          "Rare": "5",
          "Holo Rare": "2",
          "Ultra Rare": "2",
          "Normal": "5",
          "Holofoil": "4"
        },
        {
          "Type": "Colorless",
          "Everything": "7",
          "Common": "2",
          "Rare": "1",
          "Holo Rare": "1",
          "Ultra Rare": "8",
          "Normal": "3",
          "Holofoil": "6"
        },
        {
          "Type": "Metal",
          "Everything": "8",
          "Common": "11",
          "Rare": "11",
          "Holo Rare": "9",
          "Ultra Rare": "9",
          "Normal": "10",
          "Holofoil": "10"
        },
        {
          "Type": "Darkness",
          "Everything": "9",
          "Common": "10",
          "Rare": "9",
          "Holo Rare": "8",
          "Ultra Rare": "5",
          "Normal": "11",
          "Holofoil": "8"
        },
        {
          "Type": "Grass",
          "Everything": "10",
          "Common": "6",
          "Rare": "6",
          "Holo Rare": "5",
          "Ultra Rare": "10",
          "Normal": "7",
          "Holofoil": "9"
        },
        {
          "Type": "Fighting",
          "Everything": "11",
          "Common": "9",
          "Rare": "8",
          "Holo Rare": "7",
          "Ultra Rare": "11",
          "Normal": "8",
          "Holofoil": "11"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "charts": [
    {
      "title": "Median Near Mint quote by energy type",
      "unit": "$",
      "note": "21,754 products in the provider's English catalog carrying both an energy type and a Near Mint quote, read 2026-10-12. Row counts in the labels. Three of the eleven medians land on a half cent and are printed to the tenth of a cent.",
      "points": [
        {
          "label": "Dragon",
          "value": 2.92,
          "basis": "n=725, 69.8% holofoil"
        },
        {
          "label": "Fairy",
          "value": 2.55,
          "basis": "n=284, the thinnest of the eleven"
        },
        {
          "label": "Lightning",
          "value": 2.09,
          "basis": "n=2,071"
        },
        {
          "label": "Fire",
          "value": 1.82,
          "basis": "n=2,057"
        },
        {
          "label": "Water",
          "value": 1.745,
          "basis": "n=3,044"
        },
        {
          "label": "Psychic",
          "value": 1.605,
          "basis": "n=3,062"
        },
        {
          "label": "Colorless",
          "value": 1.44,
          "basis": "n=2,685"
        },
        {
          "label": "Metal",
          "value": 1.155,
          "basis": "n=1,168"
        },
        {
          "label": "Darkness",
          "value": 0.95,
          "basis": "n=1,519"
        },
        {
          "label": "Grass",
          "value": 0.92,
          "basis": "n=2,822"
        },
        {
          "label": "Fighting",
          "value": 0.8,
          "basis": "n=2,317"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "title": "Share of a type's summed quoted prices held by its single most concentrated name",
      "unit": "%",
      "note": "Candidate names are the first word of a product name, three letters or more, matched as a substring inside the type, so a shorter name swallows a longer one: Mew counts the 126 Mewtwo rows, Sylveon counts four Gardevoir and Sylveon GX rows. Same 21,754 rows. Sums of quoted prices, not realised value.",
      "points": [
        {
          "label": "Lightning: Pikachu",
          "value": 41.7,
          "basis": "374 of 2,071 rows"
        },
        {
          "label": "Fire: Charizard",
          "value": 39.4,
          "basis": "155 of 2,057 rows"
        },
        {
          "label": "Psychic: Mew",
          "value": 37.3,
          "basis": "209 of 3,062 rows, 126 of them Mewtwo"
        },
        {
          "label": "Fairy: Sylveon",
          "value": 33.8,
          "basis": "18 of 284 rows"
        },
        {
          "label": "Darkness: Umbreon",
          "value": 23.6,
          "basis": "64 of 1,519 rows"
        },
        {
          "label": "Dragon: Rayquaza",
          "value": 21.2,
          "basis": "43 of 725 rows"
        },
        {
          "label": "Metal: Dialga",
          "value": 16.5,
          "basis": "47 of 1,168 rows"
        },
        {
          "label": "Fighting: Groudon",
          "value": 15,
          "basis": "44 of 2,317 rows"
        },
        {
          "label": "Grass: Celebi",
          "value": 14.6,
          "basis": "32 of 2,822 rows"
        },
        {
          "label": "Colorless: Rayquaza",
          "value": 13.4,
          "basis": "30 of 2,685 rows"
        },
        {
          "label": "Water: Gyarados",
          "value": 9,
          "basis": "77 of 3,044 rows"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sections": [
    "The raw table, which is wrong",
    "Fire against Water, held still",
    "The two cents is one Pokemon",
    "What this measure is not"
  ],
  "method": [
    "Read 2026-10-12 against the production Turso database. Universe: tcgcsv_products, 32,868 rows, joined on product_id to condition_quotes rows with condition = 'NM' (50,058 of 170,451 quote rows; the condition column stores codes, so 'Near Mint' matches nothing). 29,008 quotes join to a product, keyed one row per product_id so no product can count twice; 21,050 NM quotes have no product row and are excluded as absent. Energy type is the extendedData 'Card Type' entry inside tcgcsv_products.extended: 28,340 of 32,868 products carry one, 97 distinct values across the whole product file and 96 across the rows that join a quote. From the 29,008 joined rows we excluded 1,121 with no Card Type, 4,691 trainer family labels (Trainer, Supporter, Item, Stadium, Tool, Technical Machine and their variants), 1,257 energy card labels, 126 strings naming two types at once (six of those 126 read Rocket's Secret Machine, a trainer label our rule caught in the dual bucket; excluded either way) and 59 legacy or misspelled values (Dark 46, Normal 7, Electric 2, Lighnting 2, TM 2). That leaves the 21,754 rows ranked here. Medians are the mean of the two middle values on an even sample, which is the convention every figure here was computed on; taking the upper middle value instead moves the Fire over Water bucket count from 339 to 344 and the median bucket gap from two cents to three, and moves three of the eleven type medians by half a cent, Water to $1.75, Psychic to $1.61 and Metal to $1.16. A median that lands on a half cent is printed to the tenth of a cent rather than rounded, so no rounding rule is doing any work in the figures above. The mean of the 632 signed bucket gaps is $8.83 on this convention and $10.37 on the upper middle one, which is why the median gap is the figure quoted. Matched buckets are keyed on (group_id, printed rarity, printing label) and require at least one Fire and one Water row: 632 buckets, 1,857 Fire rows, 2,775 Water rows. Bootstrap intervals are 20,000 resamples with replacement at the same median convention, so endpoints wobble a cent or two by seed: three seeds put Fire's upper endpoint at $2.12 twice and $2.13 once, and moved Fairy's endpoints by two cents. The ten cuts are: everything, Common 6,002, Uncommon 3,433, Rare 3,226, Holo Rare 1,717, Ultra Rare 2,066, Promo 3,017, Normal printing 11,534, Holofoil printing 8,856, and products with exactly one printing 10,150. Rank ties inside a cut are broken on the type name, which is why Dragon sits above Fighting among Commons at an identical $0.25. Species shares are substring matches on the provider's product name within a single type. Candidates are the first word of a product name of three letters or more, which is the rule that makes the chart reproducible: with no length floor the single letter M, from Mega cards named M Charizard EX, wins eight of the eleven types and takes 63.0% of Psychic. A match takes tag teams, alternate printings and any longer name containing the shorter one, so Mew's 209 rows include 126 Mewtwo rows and Sylveon's 18 include four Gardevoir and Sylveon GX rows. The random draw probability between Fire and Water splits tied pairs in half; strict dominance is 51.0% against 51.2%. Summed quoted prices are sums of asking prices and are not realised value. The 209 provider groups in the population all sit in the provider's English catalog; a handful of tournament deck and promo groups inside it hold cards printed in Japan, and we did not separate those out. No price floor and no top N anywhere: the population is the catalog."
  ],
  "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."
}