{
  "url": "https://www.moonstonehq.com/articles/same-card-two-oceans",
  "slug": "same-card-two-oceans",
  "title": "The Same Card, Two Oceans Apart: JP vs EN Pricing",
  "summary": "A Base Set Charizard costs about the same in Tokyo and Texas. The same Umbreon VMAX artwork trades thirty-seven to fifty-six times higher in English. The Japanese and English markets price identical cardboard by completely different rules, and the pattern is learnable.",
  "section": "Investment research",
  "published": "2026-08-27",
  "readMinutes": 7,
  "publisher": "moonstone",
  "findings": [],
  "tables": [
    {
      "title": "Same artwork, both markets, listed TCGplayer market quotes, August 2026",
      "columns": [
        "Card",
        "English print",
        "Japanese print",
        "Pattern"
      ],
      "rows": [
        {
          "Card": "[Charizard, Base Set art](/card/base1-4)",
          "English print": "$855.52 ([Base Set](/set/base%20set))",
          "Japanese print": "$800 (Expansion Pack, 1996)",
          "Pattern": "vintage parity"
        },
        {
          "Card": "[Umbreon VMAX alt art](/card/swsh7-215)",
          "English print": "$2,410.66 ([Evolving Skies](/set/evolving%20skies))",
          "Japanese print": "$64.81 (VMAX Climax reprint) · $42.73 (Eevee Heroes)",
          "Pattern": "modern chasm"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "charts": [],
  "sections": [
    "Why vintage converges",
    "Why modern diverges"
  ],
  "method": [
    "Both legs from our daily TCGplayer sync across the English and Japanese catalogs, August 2026, quoted as listed market values with the liquidity caveat stated inline. Same-artwork pairing verified manually for the examples shown. WHICH JAPANESE ROWS: every Japanese leg here is a TCGplayer Japanese catalog row, the family whose ids we store with a jat- prefix, not a TCGdex-sourced row, and the two read very differently on price coverage; the three quoted are jat-575604 (Expansion Pack Charizard), jat-571497 (VMAX Climax Umbreon VMAX 245/184) and jat-570556 (Eevee Heroes Umbreon VMAX 094/069). The catalog counts are deduplicated on the TCGplayer product id before they are quoted, because a share of rows on both sides claim an id another row also claims: on the dedupe the two catalogs hold 21,452 English and 29,055 Japanese products, which is the fifty thousand the lede means. Recomputed 2026-09-22 against the per-card tape at its first surviving reading, 2026-08-30: Base Charizard $855.52 English against $800 Japanese, Eevee Heroes Umbreon $42.73, VMAX Climax Umbreon $65.41 against the $64.81 printed here from August 27."
  ],
  "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."
}