{ "url": "https://www.moonstonehq.com/articles/sealed-requote", "slug": "sealed-requote", "title": "Before You Buy Sealed, Count How Many Times the Price Changed", "summary": "Across 1,516 sealed products with a month of daily readings we hold, 840 read up over thirty days. 294 of those got there on one or two price changes and have sat at the new number for a median of fourteen readings since. Among the products that fell, only 63 of 312 look like that. Boxes and Elite Trainer Boxes get re-priced most often, a median of fourteen times a month in the $100 to $550 band, and there they read down: median -0.93%, 62 of 108 lower.", "section": "Market Structure", "published": "2026-09-29", "readMinutes": 9, "publisher": "moonstone", "findings": [ { "value": "294 of 840", "measures": "sealed gainers moved on two price changes or fewer", "basis": "35.0%, against 63 of 312 among the products that fell" }, { "value": "217", "measures": "products whose price was never rewritten in the window", "basis": "median 25 consecutive readings at one number" }, { "value": "-0.93%", "measures": "median thirty day change on boxes and Elite Trainer Boxes, $100 to $550", "basis": "108 products, median 14 price changes each, 62 of them lower" } ], "tables": [ { "title": "Thirty day change by number of price changes, 1,516 sealed products, window ending 2026-09-29", "columns": [ "Price changes in the window", "Products", "Median 30d change", "Reading up over 0.5%", "Reading down over 0.5%", "Median readings the last price has stood" ], "rows": [ { "Price changes in the window": "0", "Products": "217", "Median 30d change": "0.00%", "Reading up over 0.5%": "0 (0%)", "Reading down over 0.5%": "0 (0%)", "Median readings the last price has stood": "25" }, { "Price changes in the window": "1 or 2", "Products": "425", "Median 30d change": "+1.82%", "Reading up over 0.5%": "294 (69%)", "Reading down over 0.5%": "63 (15%)", "Median readings the last price has stood": "14" }, { "Price changes in the window": "3 to 5", "Products": "380", "Median 30d change": "+2.66%", "Reading up over 0.5%": "279 (73%)", "Reading down over 0.5%": "58 (15%)", "Median readings the last price has stood": "6" }, { "Price changes in the window": "6 to 14", "Products": "322", "Median 30d change": "+1.25%", "Reading up over 0.5%": "188 (58%)", "Reading down over 0.5%": "109 (34%)", "Median readings the last price has stood": "3" }, { "Price changes in the window": "15 or more", "Products": "172", "Median 30d change": "+0.25%", "Reading up over 0.5%": "79 (46%)", "Reading down over 0.5%": "82 (48%)", "Median readings the last price has stood": "2" } ] }, { "title": "The $100 to $550 band, 475 products, split by whether the price gets rewritten", "columns": [ "Group", "Products", "Median 30d change", "Median price changes", "Up over 0.5%", "Down over 0.5%", "Rewritten twice or fewer", "Median readings the last price has stood" ], "rows": [ { "Group": "Booster boxes and Elite Trainer Boxes", "Products": "108", "Median 30d change": "-0.93%", "Median price changes": "14", "Up over 0.5%": "32", "Down over 0.5%": "62", "Rewritten twice or fewer": "5", "Median readings the last price has stood": "2" }, { "Group": "Everything else in the band", "Products": "367", "Median 30d change": "+0.76%", "Median price changes": "2", "Up over 0.5%": "190", "Down over 0.5%": "53", "Rewritten twice or fewer": "225", "Median readings the last price has stood": "11" } ] }, { "title": "Sealed formats, 1,516 products, groups under twenty omitted because they are not findings", "columns": [ "Format", "Products", "Median price changes", "Median 30d change", "Up over 0.5%", "Down over 0.5%", "Never rewritten" ], "rows": [ { "Format": "Booster Bundle", "Products": "39", "Median price changes": "20", "Median 30d change": "+0.67%", "Up over 0.5%": "20", "Down over 0.5%": "14", "Never rewritten": "1" }, { "Format": "Elite Trainer Box", "Products": "68", "Median price changes": "11", "Median 30d change": "0.00%", "Up over 0.5%": "22", "Down over 0.5%": "30", "Never rewritten": "5" }, { "Format": "Booster box", "Products": "48", "Median price changes": "10", "Median 30d change": "+0.27%", "Up over 0.5%": "22", "Down over 0.5%": "19", "Never rewritten": "4" }, { "Format": "Elite Trainer Box (Pokémon Center)", "Products": "39", "Median price changes": "9", "Median 30d change": "-1.61%", "Up over 0.5%": "8", "Down over 0.5%": "25", "Never rewritten": "1" }, { "Format": "Booster pack (single)", "Products": "175", "Median price changes": "5", "Median 30d change": "+1.62%", "Up over 0.5%": "106", "Down over 0.5%": "35", "Never rewritten": "18" }, { "Format": "Build & Battle", "Products": "38", "Median price changes": "4", "Median 30d change": "+0.88%", "Up over 0.5%": "25", "Down over 0.5%": "4", "Never rewritten": "2" }, { "Format": "Tin", "Products": "174", "Median price changes": "3", "Median 30d change": "+1.17%", "Up over 0.5%": "98", "Down over 0.5%": "29", "Never rewritten": "28" }, { "Format": "Collection", "Products": "173", "Median price changes": "3", "Median 30d change": "+1.29%", "Up over 0.5%": "110", "Down over 0.5%": "27", "Never rewritten": "24" }, { "Format": "Mini tin", "Products": "116", "Median price changes": "3", "Median 30d change": "+3.42%", "Up over 0.5%": "82", "Down over 0.5%": "16", "Never rewritten": "4" }, { "Format": "Premium collection", "Products": "86", "Median price changes": "3", "Median 30d change": "+1.08%", "Up over 0.5%": "47", "Down over 0.5%": "18", "Never rewritten": "9" }, { "Format": "Other products", "Products": "173", "Median price changes": "3", "Median 30d change": "+1.12%", "Up over 0.5%": "93", "Down over 0.5%": "29", "Never rewritten": "38" }, { "Format": "Blister", "Products": "239", "Median price changes": "2", "Median 30d change": "+1.00%", "Up over 0.5%": "129", "Down over 0.5%": "45", "Never rewritten": "49" }, { "Format": "Deck", "Products": "137", "Median price changes": "2", "Median 30d change": "+0.97%", "Up over 0.5%": "74", "Down over 0.5%": "21", "Never rewritten": "28" } ] }, { "title": "Gains built on one or two edits to the tag", "columns": [ "Product", "Set", "First to last recorded price", "30d change", "Price changes", "Readings the last price has stood" ], "rows": [ { "Product": "[Mega Beedrill EX Premium Collection](/sealed/125563)", "Set": "[Evolutions](/set/evolutions)", "First to last recorded price": "$210.00 to $405.96", "30d change": "+93.3%", "Price changes": "1", "Readings the last price has stood": "12 of its 14 readings" }, { "Product": "[Trick or Trade BOOster Bundle 2023](/sealed/564134)", "Set": "[Trick or Trade BOOster Bundle 2023](/set/trick%20or%20trade%20booster%20bundle%202023)", "First to last recorded price": "$133.33 to $191.98", "30d change": "+44.0%", "Price changes": "2", "Readings the last price has stood": "9" }, { "Product": "[Mega Evolution Half Booster Box](/sealed/644351)", "Set": "[Mega Evolution](/set/mega%20evolution)", "First to last recorded price": "$250.00 to $312.50", "30d change": "+25.0%", "Price changes": "1", "Readings the last price has stood": "22" }, { "Product": "[Stormfront Booster Pack](/sealed/98589)", "Set": "[Stormfront](/set/stormfront)", "First to last recorded price": "$468.35 to $545.27", "30d change": "+16.4%", "Price changes": "1", "Readings the last price has stood": "27" }, { "Product": "[Shining Legends Shiny Darkrai GX Collection](/sealed/600514)", "Set": "[Shining Legends](/set/shining%20legends)", "First to last recorded price": "$399.99 to $462.49", "30d change": "+15.6%", "Price changes": "1", "Readings the last price has stood": "16" } ] }, { "title": "Prices that are genuinely being argued over, in both directions", "columns": [ "Product", "Set", "First to last recorded price", "30d change", "Price changes" ], "rows": [ { "Product": "[Paldean Fates Tin (Iron Treads ex)](/sealed/528059)", "Set": "[Paldean Fates](/set/paldean%20fates)", "First to last recorded price": "$97.68 to $139.94", "30d change": "+43.3%", "Price changes": "6" }, { "Product": "[Paldean Fates Tin (Great Tusk ex)](/sealed/528057)", "Set": "[Paldean Fates](/set/paldean%20fates)", "First to last recorded price": "$107.61 to $128.57", "30d change": "+19.5%", "Price changes": "7" }, { "Product": "[151 Elite Trainer Box](/sealed/503313)", "Set": "[151](/set/151)", "First to last recorded price": "$569.14 to $472.41", "30d change": "-17.0%", "Price changes": "22" }, { "Product": "[Mega Evolution Pokémon Center ETB (Mega Lucario)](/sealed/644282)", "Set": "[Mega Evolution](/set/mega%20evolution)", "First to last recorded price": "$231.35 to $197.87", "30d change": "-14.5%", "Price changes": "16" }, { "Product": "[Ascended Heroes Pokémon Center ETB](/sealed/668497)", "Set": "[Ascended Heroes](/set/ascended%20heroes)", "First to last recorded price": "$405.88 to $357.87", "30d change": "-11.8%", "Price changes": "26" }, { "Product": "[Destined Rivals Pokémon Center ETB](/sealed/624675)", "Set": "[Destined Rivals](/set/destined%20rivals)", "First to last recorded price": "$486.04 to $429.34", "30d change": "-11.7%", "Price changes": "18" }, { "Product": "[Journey Together Booster Box](/sealed/610931)", "Set": "[Journey Together](/set/journey%20together)", "First to last recorded price": "$237.87 to $207.95", "30d change": "-12.6%", "Price changes": "28" }, { "Product": "[Prismatic Evolutions Elite Trainer Box](/sealed/593355)", "Set": "[Prismatic Evolutions](/set/prismatic%20evolutions)", "First to last recorded price": "$157.90 to $140.08", "30d change": "-11.3%", "Price changes": "28" } ] } ], "charts": [ { "title": "Share of products reading up more than 0.5% over thirty days", "unit": "%", "note": "By how many times the price was rewritten in the window. Zero changes cannot produce a change, so that bar is zero by construction rather than by market behaviour.", "points": [ { "label": "0 changes", "value": 0, "basis": "0 of 217" }, { "label": "1 or 2", "value": 69, "basis": "294 of 425" }, { "label": "3 to 5", "value": 73, "basis": "279 of 380" }, { "label": "6 to 14", "value": 58, "basis": "188 of 322" }, { "label": "15 or more", "value": 46, "basis": "79 of 172" } ] } ], "sections": [ "What a price change is here, and what it is not", "Sort 1,516 sealed products by how often their price moved", "This corrects a reading we published ourselves", "The sealed prices that do get rewritten, and what they say", "Sealed formats, ranked by how lively their prices are", "Named, in both directions", "What this does not answer" ], "method": [ "UNIVERSE. Every sealed_products row with price_usd above zero and a non-null change_30d, 2,011 rows on 2026-09-29. Excluded: 421 multi-unit lots by LOT_RE from src/server/set-products.ts, because a case of six boxes is not one product's price; 33 products whose recorded readings span under seven days; and 41 products belonging to ME: 30th Celebration, ME: 30th Celebration Classic Collection or ME06: Delta Reign, whose release dates fall on or after the window's first day or in the future, because a preorder tag settling to a retail price is not a market move. That leaves 1,516. No price floor and no top-N cut. Format grouping is classifyProduct() from the same file; groups under twenty products are printed as counts and not treated as findings. WINDOW. Readings dated 2026-08-31 to 2026-09-29 inclusive, median 29 readings over 28 days per product. The window floor is stated rather than discovered: the table holds 189 scattered readings from earlier in August across 113 products, left by the sync's first partial passes, and catalog-wide daily coverage starts 2026-08-31. Windows neither all start nor all end on the same day, because the sync runs in paged passes and the provider hands each page its own window: 922 series start 2026-08-31 and 574 start 2026-09-01, with 20 starting later; 853 end 2026-09-28, 537 end 2026-09-29, and 126 end on one of 21 earlier days, the earliest 2026-09-07. The first window day is itself partial, 1,251 products against 1,975 on 2026-09-01. SOURCE AND WHY IT IS NEW. The dated prices come from sealed_price_history, a table created for this study (src/server/db/sealed-history.ts, declared in schema.ts, written by the sync-sealed cron on every pass and backfilled once by scripts/sealed-history-backfill.mts: 55,489 points across 2,127 products, span 2026-08-01 to 2026-09-29). Before it existed these points lived only in api_cache rows keyed sealedhist: under a 35-day TTL that each pass replaced in full, so no figure computed from them survived a day. The write merges on (id, day) and has no delete path, so a refresh may add a day or correct a day and can never shorten the record. DEFINITIONS. A price change is two consecutive recorded readings that differ at all, one cent included; there is no threshold. Readings the last price has stood is the count of consecutive readings, ending at the most recent, carrying the final price. Medians take the upper-middle value on an even sample, the convention the-convenience-tax also states. COLUMN MEANING. price is the provider's unopened price, which is the TCGplayer Market Price for the SKU: not an ask, not a sale, not a graded figure. VERIFICATION. change_30d as the catalog stores it reproduces from our own recorded points on 1,515 of the 1,516 products. The single exception is the 2024 World Championship Deck: Fernando Cifuentes (Crushing Thorn), whose recorded readings stop on 2026-09-13 while its catalog price kept updating, and it is left in the universe at its recorded values rather than dropped. CROSS-CHECK. Against tcgcsv_prices on day 20725, sub_type Normal: 1,363 of the 1,516 products match by product id and 1,332 of those agree within 2%. Both sides are the TCGplayer market price arriving by different routes, so this measures whether our sync is current and says nothing about whether the price is correct. SCRIPT. scripts/sealed-requote-figures.mts prints every figure in this article in one run against production." ], "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." }