Weekly Buys logs every pick at its entry price the moment it publishes, and nothing is ever deleted. That means our mistakes are still sitting there, marked against live sold data every week, visible to anyone. This is the guided tour: the picks that lost, why, and what changed because of them. If you read one thing we write, read the losers.
Case one: Mew ex PSA 10, entered $3,475.50
Week 31 we entered the Paldean Fates Mew ex PSA 10 at $3,475.50 on deep comps and strong momentum. A week later the same card re-entered the list at $3,185.50, and recent marks have hovered near $3,205. Against the original entry that is roughly an 8 percent drawdown on a four-figure position. What went wrong: we bought strength at a local top, and deep comps describe where a market HAS been, not where it tops. The gate that came from it: momentum picks now carry explicit prior-snapshot deltas in their evidence line, so a buyer can see whether they are entering into acceleration or into a peak.
Cases two and three: the Fossil birds on poisoned medians
Week 31 entered Zapdos PSA 9 at $385.50 and Moltres PSA 9 at $391.50. Those entries came from provider medians that, we later proved, blended 1st Edition sales into Unlimited comps. The real printing-verified medians are $120 and $199.99. As raw score-keeping, that is catastrophic; as published records, both rows now carry a suspended mark note naming the contamination, they are excluded from alpha until their series stabilize on clean data, and the entries were never edited. The gate that came from it is the biggest methodological change we have made: every vintage graded median is now rebuilt from individual sold listings with printing claims verified per listing. The mixed-median mechanism and the receipts are written up separately in The $479 Lie.
Case four: the sealed pick that went nowhere
Week 31 also carried a Temporal Forces sleeved booster bundle at $85.90. It did not crash; it did nothing, in a sealed market where, by late August, only six of 651 tracked products in the box-and-ETB band showed meaningful positive momentum. The gate: sealed picks now require positive momentum AND a defensible per-pack price simultaneously, and when nothing clears both bars the edition publishes zero sealed picks with the failed candidates listed. Thin beats forced became policy because of this row.
All entries and marks from the public weekly_picks ledger and its weekly scorecard, August 2026. Entry prices are as published on entry day and are immutable; current marks come from verified sold medians; suspended marks are excluded from alpha with the reason stated on the row.