{ "url": "https://www.moonstonehq.com/articles/the-casting-premium", "slug": "the-casting-premium", "title": "The Casting Premium: A Charizard's Advantage Is Decided Before the Card Is Printed", "summary": "Across 21,153 priced English cards, knowing only which Pokémon is on the card predicts 35.4% of where an ordinary printing lands among the other ordinary printings in its set, out of sample. Inside the chase tier the same test predicts 16.8% against other chase cards and nothing at all against the set as a whole. And the largest expression of character demand is not what buyers pay. It is casting: 63.0% of Charizard's printings are given a mechanic slot, against 27.2% of Pikachu's and 0% of Chinchou's.", "section": "Data forensics", "published": "2026-09-03", "readMinutes": 8, "publisher": "moonstone", "findings": [ { "value": "35.4%", "measures": "of ordinary-league rank explained by species alone", "basis": "out of sample, 20 random half-splits, species with 5+ printings in the fitting half" }, { "value": "16.8%", "measures": "same test inside the chase tier, chase cards only", "basis": "against the whole set instead, the same test explains nothing" }, { "value": "91.2", "measures": "average within-set percentile for Charizard", "basis": "89 printings; Chinchou sits at 13.6 on 25" }, { "value": "63.0%", "measures": "of Charizard printings carry a mechanic suffix", "basis": "against 27.2% for Pikachu, on 92 and 180 printings" } ], "tables": [ { "title": "Where a character sits in its own set, average percentile across all its printings. Eleven well-known characters and three low-demand controls, chosen to show the range, not the top of a 298-species ranking", "columns": [ "Species", "Printings scored", "Average within-set percentile", "Median price" ], "rows": [ { "Species": "Charizard", "Printings scored": "89", "Average within-set percentile": "91.2", "Median price": "$68.31" }, { "Species": "Gengar", "Printings scored": "52", "Average within-set percentile": "91.2", "Median price": "$73.09" }, { "Species": "Rayquaza", "Printings scored": "51", "Average within-set percentile": "90.9", "Median price": "$112.06" }, { "Species": "Umbreon", "Printings scored": "41", "Average within-set percentile": "90.2", "Median price": "$96.83" }, { "Species": "Lugia", "Printings scored": "36", "Average within-set percentile": "89.2", "Median price": "$46.29" }, { "Species": "Mew", "Printings scored": "39", "Average within-set percentile": "88.9", "Median price": "$103.18" }, { "Species": "Blastoise", "Printings scored": "44", "Average within-set percentile": "88.2", "Median price": "$51.61" }, { "Species": "Mewtwo", "Printings scored": "85", "Average within-set percentile": "84.8", "Median price": "$39.38" }, { "Species": "Snorlax", "Printings scored": "53", "Average within-set percentile": "82.6", "Median price": "$19.91" }, { "Species": "Pikachu", "Printings scored": "154", "Average within-set percentile": "77.8", "Median price": "$20.33" }, { "Species": "Eevee", "Printings scored": "83", "Average within-set percentile": "68.2", "Median price": "$5.02" }, { "Species": "Magnemite", "Printings scored": "44", "Average within-set percentile": "19.1", "Median price": "$0.41" }, { "Species": "Potion (item)", "Printings scored": "40", "Average within-set percentile": "14.3", "Median price": "$0.18" }, { "Species": "Chinchou", "Printings scored": "25", "Average within-set percentile": "13.6", "Median price": "$0.38" } ] }, { "title": "Casting rates and rank, ordinary printings versus mechanic printings, for seven of the characters in the table above", "columns": [ "Species", "Printings", "Share cast as a mechanic card", "Rank among ordinary cards", "Rank among mechanic cards" ], "rows": [ { "Species": "Charizard", "Printings": "92", "Share cast as a mechanic card": "63.0%", "Rank among ordinary cards": "96.2 (30 cards)", "Rank among mechanic cards": "82.2 (57 cards)" }, { "Species": "Rayquaza", "Printings": "55", "Share cast as a mechanic card": "69.1%", "Rank among ordinary cards": "90.4 (15)", "Rank among mechanic cards": "82.1 (32)" }, { "Species": "Umbreon", "Printings": "44", "Share cast as a mechanic card": "52.3%", "Rank among ordinary cards": "91.8 (20)", "Rank among mechanic cards": "84.3 (23)" }, { "Species": "Gengar", "Printings": "52", "Share cast as a mechanic card": "38.5%", "Rank among ordinary cards": "92.3 (31)", "Rank among mechanic cards": "83.4 (20)" }, { "Species": "Mewtwo", "Printings": "89", "Share cast as a mechanic card": "65.2%", "Rank among ordinary cards": "83.3 (29)", "Rank among mechanic cards": "76.1 (49)" }, { "Species": "Pikachu", "Printings": "180", "Share cast as a mechanic card": "27.2%", "Rank among ordinary cards": "79.3 (112)", "Rank among mechanic cards": "77.1 (42)" }, { "Species": "Eevee", "Printings": "88", "Share cast as a mechanic card": "18.2%", "Rank among ordinary cards": "70.6 (67)", "Rank among mechanic cards": "73.3 (16)" } ] } ], "charts": [], "sections": [ "Rank within your own set, so the set cannot take credit", "How much does the character actually explain, and of what", "The casting decision" ], "method": [ "Universe: 21,153 English cards in the moonstone catalog carrying a TCGplayer market price of at least $0.05 read on September 2, 2026, of which 3,158 carry a mechanic suffix in the card name and 17,995 do not. Within-set percentile ranks are computed on the flagship printing's market price, an ask-derived figure rather than a sold median, and NOT on the canonical printing price the card pages show; that choice is inherited from the original study and is the reason a handful of multi-printing cards rank higher here than their card page would suggest. It affects levels far less than dollars, because the measure is a rank. The all-cards ranking uses the 158 sets holding 30 or more priced cards, covering 20,405 cards, and reports species with 20 or more scored printings (298 species). The two-league comparison ranks mechanic cards only against mechanic cards in sets holding 12 or more of them (2,963 cards, 89 sets) and ordinary cards only against ordinary cards in sets holding 20 or more (17,471 cards, 164 sets). Species tokens come from a name parse that strips parenthetical suffixes, owner prefixes such as Team Rocket's, form prefixes such as Alolan, Mega and Hisuian, and mechanic suffixes; the parse merges forms of one Pokémon, takes the first member of a tag team, and leaves trainer and item cards as their own tokens, which is why Potion appears in a species table and is labelled as an item. It also splits some named forms away from their base species, so a species count here is a count of what the parse produced, not a curated dex entry. Casting shares count a printing as mechanic when its name carries one of those suffixes and as a secret slot when its collector number exceeds the set's printed total; 20,778 of the 21,153 carry the printed-total field needed for the second test. Explained-variance figures are the average across 20 random half-splits, fitting species means on one half and scoring the other; both the restricted (5+ printings in the fitting half, 65.5% of held-out cards scored) and unrestricted (1+ printing, 90.1% scored) versions are reported, as is the near-zero result of scoring mechanic cards against their whole set. A rank is not a return: nothing here says a Charizard printing appreciates faster, only that it is priced higher within its own set today. 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." }