{ "url": "https://www.moonstonehq.com/articles/the-forty-nine-ninety-nine-plateau", "slug": "the-forty-nine-ninety-nine-plateau", "title": "Three Weeks of 30th Celebration Prices, and Not One Recorded Sale", "summary": "30th Celebration released on September 16, so all but one day of this tape is preorder pricing. The set is down hard: on the 40 cards priced on both days, the median fell 34.2% between September 15 and 16 alone, and the Pikachu Rares are down 67.3% from their own preorder peaks. But before the fall, six of those cards were quoted at exactly $49.99 for up to seventeen straight days, and Mewtwo ex sat at exactly $1,000.00 for twenty-eight. Across all 159 tracked cards in the set we hold zero recorded sales, so every one of these numbers is an ask. Including ours, which on 92 of the cards is still the stale one.", "section": "Data forensics", "published": "2026-09-17", "readMinutes": 8, "publisher": "moonstone", "findings": [ { "value": "0", "measures": "recorded sales across the whole set", "basis": "159 tracked cards, a set that released the day before" }, { "value": "-34.2%", "measures": "median one-day move, September 15 to 16", "basis": "measured on the 40 cards priced on both days" }, { "value": "-65.2%", "measures": "Mew ex from its peak", "basis": "$3,333 on September 4 to $1,158.37 on September 16" }, { "value": "92", "measures": "cards in this set published at a stale price on September 17", "basis": "disclosed below; the aggregate is 48% too high" } ], "tables": [ { "title": "Cards whose recorded series opens with a flat run of four days or more", "columns": [ "Card", "Held at", "For", "Broke on", "Next reading", "Latest" ], "rows": [ { "Card": "[Pikachu 032/128](/card/30th-032)", "Held at": "$49.99", "For": "17 days", "Broke on": "Sep 13", "Next reading": "$39.99", "Latest": "$17.60" }, { "Card": "[Pikachu 030/128](/card/30th-030)", "Held at": "$49.99", "For": "15 days", "Broke on": "Sep 16", "Next reading": "$10.88", "Latest": "$10.88" }, { "Card": "Pikachu 025/128", "Held at": "$49.99", "For": "8 days", "Broke on": "Sep 9", "Next reading": "$49.50", "Latest": "$14.14" }, { "Card": "Pikachu 038/128", "Held at": "$49.99", "For": "8 days", "Broke on": "Sep 6", "Next reading": "$49.97", "Latest": "$18.02" }, { "Card": "Pikachu 042/128", "Held at": "$49.99", "For": "8 days", "Broke on": "Sep 6", "Next reading": "$49.98", "Latest": "$22.97" }, { "Card": "Pikachu 026/128", "Held at": "$49.99", "For": "7 days", "Broke on": "Sep 8", "Next reading": "$49.66", "Latest": "$17.37" }, { "Card": "[Alolan Meowth 139/128](/card/30th-139)", "Held at": "$99.00", "For": "6 days", "Broke on": "Sep 14", "Next reading": "$98.90", "Latest": "$64.19" }, { "Card": "Pikachu 023/128", "Held at": "$49.97", "For": "5 days", "Broke on": "Sep 11", "Next reading": "$49.96", "Latest": "$15.36" }, { "Card": "[Rayquaza EX (Classic Collection)](/card/30th-c-016)", "Held at": "$299.00", "For": "4 days", "Broke on": "not yet", "Next reading": "", "Latest": "$299.00" } ] }, { "title": "Same cards, both days: what the set actually did", "columns": [ "Window", "Cards in panel", "Median change", "Aggregate change" ], "rows": [ { "Window": "Sep 15 to Sep 16", "Cards in panel": "40", "Median change": "-34.2%", "Aggregate change": "-32.5%" }, { "Window": "Sep 14 to Sep 16", "Cards in panel": "28", "Median change": "-36.3%", "Aggregate change": "-37.3%" }, { "Window": "Sep 13 to Sep 16", "Cards in panel": "16", "Median change": "-67.1%", "Aggregate change": "-40.5%" }, { "Window": "Sep 12 to Sep 16", "Cards in panel": "12", "Median change": "-64.9%", "Aggregate change": "-49.5%" }, { "Window": "Sep 11 to Sep 16", "Cards in panel": "10", "Median change": "-64.9%", "Aggregate change": "-57.9%" } ] }, { "title": "Fall from each card's own peak, by rarity", "columns": [ "Rarity", "Cards", "Median fall from peak" ], "rows": [ { "Rarity": "Pikachu Rare", "Cards": "8", "Median fall from peak": "-67.3%" }, { "Rarity": "Rare", "Cards": "2", "Median fall from peak": "-44.4%" }, { "Rarity": "Double rare", "Cards": "1", "Median fall from peak": "-43.0%" }, { "Rarity": "Illustration rare", "Cards": "5", "Median fall from peak": "-35.2%" }, { "Rarity": "Special illustration rare", "Cards": "1", "Median fall from peak": "-25.2%" }, { "Rarity": "Common", "Cards": "9", "Median fall from peak": "-19.6%" } ] }, { "title": "What we publish against what the provider last recorded", "columns": [ "Card", "We publish", "Provider's latest", "Overstated by" ], "rows": [ { "Card": "[Mew ex 158/128](/card/enx-696688)", "We publish": "$1,808.25", "Provider's latest": "$1,158.37", "Overstated by": "56.1%" }, { "Card": "[Mewtwo ex 157/128](/card/enx-696687)", "We publish": "$829.99", "Provider's latest": "$706.24", "Overstated by": "17.5%" }, { "Card": "[Jirachi ex 155/128](/card/30th-155)", "We publish": "$249.99", "Provider's latest": "$204.13", "Overstated by": "22.5%" }, { "Card": "[Galarian Meowth 141/128](/card/30th-141)", "We publish": "$144.98", "Provider's latest": "$56.09", "Overstated by": "158.5%" }, { "Card": "[Pikachu 027/128](/card/30th-027)", "We publish": "$62.00", "Provider's latest": "$14.09", "Overstated by": "340.0%" }, { "Card": "[Pikachu 040/128](/card/30th-040)", "We publish": "$73.00", "Provider's latest": "$9.36", "Overstated by": "679.9%" } ] } ], "charts": [], "sections": [ "A price that does not move is not a price", "The break, measured honestly", "Our own number was wrong, on 92 cards", "What a reader should take from this" ], "method": [ "Read from moonstone production on September 17, 2026. The set is 188 catalogue rows, of which 159 carry a TCGplayer link and a stored provider payload and 131 currently resolve to a price. Price series are the provider's own daily history as we cache it, one reading per card per day, quoted unmodified. ALL CHANGE FIGURES ARE CONSTANT PANELS: a card enters a window only if it has a reading on both endpoints, because our coverage of this set tripled on September 17 and a set-wide median across that boundary falls 94% for reasons that have nothing to do with price. Median change is the median of per-card ratios, not the ratio of medians; aggregate change is the sum of the panel on each day. Fall from peak uses each card's own maximum recorded reading and requires at least three readings, which is why the rarity table holds 26 cards and not 159; rows of one or two cards are printed rather than hidden and carry no weight. Zero sold comps means our stored payload for all 159 cards contains an empty sales array and an empty graded array; it is a statement about our tape, NOT a claim that no copy has changed hands anywhere. 83 of the 159 carry a listing count. The publishing fault is measured by comparing, on single-printing cards, the top-level market field our price rule selects against the per-printing figure whose timestamp is fresher, validated against which of the two matches the provider's own latest daily reading: where the per-printing block is fresher than the bulk export, it matches 90% of the time and the field we publish matches 10%. The fault was not fixed at the time of writing and no figure in this article is taken from the field it affects; the counts of affected cards and the percentages beside them are as of September 17, 2026, and were repaired afterwards. Note also that the set released on September 16, so the series here are preorder quotes and \"fall from peak\" means fall from a preorder peak." ], "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." }