{
  "url": "https://www.moonstonehq.com/articles/the-japanese-price-flip",
  "slug": "the-japanese-price-flip",
  "title": "Japanese Cards Are Cheaper, and Also Dearer. Which One Depends Entirely on the Price",
  "summary": "Across 1,373 cards that exist as a single English printing and a single Japanese one, both carrying a live price, the Japanese copy is the more expensive of the two 832 times. That is the opposite of what the hobby says. It is also not the whole story, because the direction reverses cleanly as the card gets dearer: under a dollar the Japanese print runs at 4.75 times the English one and is dearer 90% of the time, and above $100 it runs at 0.30 and is dearer 5% of the time. Both halves of the folk wisdom are true. They are true about different cards.",
  "section": "Data forensics",
  "published": "2026-09-17",
  "readMinutes": 8,
  "publisher": "moonstone",
  "findings": [
    {
      "value": "1,373",
      "measures": "cards priced on both sides of the language line",
      "basis": "one English printing, one Japanese printing, both with a live price"
    },
    {
      "value": "832",
      "measures": "where the Japanese copy is the dearer one",
      "basis": "against 533 cheaper and 8 identical"
    },
    {
      "value": "4.75x",
      "measures": "median Japanese price under $1 English",
      "basis": "479 pairs; the Japanese copy is dearer in 90% of them"
    },
    {
      "value": "0.30x",
      "measures": "median Japanese price above $100 English",
      "basis": "99 pairs; the Japanese copy is dearer in 5% of them"
    }
  ],
  "tables": [
    {
      "title": "Japanese price as a multiple of its English twin, by what the English card costs",
      "columns": [
        "English price",
        "Pairs",
        "Median Japanese / English",
        "Japanese is dearer"
      ],
      "rows": [
        {
          "English price": "Under $1",
          "Pairs": "479",
          "Median Japanese / English": "4.75x",
          "Japanese is dearer": "90%"
        },
        {
          "English price": "$1 to $5",
          "Pairs": "381",
          "Median Japanese / English": "1.63x",
          "Japanese is dearer": "74%"
        },
        {
          "English price": "$5 to $20",
          "Pairs": "238",
          "Median Japanese / English": "0.79x",
          "Japanese is dearer": "35%"
        },
        {
          "English price": "$20 to $100",
          "Pairs": "176",
          "Median Japanese / English": "0.50x",
          "Japanese is dearer": "16%"
        },
        {
          "English price": "Over $100",
          "Pairs": "99",
          "Median Japanese / English": "0.30x",
          "Japanese is dearer": "5%"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "title": "Widest recorded gaps, English side $20 and above",
      "columns": [
        "Card",
        "English",
        "Japanese",
        "Gap"
      ],
      "rows": [
        {
          "Card": "[Deoxys ex](/card/ex8-99) (Deoxys)",
          "English": "$550.00",
          "Japanese": "$22.00",
          "Gap": "96% cheaper in Japanese"
        },
        {
          "Card": "[Entei ex](/card/ex4-91)",
          "English": "$175.00",
          "Japanese": "$8.00",
          "Gap": "95% cheaper"
        },
        {
          "Card": "[Team Aqua's Kyogre](/card/ex4-3)",
          "English": "$228.30",
          "Japanese": "$14.99",
          "Gap": "93% cheaper"
        },
        {
          "Card": "[_____'s Pikachu](/card/cel25cc-CC008)",
          "English": "$31.57",
          "Japanese": "$195.00",
          "Gap": "6.2x dearer in Japanese"
        },
        {
          "Card": "[Shining Ho-Oh](/card/smp-SM70)",
          "English": "$26.68",
          "Japanese": "$147.50",
          "Gap": "5.5x dearer"
        },
        {
          "Card": "[Pikachu](/card/basep-27)",
          "English": "$30.31",
          "Japanese": "$115.26",
          "Gap": "3.8x dearer"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "title": "Every card in the catalogue, by whether it has a counterpart across the language line",
      "columns": [
        "Bucket",
        "Identity groups"
      ],
      "rows": [
        {
          "Bucket": "Exactly one English and one Japanese printing",
          "Identity groups": "1,597"
        },
        {
          "Bucket": "English only, no Japanese counterpart",
          "Identity groups": "1,441"
        },
        {
          "Bucket": "Japanese only, no English counterpart",
          "Identity groups": "2,131"
        },
        {
          "Bucket": "Several printings on one or both sides",
          "Identity groups": "4,981"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "charts": [],
  "sections": [
    "The flip, band by band",
    "Why both camps are certain",
    "The extremes, both directions",
    "How many cards even have a twin",
    "The bug that had to be fixed before any of this could be measured"
  ],
  "method": [
    "Read from moonstone production on September 17, 2026. Counterparts are joined on a cleaned English card name plus printed hit points, computed over the bundled catalogue snapshot of roughly 63,800 rows; Japanese rows carrying kana names bridge to English through the species dictionary, and mechanic markers are folded to one spelling first, so “(Delta Species)” and “δ” are the same key, as are a trailing “Star” and “☆”. Only identity groups holding EXACTLY one English and one Japanese printing enter the ratio study: 1,597 such groups exist and 1,373 carry a live price on both sides. Prices are the canonical printing price, the same rule the card pages publish, not the raw provider market field, which on a multi-printing card quotes the dearest printing. Ratios are Japanese price divided by English price, and medians are per band rather than pooled, because the bands differ by two orders of magnitude and a pooled median would simply report whichever band is most populous. THIS MEASURES ASKING AND MARKET PRICES ON ONE MARKETPLACE, in United States dollars, for cards sold domestically and cards that must be imported; it is not a claim about what a card costs inside Japan, which we do not price. The explanation offered for the flip is an argument from the shape of the data, not a measurement: we do not hold shipping costs and cannot decompose the gap into freight, scarcity and demand. RECHECKED 2026-09-22: the catalogue is a current-state table with no history, so the census cannot be replayed at its September 17 date. Rebuilding the same join today gives 1,089 one-to-one identity groups rather than 1,597, and the band shape survives: 4.88x, 1.86x, 0.83x, 0.69x and 0.50x with the Japanese card dearer in 90%, 75%, 39%, 32% and 25% of pairs, against the 4.75x, 1.63x, 0.79x, 0.50x and 0.30x printed here. The two dearest-in-Japanese rows of the extremes table reproduce and still hold the top two places; the three cheapest-in-Japanese rows no longer form one-to-one priced pairs and cannot be rechecked. Related: [Japanese slabs](/articles/japanese-slabs) measures the same language line on graded populations rather than raw prices."
  ],
  "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."
}