In our Population Growth Tax window, one card behaved unlike everything else we measured: Dark Charizard from Team Rocket. Its registry barely moved, 34 new slabs a week against 9,591 existing, and its PSA 10 median more than doubled, $1,563 to $3,475, in seventeen days. Every modern chase in the same window paid the growth tax. This card collected it.
Closed registries turn demand into price with no shock absorber
When demand hits Mega Charizard X ex, 730 fresh slabs a week absorb it: supply is the shock absorber and price moves slowly. When demand hits Dark Charizard, there is no absorber: the copies that exist are the copies that will ever exist, minus attrition, and the ask ladder simply reprices. Our Print-Run Archaeology shows the whole Team Rocket stratum sits in the shallow registry band, and Bulk's Hidden Floor shows the same age cohort holding a $2.34 floor under its WORST cards. Closed supply is the single variable those three findings share.
The caveat our own ledger insists on: verify the move's depth before believing it. A 17-day doubling on a vintage card can ride thin tape, and the frozen-trophy study shows what thin tape does to 'value'. Dark Charizard's move printed across a real sample rather than one outlier sale, which is why it made this page, but the discipline is the point: on closed registries, always ask how many sales the move is made of.
Population series from Moonstone daily PSA registry snapshots; medians from verified eBay solds, first-to-latest within the 17-day measurement window ending August 27, 2026, sample thresholds per the graded ledger's standard (minimum three sales per point). Registry growth annualized from window deltas. Not financial advice.