{ "url": "https://www.moonstonehq.com/articles/thirty-two-days-after-the-mania", "slug": "thirty-two-days-after-the-mania", "title": "Thirty-Two Days After We Called the Mania: the Slab Lost 15.6%, the Card Lost 3.5%, and One Slab Now Has Five Prices", "summary": "On August 28 we published Mega Charizard X ex in the middle of its run and printed our own numbers so they could be scored. Here is the scorecard. The recorded PSA 10 figure went from $1,917.50 to $1,618.00 while the ungraded card went from $703.07 to $678.59. Grading a copy was worth an expected $712.99 then and $531.36 now. And on one card on one day, five honest answers to what a PSA 10 is worth run from $1,600 to $2,100.", "section": "Data forensics", "published": "2026-09-29", "readMinutes": 9, "publisher": "moonstone", "findings": [ { "value": "-15.6%", "measures": "the recorded PSA 10 figure", "basis": "$1,917.50 on Aug 28 to $1,618.00 on Sep 29" }, { "value": "-3.5%", "measures": "the ungraded card", "basis": "$703.07 to $678.59 on the daily price file" }, { "value": "+842/wk", "measures": "registry growth, against the +730 we printed", "basis": "15.3% faster than our own number" }, { "value": "$500", "measures": "the spread across five honest prices", "basis": "$1,600 to $2,100, one card, one grade, one day" } ], "tables": [ { "title": "Our August 28 numbers, marked on September 29", "columns": [ "What we printed", "August 28", "September 29", "Verdict" ], "rows": [ { "What we printed": "Registry growth a week", "August 28": "+730", "September 29": "+842 across 37 days", "Verdict": "15.3% faster than we said" }, { "What we printed": "Verified PSA 10 sales a week", "August 28": "43.8", "September 29": "46.6 across 32 days", "Verdict": "Held, and the price fell anyway" }, { "What we printed": "Gem rate", "August 28": "59.8%", "September 29": "59.74%", "Verdict": "Flat, as printed" }, { "What we printed": "PSA 10 figure", "August 28": "$2,001", "September 29": "$1,618.00 recorded", "Verdict": "Our $2,001 was 18 days stale, see below" }, { "What we printed": "Net grading return", "August 28": "+$796", "September 29": "+$531.36 on today's figures", "Verdict": "The +$796 came off the stale figure, see below" }, { "What we printed": "Total population", "August 28": "49,604", "September 29": "54,054 on Sep 28", "Verdict": "As printed, and compounding" } ] }, { "title": "What is a PSA 10 Mega Charizard X ex worth today", "columns": [ "The figure", "What it measures", "Sales behind it" ], "rows": [ { "The figure": "$1,600.00", "What it measures": "The newest verified sale, September 28", "Sales behind it": "1 sale, which is not a price" }, { "The figure": "$1,618.00", "What it measures": "The provider's own recorded figure for the grade", "Sales behind it": "Window not disclosed to us" }, { "The figure": "$1,632.61", "What it measures": "The provider's seven day market figure", "Sales behind it": "Seven days of activity" }, { "The figure": "$1,999.48", "What it measures": "Our verified median over the last 90 days", "Sales behind it": "676 verified sales" }, { "The figure": "$2,100.00", "What it measures": "Our verified median over every sale we kept", "Sales behind it": "1,974 verified sales" } ] }, { "title": "The same grading model, 32 days apart", "columns": [ "Input", "August 28", "September 29" ], "rows": [ { "Input": "Share of the registry at PSA 10", "August 28": "59.77%", "September 29": "59.74%" }, { "Input": "Share at PSA 9", "August 28": "34.09%", "September 29": "34.14%" }, { "Input": "Share below a 9", "August 28": "6.14%", "September 29": "6.11%" }, { "Input": "PSA 10 figure", "August 28": "$1,917.50", "September 29": "$1,618.00" }, { "Input": "PSA 9 figure", "August 28": "$743.00", "September 29": "$667.93" }, { "Input": "Ungraded card", "August 28": "$703.07", "September 29": "$678.59" }, { "Input": "Net expected value", "August 28": "+$712.99", "September 29": "+$531.36" }, { "Input": "Return on the card", "August 28": "+101.4%", "September 29": "+78.3%" } ] }, { "title": "The 130 lines sorted by weekly registry growth", "columns": [ "Quarter", "Registry growth a week", "Median seven day figure move", "Median card move", "Share of seven day figures down" ], "rows": [ { "Quarter": "Fastest 32", "Registry growth a week": "1.13%", "Median seven day figure move": "-12.71%", "Median card move": "-8.18%", "Share of seven day figures down": "87.50%" }, { "Quarter": "Second 32", "Registry growth a week": "0.60%", "Median seven day figure move": "-7.54%", "Median card move": "-2.85%", "Share of seven day figures down": "75.00%" }, { "Quarter": "Third 32", "Registry growth a week": "0.34%", "Median seven day figure move": "-3.41%", "Median card move": "-4.15%", "Share of seven day figures down": "65.63%" }, { "Quarter": "Slowest 34", "Registry growth a week": "0.25%", "Median seven day figure move": "-1.65%", "Median card move": "-2.02%", "Share of seven day figures down": "58.82%" } ] } ], "charts": [ { "title": "How far a 90 day median sits above today's figure, by what the card did", "unit": "%", "note": "Median overstatement across the 126 cohort lines that also carry a 90 day window", "points": [ { "label": "Slab fell more than 5% in the 32 days", "value": 18.33, "basis": "78 lines, median move -10.81%" }, { "label": "Slab moved less than 5% either way", "value": 7.42, "basis": "33 lines, median move -1.44%" }, { "label": "Slab rose more than 5%", "value": 1.15, "basis": "15 lines, median move +10.47%" } ] } ], "sections": [ "What we printed, and what happened", "One card, one day, five prices", "The sale count beside a graded price is not the sample behind it", "The grading trade, repriced", "Where the slab fell and the card did not", "The screen we wanted, and why we are not selling it", "What this does not answer" ], "method": [ "Sources, all moonstone recorded data read on September 29, 2026. The ungraded prices are price_history, the TCGplayer market price recorded daily, which is derived from recent sales rather than from live listings, so it is neither an asking price nor a comp you can point at. Its window here is August 30 to September 29, 2026, its first stored day through its last; the daily file stamps a value two days later than the Near Mint series does, and the Near Mint series holds $703.07 for this card on August 28, which is the same figure the daily file stamps on August 30, so the publication day quote is the same number in both. The day after this window the file already reads $672.28, which is the figure the card page shows. The graded figures are graded_snapshots. Two of its columns carry a reading on both August 28 and September 29: the provider's recorded figure for the grade, which marks -15.62%, and the provider's seven day market figure, which marks -19.08%. Our own verified medians begin on September 25, when the dated price model shipped, so they cannot measure this window and are not used to. We publish the recorded figure as the headline because it is the primary column and the more conservative of the two. The recorded figure is NOT a median over the recorded sale count beside it: those are two separate provider fields, which the one day test in the body demonstrates on 182 lines. That card's graded readings also skip August 30 to September 13, because the daily graded refresh rotates across the catalogue, so the series holds 18 readings across the 32 days rather than 33. Population and gem rate are the daily PSA registry snapshots, which for this card run August 22 to September 28, 37 days, 49,604 slabs to 54,054 and 29,648 tens to 32,293. Two readings inside that stretch, September 9 and September 11, record a gem count of zero against a null PSA 9 count and are excluded as unknown rather than read as zero. The +730 a week we printed in August reproduces from the two readings we then held, August 12 and August 22, 48,561 to 49,604. The grading model is the registry-average model in [our ROI study](/articles/grading-roi-for-the-cards-you-own), read from that study's own methodology rather than recalled: the registry's PSA 10 share times the PSA 10 figure, plus its PSA 9 share times the PSA 9 figure, plus the remaining share valued at 85% of the ungraded price, less a $20 fee, against the ungraded price. The shares come from the same population readings, 29,648 tens and 16,909 nines of 49,604 on August 22 and 32,293 tens and 18,456 nines of 54,054 on September 28. It carries no shipping, no insurance and no eBay fee, exactly as August ran it, and on the stale $2,000.50 figure with the $673 ask the August article quoted it returns $796.21, which is the +$796 that article printed. The 130 line cohort requires a PSA 10 reading on both endpoints with five or more recorded sales AND a seven day figure recorded on both endpoints, which is the largest single exclusion: 195 lines carry the recorded figure on both days and only 147 of them carry the seven day figure on both, so 48 are dropped there before any other rule runs. It then requires MORE recorded sales at the end than at the start so that a line which never re-quoted cannot be counted as flat, an ungraded price on both days, a population pair at least 20 days apart whose readings never fall and never rise by more than half in a single step, a starting population of 500 or more, and a set released before the window opened. Those rules exclude 7 lines for recording no new sales, 8 for a short or absent population pair, and 2 for population readings that shrank or jumped, one of which is Jungle Pikachu going 11,792 to 18,919 in one reading, which is a registry remap and not grading. One catalogue row per TCGplayer product id throughout, because 1,215 product ids in the catalogue are claimed by two rows each; this card is not one of them and resolves one to one to product 662184. The 340 line trailing window comparison is every PSA 10 line holding both a provider figure of five or more sales and a 90 day verified median of 20 or more sales on September 29; lines whose window had to widen past 90 days are excluded so the window is one claim. Correlations are Spearman rank correlations. Phantasmal Flames released on November 14, 2025 per the price file's own set metadata, well before the window, which is what rules out a release day collapse being read as a decline. 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." }