Where the New Slabs Go: 339,436 PSA Submissions in a Month, 42% of Them Japanese, and the Cards Being Graded Fastest Are Gemming Less

The Grading Throughput Index counted how many slabs PSA returns in a week. The Population Growth Tax watched what that does to a premium. This piece asks the question in between: where do the new slabs go? Which sets, which eras, which rarities, which cards, and are the copies people are sending in now as clean as the ones already in the registry? Six weeks of our own daily population snapshots are enough to answer, with one large caveat about the data that we deal with first.

Japanese cards are 30% of the tracked registry and took 42% of the month's inflow, 4,099 slabs a day, at a gem rate of 77.1% that matches their stock. Japanese Registries Are Twice as Deep explained why the stock is what it is; this is the flow that built it, still running. The other fast lane is the Mega Evolution era, a year old, 4% of the stock and 13.4% of the inflow, growing 9.6% in a month at 1,371 slabs a day. Everything printed before 2019 is a trickle: WotC, the largest vintage registry, grew 1.7%, and the EX, Diamond & Pearl, Black & White and HeartGold SoulSilver eras together added 4,826 slabs, 1.4% of the total. The registry is not being built on old cards. It is being built on the cards released this year and last.

The single biggest destination for new slabs is a Japanese set, MEGA Dream ex, at 696 a day and 23% growth. The fastest-growing English registry is Ascended Heroes, released in August, which added 16,566 slabs and grew 32.7% in the window; Phantasmal Flames grew 6.3% and Mega Evolution 4.5%. The 2023 sets are still being graded in volume but no longer growing fast: 151 added 10,982 slabs for 1.7% growth, and its new submissions came back PSA 10 at 12.7% against a 28.5% stock rate, the widest gap of any set on the list. 151 Proved the 90-Day Rule Twice predicted the set would get harder to gem as the clean copies ran out; this is that, measured.

The inflow is concentrated to a degree the registry's stock is not: the 100 fastest-growing lines took 48.1% of every new slab, the top 1% (32 lines) took 27.8%, the top 10% took 75.5%, and 846 of the 3,248 lines added nothing at all. At the front is the Mega Charizard X ex promo, 361 slabs a day on a $33.87 card, the pattern Everyone Grades the Freebies described: a cheap promo with a high gem rate is the cheapest lottery ticket in the hobby. Behind it the 332,353-slab Japanese promo Pikachu is still adding 315 a day. The English chase cards of the Mega era are being graded at 50 to 120 a day each while their prices sit between $600 and $1,000, which is the mania arriving at PSA's door a few weeks after it arrived on the tape.

Among English cards the queue is the top of the checklist: special illustration rares, 11% of the stock, took a quarter of the inflow, and cards priced $25 or more took three quarters of it. Cards under $5 took 2.3%. That is the submission decision The Fee Is a Fixed Cost described, made in aggregate: a grading fee only makes sense above a price floor, so the registry grows where the money is. The one surprise is that special illustration rares submitted this month gemmed at 48.6% against a 39.9% stock rate; the plain illustration rares in the same window did the same, 34.3% against 31.6%. The newest textured cards are arriving cleaner than the ones already slabbed, or the submitters have learned to pre-screen them.

Across the 292 lines with at least 200 new slabs, the median line's new submissions gemmed at 56.9% against a stock rate of 61.1%; 117 lines came in more than five points below their stock rate and 21 came in more than five points above. The gap is widest exactly where The Gem Rate Drift predicted: Scarlet & Violet, where the month's submissions gemmed at 19.5% against 32.2% in the stock, and Sword & Shield, 47.2% against 56.2%. The two eras where the door is not getting harder are the ones still being opened: Japanese cards at 84.3% and Mega Evolution at 65.6%, marginally above its stock. The reading is consistent with the clean copies of a set being graded first and the rest following, rather than with PSA changing its standard month to month; this data cannot separate the two.

Universe: PSA population lines in our daily snapshots (keyed by TCGplayer product id) with a latest snapshot and an earlier snapshot at least 21 days older, as of 2026-09-15: 3,316 lines, median window 32 days. Excluded: 114 lines whose total fell between readings, 67 lines flagged as provider re-mappings (total more than doubled in the window, or a single step of 1,000+ slabs equal to 80% or more of the inflow), and one duplicate at 1,000+ slabs with identical totals at both ends. Final: 3,248 lines, 12,881,671 slabs at the latest reading, 339,436 added. Era follows the set prefix with Japanese prints as their own bucket; 54 lines not in our catalog are counted in totals and omitted from the era table. Growth is inflow over the earlier total; per day is inflow over the window length. PSA 10 rate of new slabs is the change in PSA 10 count over the change in total, on lines with a PSA 10 count at both ends, at least 50 new slabs for the era and set tables and at least 200 for the drift table; stock rate is the PSA 10 count over the total at the earlier reading. Raw market is the median of our recorded daily market price over the ten days to 2026-09-15. Set names for Japanese sets are the catalog's; four Japanese names are given in English translation. Not financial advice.