Weekly Buys

• Momentum cohortCards like this one have gained 34% on average over the past 18 months.
• Print clockSupply is winding down: the cheapest Twilight Masquerade ETB already costs 2.12× its retail price, the classic end-of-print signal.

No slab clears the two-factor bar at this budget: our graded series carries no PSA 10 with n≥50 comps under this ceiling this week.

No sealed pick at this budget: 1 sub-$55 sealed product shows positive 30-day momentum, but none is a full booster configuration whose per-pack cost clears a loose-pack comp — so none reaches the print-clock + defensible-EV bar. The one sealed pick that does clear it sits in the $100 tier.

• Graded ladderPSA 9 copies sell for a median $200, 3.3 times the $61 raw price (74 recorded sales).
• Print clockPrint-clock: Fossil is out of print — the original WotC-era run ended in 1999 and has never been reprinted, so the surviving graded population is the entire supply. This is a closed print window by fact, not by the ETB-ratio inference used for modern sets (as of July 28, 2026)

No sealed pick at this budget this week — and this is exactly the ETB / booster-box band, so we checked it: of 645 sealed products tracked between $100 and $550, only 4 show even +0.5% over 30 days (tape median +0.01%, live at build). A sealed box needs positive momentum AND a defensible per-pack cost to clear print-clock + EV; on a dead-flat tape none does. The print-clock alone is one factor, not two — so the honest call is slabs, not a forced box.

Factor attribution (live ledger)

• The honest conclusion: across the nine entry dates the ranked portfolio averaged -0.6% alpha and the pure two-factor screen (every qualifying candidate, equal weight) averaged +3.5%. In other words the criteria roughly match the index, with wide dispersion. The favorable 12-month window (Jul 28, 2025: +16.2%) is one draw in that distribution, shown alongside the others, never instead of them. We are not claiming proven historical alpha.
• Dispersion caveat: even where the mean is positive it is mean-driven, not uniform: the median simulated pick lagged the index in most windows (e.g. +14.3% median alpha at the 12-month entry, −34.2% at the 6-month entry). Expect most picks to trail a hot index while a minority carries any result.
• Negative finding, kept and published: the stamp-freeze factor attributed −39.8% (12-mo entry) and −24.3% (6-mo entry) mean alpha historically. We carry one stamped position anyway as an explicitly contrarian supply-freeze bet (smallest sizing, risk disclosed on the pick), and the live factor-attribution loop below will retire the factor if it keeps failing to earn alpha.
• Not backtestable, disclosed: graded-ladder (our graded series only begins 2026-07-21) and sealed-ev (no sealed price archive) could not be simulated; they enter the ledger unproven and will be judged by the live factor attribution above. The sweep universe was assembled on 2026 prices (survivorship-bias risk), which is why every figure is also benchmarked against that same universe’s unfiltered mean.

Where this leaves the series. Public validation in progress · and this scorecard is the validation, not a victory lap over a simulation. The sweep says the criteria roughly match the index; the live ledger is how we find out whether the disciplined, disclosed version does better. Every pick is logged at its entry price and marked weekly against the index, wins and losses alike, and the factor-attribution loop retires any factor that fails to earn alpha over time. We have already published one factor’s negative result (stamp-freeze) rather than bury it.

Revision log. v1.0 · 2026-07-30: criteria codified from the moonstone research series (grade-ladder, print-clock, launch-curve, waifu-tax/catch-up, PC-stamp, velocity studies); historical entry-date sweep run and published in full, favorable and unfavorable windows alike, no “gate” and nothing passed, the criteria roughly match the index and the live scorecard is the validation; ledger opened. Criteria changes will be logged here and never applied retroactively to logged picks.