Only 34% of English Pokemon Cards Get a PSA 10

Collectors have sent PSA 105,974 copies of the Base Set Charizard since the card was printed in 1999, and 491 of them came back a PSA 10. That is one submission in 216, on a card nobody bothers to grade unless they already think their copy looks clean.

Almost every article about whether grading is worth it skips straight past that number. They tell you to compare the raw price to the PSA 10 price, subtract the grading fee, and submit if the gap is wide enough. The missing step is how often your card actually gets the 10. We read the full PSA population report on September 21 to put a real figure on it, set by set, and the answer is lower than most people assume and a lot less even.

What percentage of Pokemon cards get a PSA 10?

Across every English Pokemon card in the report, PSA has graded about 20.57 million and handed out roughly 7.03 million tens. That is 34.2%. Another 36.7% came back a 9 and 14.8% came back an 8, which means a little over half of all English submissions land in the two grades that usually lose money on a modern card.

Japanese cards behave completely differently. PSA has graded about 15.26 million of those and 72.8% of them got a 10.

One thing to hold onto before you use any of these numbers: a gem rate is the share of graded copies that came back a 10, and it is calculated on cards people chose to submit. Nobody mails in the copy with a soft corner. So every rate below is already the flattered version, measured on cards that had been picked over first, and a random copy out of a pack does worse than the report says. We wrote up how to pre-screen a card before it goes in the box last spring, and that step is what separates your odds from the set average.

PSA 10 gem rates by set

Here is the whole report for twelve sets people actually submit, read on September 21. The percentages cover every card in the set, commons included.

Set	Cards graded	PSA 10	PSA 9
Base Set (1999)	1,146,019	9.8%	24.2%
XY Evolutions (2016)	473,278	21.9%	45.8%
Hidden Fates (2019)	485,928	59.0%	34.4%
Evolving Skies (2021)	355,548	58.9%	29.9%
Crown Zenith (2023)	727,315	52.2%	38.1%
151 (2023)	832,205	28.5%	51.0%
Obsidian Flames (2023)	256,276	24.8%	50.9%
Surging Sparks (2024)	327,238	34.7%	52.3%
Prismatic Evolutions (2025)	385,987	32.7%	50.4%
Destined Rivals (2025)	415,956	45.4%	41.1%
Mega Evolution (2025)	388,352	56.1%	34.8%
Ascended Heroes (2026)	272,477	63.4%	31.2%

The usual explanation for a low gem rate is age, and the table does not support it. Evolving Skies came out in 2021 and gems at 58.9%. The 151 set came out two years later and gems at 28.5%, with more than half of everything sent in coming back a 9. Obsidian Flames, from the same year, is worse again at 24.8%.

What the low scorers have in common is the Scarlet and Violet textured finish. 151, Obsidian Flames, Surging Sparks and Prismatic Evolutions all sit in the twenties and thirties, and all four push roughly half their submissions into a 9. The sets on either side of that era, Evolving Skies and Hidden Fates before it, Mega Evolution and Ascended Heroes after, all clear 56%. We would not swear the texture is the whole cause, but if you are grading a Scarlet and Violet chase card you should plan around a coin flip landing on 9, not on a 10.

Why a high gem rate is bad news for your PSA 10

The natural move is to hunt for the highest gem rate you can find and submit that. It is the wrong move, and two cards from the table show why.

The 151 Charizard ex Special Illustration Rare, card 199, is one of the most graded modern cards in the hobby. PSA has seen 104,580 of them and 27.4% came back a 10, while 48.3% came back a 9. On PriceCharting on September 21 a raw copy was going for $350.00, a PSA 9 for $387.92 and a PSA 10 for $1,412.50. The ten is worth roughly four times the raw card, which is exactly the kind of gap that gets people excited.

Now take Lillie's Clefairy ex, card 280 from Ascended Heroes. PSA has graded 5,597 of them and 66.8% came back a 10, more than double the Charizard's rate. On the same day the raw card was $145.00, a PSA 9 was $176.00 and a PSA 10 was $310.00. The ten is worth about twice the raw copy.

Run a hundred submissions of each and the easy card loses badly. Both runs below use PSA's September fee board, $79.99 Priority for the Charizard and $59.99 Standard for the Clefairy, about $10 a card for shipping and insurance each way, and eBay's roughly 13% cut on the sale.

Per 100 submissions	151 Charizard ex #199	Lillie's Clefairy ex #280
All in cost per card	$439.99	$214.99
A PSA 10 nets	plus $788.88	plus $54.71
A PSA 9 nets	minus $102.50	minus $61.87
Tens out of 100	27	67
Nines out of 100	48	30
Average per card	plus $128	plus $16

The card that gems a quarter of the time returns about eight times as much per submission as the card that gems two thirds of the time. That is not a fluke of these two cards. A high gem rate means PSA 10s of that card are common, and common slabs do not carry a premium over the raw copy. The gem rate and the size of the prize move against each other, so reading either one on its own tells you nothing.

The Lillie's Clefairy call we got wrong

We have been tracking that Clefairy since May, and this is the week our call on it resolved badly.

On July 13 the PSA 10 had fallen from $690 in May to $469.74, and we wrote that it would stay soft in a $420 to $520 band for the next sixty days while the raw floor held between $180 and $210. We also said the call was wrong if the ten dropped below about $380.

It dropped below about $380. On September 21 PriceCharting had the PSA 10 at $310.00 and the raw card at $145.00, so both legs broke through the bottom of the range we named. The direction was right and every number was too optimistic.

The gem rate is the piece we did not look at. At 66.8%, two out of every three Clefairy submissions come back a ten, so the population of PSA 10s grows almost as fast as people send the card in, and a slab that common cannot hold a big premium over the raw card. We had the pop report sitting right there and used it to count how many slabs existed rather than how fast new ones arrive. This is now the fourth call where we got the direction right and named a price floor that broke, so we are done naming floors on cards that are still being opened in volume.

What to check before you submit

Three numbers, in this order.

1. Your card's own gem rate, not the set average. Within 151 the Charizard SIR gems at 27.4% while the Ultra Rare version of the same Pokemon gems at 36.5%. Set level figures are a starting point and nothing more. Be aware that PSA's own population pages now bounce an anonymous visitor to a sign-in screen, which is worth knowing before you go looking.
2. The full price ladder, meaning what a 9 sells for, not just the 10. On these two cards the 9 is where about half of all submissions land, and a PSA 9 on a modern card is usually a loss once fees come out. If the 9 loses more than the 10 makes, the gem rate has to be very high to rescue it.
3. The two multiplied together. A 27% shot at $789 beats a 67% shot at $55, and nothing about either percentage tells you that on its own.

One correction while we are here. In our Japanese versus English grading post in July we used 45% as a stand in for the English gem rate and 70% for Japanese. The report says 72.8% for Japanese, which was close, and 34.2% for English, which was eleven points kinder than reality. The conclusion in that post survives, but the margin we showed on the English side was too wide.

Flipr pulls the pop report and the price ladder onto the same screen for exactly this reason, because the two numbers are useless apart and neither one is hard to find. What is hard is remembering to look at both on the same afternoon, before the card is already in a padded envelope.