Ascended Heroes Elite Trainer Box promo pop report: the worst ETB promo since 2021

Published September 29, 2026 · Pop figures refresh with every site build; the current pull is September 20, 2026

Almost this whole census is stacked on two grades, and neither of them is a 10. At the September 20, 2026 pull the Ascended Heroes Elite Trainer Box promo pop report reads 1,379 Gem Mint 10s from 10,867 submissions on N's Zekrom #031, a 12.7 percent gem rate. 62.11 percent stopped at a 9 and another 21.50 percent at an 8, leaving 3.71 percent for everything below that.

Whatever is going wrong here is not happening to the cards.

The Ascended Heroes Elite Trainer Box promo pop report, in two grades

Between them the 9 and the 8 hold better than five copies in six, and of the thirty two promos that shipped one to a standard Elite Trainer Box and have passed 1,000 grades, none packs more of a census into two slots. Across every English row past 10,000 grades, only four of 361 hold a tighter pair. PSA still took 2,993 more copies last period against a thirty day trend of -5%.

The box reached shelves on February 20, 2026. Seven months is a short life for a census this size.

Four sets, and the format broke

Thirty two English promos that shipped one to a standard Elite Trainer Box have passed 1,000 PSA grades. Pooled across 596,047 submissions, the twenty seven printed before the Mega Evolution block gem 39.20 percent. The five printed inside it gem 16.07 percent across 34,336.

Those five are the Mega Evolution Alakazam #009 and Riolu #010, the Phantasmal Flames Charcadet #022, the Perfect Order Tyrunt #070, and this one. One row from outside the block lands inside their range, the Destined Rivals Team Rocket's Wobbuffet at 19.32 percent, and only two fall under it: the 2016 Generations Shaymin EX at 2.09 and the Celebrations Greninja Gold Star at 5.22. Nothing printed since 2021 grades worse, and N's Zekrom is also the weakest of its own five.

Year of manufacture does not explain that. Twenty other rows in the same Mega Evolution Black Star Promo set have passed 1,000 grades and gem 61.65 percent pooled across 371,964 submissions, and the First Partner Illustration Collection Charmander out of that same set gems 84.41. Same promo set, same year, six and a half times the odds.

Nothing handled this card

Pokemon's product page for the Elite Trainer Box lists nine booster packs, a full art promo card featuring N's Zekrom, 65 sleeves, 40 Energy cards, dice and a coin. The promo does not sit loose in the tray, and buyers treat it that way: of 59 raw sales on PriceCharting's tape since May 6, ten were titled as still sealed and cleared a $9.95 median against $8.36 for everything else.

The census agrees from the other direction. 403 copies of 10,867 came home below an 8, about what a card collects between a factory seal and a submission envelope. Set that against the Shaymin EX, the one Elite Trainer Box promo in the group that gems worse: 44.1 percent of its census sits below an 8. That card was beaten up. This one is getting measured and turned down.

Which measurement, PSA does not publish. The numbers rule out handling and point at something the press had already done, which is as far as any population count will take you. For what a census can and cannot say about the copy in your hand, start with how these counts get assembled.

The stamped copy from the same carton

Pokemon Center sold its own Ascended Heroes Elite Trainer Box on the same February day with eleven packs instead of nine and two N's Zekrom promos instead of one. Pokemon's page says one of that pair carries the Pokemon Center logo, so anyone who bought the Pokemon Center version opened a plain copy and a stamped copy together, and the census above counts plain copies off both shelves.

The stamped row is far worse. It reads 116 Gem Mint 10s from 2,344 submissions, 4.95 percent, with 34.9 percent parked at an 8 against 21.50 percent here. Two cards that travelled in one carton, one third of the gem rate.

That is tempting and it is not a rule. Across the five Mega Evolution block pairs the stamped copy loses three times and wins twice: Riolu drops from 20.03 percent to 4.43 and Charcadet from 13.64 to 3.18, while the Alakazam runs 17.97 plain against 19.60 stamped and the Perfect Order Tyrunt goes the same way. Earlier pairs scatter too, the two Obsidian Flames Charmander prints by more than fourteen points and the two 151 Snorlax prints by three and a half.

Bun Toujo drew both of N's dragons

The credit on the card face reads Illus. Bun Toujo, beside a regulation mark I, the MEP EN set code, the number 031 and a black star. Basic, 130 HP, Shred for 70 and Rampaging Thunder for 250, copyright 2026. The catalogue behind the name is small: Serebii's artist index lists fourteen English cards and Limitless fifteen. One of them is N's Reshiram from Journey Together, so both of N's dragons went to the same hand.

Sixty dollars of fee against fifty one of payout

PSA's Standard tier costs $59.99 for an estimated 90 to 100 business days at a $1,000 maximum insured value, read off psacard.com/pricing on September 29, 2026, with the Value services still paused. A $305 slab sits well inside that cap.

Take 15 percent off every sale for fees and for shipping a slab. A Gem Mint 10 returns $259.25, a PSA 9 returns $24.18, and an 8 returns $13.60 on PriceCharting's Grade 8 column, which pools every grader. Weight those by the census this card actually hands back and a submission returns $51.33 against $68.98 of cost, a loss of $17.65 a card, or 25.6 percent. Breakeven arrives at a 20.10 percent gem rate. The card runs 12.7 percent lifetime and 12.35 percent on the 3,839 grades added between the August 13 and September 20 pulls, so the recent window is no kinder.

Now the part that ends the argument. Expected payout is $51.33 and the fee alone is $59.99, so a free copy of this card still loses $8.66 to grade. There is no buy price that works. Even at zero it would need a 16.33 percent gem rate to break even.

The consolation grade is what does the damage. A 9 clears $28.45 across 24 titled sales between September 12 and 29, which does not cover half the fee, and 6,749 submissions have landed there. Both ends are falling too. PriceCharting's monthly series has the PSA 10 at $510.00 in May 2026 and $288.33 in September, and the tape agrees in miniature: thirteen titled PSA 10 sales in August cleared a $319.99 median against $290.00 across seventeen in September.

Leave it in the sleeve

If a copy came out of your box in February, put it in a sleeve and stop there, because at today's fee the likeliest outcome is a $24 slab that cost $69 to make. If you want the Gem Mint 10, buy one already in the holder at $290 to $305. The seven failed submissions standing behind it have been paid for by somebody else. For how to tell a genuinely thin population from a merely small number, read when a small PSA 10 count actually means scarcity, and to watch both N's Zekrom rows move side by side, open BetterPop's own browser.

Sources

• GemRate PSA population data via the BetterPop dataset, September 20, 2026 row pull; the thirty two card Elite Trainer Box promo cohort, the 39.20 and 16.07 percent pools, the 61.65 percent promo set pool, the grade share ranks and the five stamped pairs were computed across all 110,641 rows on September 29, 2026.
• PriceCharting, N's Zekrom #31 Pokemon Promo, price table, monthly series and sold tape read September 29, 2026. All six monthly series were checked against the live table and read in dollars. Medians use titled PSA rows only: six CGC and BGS slabs were dropped from the grade 9 block and one played copy from the raw block.
• Pokemon.com, Mega Evolution Ascended Heroes product showcase, read September 29, 2026, for the February 20, 2026 launch and the contents of both Elite Trainer Boxes.
• PSA, grading service pricing, read September 29, 2026.
• Illustrator credit, HP, attack text, regulation mark, set code and copyright line read from the card face of MEP EN 031. Artist catalogue counts from Serebii's Bun Toujo index and the Limitless artist search, both read September 29, 2026.