Ascended Heroes Psyduck pop report: one gem rate, two problems

Published November 6, 2026 · Pop figures refresh with every site build; the current pull is October 23, 2026

Psyduck 226/217 comes back a Gem Mint 10 61.4 percent of the time. Two separate things hold that number down, and only one of them belongs to the Psyduck.

The Ascended Heroes Psyduck illustration rare pop report carries a scale surprise too. Mega Evolution Ascended Heroes puts 514 gradeable rows in the dataset, and exactly two of them have been mailed to PSA more often than this card.

The Ascended Heroes Psyduck illustration rare pop report, and the two rows above it

19,035 submissions, 11,681 Gem Mint 10s, 5,969 nines and 810 eights, with 573 copies landing below that. PSA added 5,092 grades last period on a +5% thirty day trend. The English set went on sale January 30, 2026.

Bulbapedia's expansion page counts 33 illustration rare Pokemon in Ascended Heroes, 22 special illustration rares and seven Mega attack rares, and the dataset carries exactly 33, 22 and seven rows at those rarities, so every group compared below is one the set actually printed.

This Psyduck holds 20.46 percent of all 93,049 grades in its 33 card tier, and 2.51 times the census of Team Rocket's Mimikyu at 238 behind it. Only the Mega Gengar ex at 269 on 27,148 grades and the Mega Dragonite ex at 271 on 20,711 sit above it, both Mega attack rares. Every special illustration rare trails it, the Mega Gengar ex at 284 included, on 15,334.

So the card the set did not build as a chase outdrew the chases. Why does it grade the way it does?

The damage belongs to the rarity, not to the card

A gem rate leaks in two different places. A copy can arrive beaten up enough to land below an 8, or it can arrive clean and still stop at a 9. Split those apart and they turn out to have different owners.

On the damage side the rarities separate hard. Pooled across the whole English set inside this snapshot, the 22 special illustration rares put 0.77 percent of 109,625 grades below an 8, and the seven Mega attack rares put 0.63 percent of 67,952 down there. The 33 illustration rares put 2.39 percent of 93,049. Same packs, same press run, same ten months of handling, and roughly three times the damage rate.

Psyduck reads 3.01 percent, a little worse than even its own tier. Erika's Tangela at 218 reads 2.57 and Team Rocket's Mimikyu at 238 reads 3.78, so the three largest illustration rare censuses in the set all sit in a band no special illustration rare comes near.

Why that gap exists is harder to pin down than the gap itself. Illustration rares fall out of packs far more often, so more of them get sleeved late, shuffled into a binder, or mailed in by the handful rather than treated as the hit of the box. Whether the difference lives in how the cards are made or in who sends them, this dataset cannot separate. It can say the gap is large, consistent, and shaped like a rarity tier rather than like a card. The Perfect Order Clefairy census found something similar about this tier, measured across five sets.

The nines are the card's own doing

The second leak moves on its own. Of every Psyduck that came back either a 9 or a 10, 66.18 percent came back the 10. Its own tier converts at 69.55 percent across all 33 rows, and Erika's Tangela, same set and same rarity, converts at 72.86 on 7,475 grades.

Volume is the obvious suspect, and the data declines to convict it. Rank all 33 illustration rares by grades taken, rank them again by gem rate, and the two orderings relate at a Spearman rho of minus 0.206. Drop Psyduck and it moves to minus 0.139. Keep only the 28 rows past 1,000 grades and it reads minus 0.187. Inside this tier, how often a card gets submitted says almost nothing about how it comes back.

An awkward fact sits on top of all this. Because the illustration rares convert better at the 9 than the special illustration rares do, 69.55 percent against 66.08, the cheaper tier finishes with the higher overall gem rate, 65.32 against 63.44, while taking three times the damage. The two leaks pull in opposite directions, which is the argument for never reading a single gem rate as a verdict on a card.

REND drew it, and Japan opened it first

REND signed the artwork. Bulbapedia files the card under its original text, the MEP Black Star Promo at 007 that Jiro Sasumo drew, and that entry carries the supply history: the 226/217 print is a Full Art illustration rare of new REND art, while the regular 039/217 keeps Sasumo's promo picture. Both originate in the Japanese MEGA Dream ex subset, where this card is Art Rare 199/193.

REND took the Grand Prize at the 2022 Pokemon Trading Card Game Illustration Contest with an Arcanine, and told that contest's own interview they had been drawing since childhood and learned illustration at school. Their first regular set card was the Paldean Fates Pawmi, which was also a 226.

That Japanese Art Rare is in the data too, at 43,540 grades and 69.09 percent against this print's 61.4 percent. The Ascended Heroes Mega Gengar ex census measured a 21 point version of that same gap inside this set. At 7.72 points, the Psyduck sits at the narrow end of it.

What sixty dollars buys at these odds

Thirty PSA titled sales of the 10 cleared between November 2 and November 6, 2026 at a $181.25 median, counted after the CGC, BGS and 2025 Mega Dream rows mixed into the same listing titles came out. Twenty seven PSA 9 sales medianed $62.00 and eighteen PSA 8 sales medianed $42.84 over the four weeks to November 6. PriceCharting's own grade columns read $179.05, $61.50 and $42.69 against that tape.

Run the full ladder at those prices. 61.4 percent tens, 31.36 percent nines, 4.26 percent eights and 3.01 percent below an 8 returns $133.85 of expected card against $103.13 of Near Mint copy plus fee. That is a gain near $31, falling to about $11 once a 15 percent selling fee comes off. Break even would need 34.5 percent gems gross, or 49.8 percent after fees, with misses landing on the $62.00 nine. This card runs 61.4 percent, so it clears, which is more than most of its tier manages.

The queue is what argues back. PSA Standard was $59.99 at a $1,000 maximum insured value and 70 to 80 business days when psacard.com was read on November 6, 2026, with Priority at $79.99 and 50 to 60 days and Value still paused at $39.99. Across the months this census was filling, Near Mint copies went from $104.00 on June 17 to $39.95 on November 4, a 61.6 percent slide on the TCGplayer tape. Eighty business days is a long time to hold something falling that fast, and the thin margin above is the first thing it eats.

One figure in the table runs ahead of the prose. It takes PriceCharting's ungraded column at $45.90 from the site's November 5 price pull, while a direct read of that column on November 6 returned $41.24 and the last ten Near Mint sales medianed $43.14. A cheaper raw copy widens the margin slightly and leaves the conclusion alone.

Where that leaves your copy

Submitting this one does pay on the numbers, on an edge thin enough that a falling raw tape and eighty business days can both get at it. Buying instead skips that: thirty finished tens changed hands in the five days to November 6 at a $181.25 median, no queue attached. If you are grading anyway, sort your copies against the 9 rather than the 8, because this print reaches the 10 less often than its own tier does, and a card that merely looks clean is the one that returns a 9 and gives back $44 against the table above. The broad pale cloud bank across the top of the art is the flattest area on the card and the easiest place to catch a surface mark first. What the numbers in a pop report actually mean covers the rest, and every row quoted here stays live in BetterPop's card browser.

Sources

• Population figures: GemRate PSA population data, pull dated October 1, 2026; the tier rates, the damage and conversion splits, the rank correlations, the set shares and the Japanese comparison were all computed inside that same snapshot.
• Set facts, rarity counts, illustrators and Japanese print: Bulbapedia, Ascended Heroes (TCG), Psyduck (MEP Promo 7) and REND, all read November 6, 2026.
• Illustration contest result and the illustrator's own words: Interview of the Winners of the 2022 Pokemon Trading Card Game Illustration Contest, read November 6, 2026.
• Prices: PriceCharting, Psyduck #226 Pokemon Ascended Heroes, grade columns and sold tape read November 6, 2026 and filtered to PSA titled rows.
• Grading fees and turnaround: PSA pricing, read November 6, 2026. Standard $59.99 at a $1,000 maximum insured value and 70 to 80 business days, Priority $79.99 at $1,500 and 50 to 60 days, Value paused at $39.99.