Base Set Alakazam PSA 10 pop: the widest print gap in the set

Published October 14, 2026 · Pop figures refresh with every site build; the current pull is October 1, 2026

No card in Base Set separates its own printings the way this one does. At the October 1, 2026 pull the Base Set Alakazam PSA 10 pop reads 457 Gem Mint copies from 20,608 submissions, a 2.2 percent gem rate. Run the same count on the shadowless Alakazam and it drops to 33 tens from 4,569 grades, 0.72 percent.

Carry both rates past one decimal and that is a 3.07 times split on a single card. Ninety nine Base Set cards exist in both printings, and none of the other ninety eight splits that far.

Reading the Base Set Alakazam PSA 10 pop

20,608 graded. 457 tens, 3,696 nines, 5,144 eights, and 11,303 copies finishing at PSA 7 or lower, which is 54.85 percent of everything ever mailed in. PSA added 319 more last period on a thirty day trend of +16%.

Inside its own set the unlimited print is a good gemmer. Fifteen Base Set holos carry an unlimited version, and on October 14, 2026 Alakazam ranked fifth of the fifteen by gem rate, behind Poliwrath at 3.67 percent, Zapdos at 3.53, Nidoking at 2.32 and Ninetales at 2.24. Pool all fifteen unlimited prints together and they return 1.41 percent across 434,849 grades, so this card sits well above the line its own set draws. If a ratio like that needs unpacking first, start with how a population report is built.

The widest print gap in the set, taken apart

The shadowless column is where the number falls over. 4,569 submissions have produced 33 Gem Mint copies, and the 1st Edition print, which is rarer than both and came off the same early press run, returns 93 tens from 2,713 grades at 3.43 percent.

So the scarcest print grades best, the middle print grades worst, and the gap between the middle and the common one is wider here than on any other card in the set. Second place is Poliwrath at 2.66 times. Pooled across the fifteen holos the set's own gap is 1.59 times, which makes Alakazam close to double its set.

Two separate things have to go right for a copy to come back a 10, and on this card the shadowless print loses both of them. Reaching the top two grades at all is the first: 20.15 percent of unlimited submissions land on a 9 or a 10, against 10.70 percent of shadowless ones. Converting once you are there is the second: 11.00 percent of the unlimited copies that reached that pair finished as tens, against 6.75 percent of the shadowless ones. Alakazam leads all fifteen holos on the second figure and ties for the lead on the first.

Why the shadowless print arrives in worse shape across the whole set is settled, and the three print breakdown on Gyarados works through the census shape and the production sequence behind it. What is not settled is why Alakazam is the far end of it. Nothing documented separates these two prints of this card from the two prints of any other card on the sheet, and the honest reading is that one card had to be the outlier and this is the one that was.

Two comparisons bound the claim. Machamp has no shadowless print at all, because every retail copy of it carries the 1st Edition stamp, which is why the comparison runs across fifteen holos rather than sixteen. And the 2000 reprint does not rescue the card either: Base Set 2 Alakazam has taken 5,216 grades for 70 tens, 1.34 percent, tracking the pattern that runs through that whole set.

Ken Sugimori, and the Power that named a deck

The credit on the face reads Illus. Ken Sugimori, next to a 1999 Wizards copyright line and the 1/102 number. Stage 2, evolves from Kadabra, 80 HP, Psychic. The Pokemon Power is Damage Swap and it moves damage counters between your own Pokemon as often as you like; the attack underneath it, Confuse Ray, does 30. The species line calls it the Psi Pokemon at 4 feet 11 inches and 106 pounds, and the flavor box claims an intelligence quotient of 5000. English Base Set reached shelves on January 9, 1999.

Damage Swap also became the name of the deck built around it, pairing Alakazam with Chansey as a damage sponge and healing the pile off afterwards. That part is the hobby's own record of 1999 and 2000 tournament play rather than anything Wizards published, and it is held here on the strength of deck archives rather than a primary document.

One detail does bear on grading. Sugimori filled the holo window with a deep purple field, and surface scratches read loudly against dark foil and quietly against bright foil, which is part of why a card like this separates so cleanly into eights and nines once it is in a grader's hands.

The rung with a price, and the rung without one

PriceCharting values a PSA 10 of this card at $2,553.23, and not one PSA 10 sale on its own completed tape carries a readable number. Thirty rows sit in that table and every one of them reads $6, which is what PriceCharting now shows for recent graded eBay sales rather than what anybody paid. The 9 is the opposite case: a Fanatics result on October 11, 2026 cleared $395.00 against the algorithm's $353.48, two numbers arrived at independently that land within twelve percent of each other.

PSA's Standard tier ran $59.99 a card on psacard.com on October 14, 2026, against a $1,000 maximum insured value and an estimated 90 to 100 business days. Value services are still paused. Add a market copy at $67.51 and a submission costs $127.50 before postage.

Take 15 percent off each rung for marketplace fees. A 10 returns $2,170.25 and arrives 2.2 percent of the time, a 9 returns $335.75 at 17.93 percent, an 8 returns $95.40 at 24.96 percent, a 7 returns $59.04 at 18.11 percent, and the 36.77 percent finishing at 6 or lower is carried here at $40 gross, which is an assumption rather than a comp. Weighted together that is $155.35 back on $127.50 spent, a 21.8 percent gain.

Now look at what is holding it up. Strip the Gem Mint column out and every other rung together returns $107.22, twenty dollars short of the fee and the card. The ten has to cover that twenty dollars on its own, which takes a 0.93 percent gem rate, and this card hands back 2.2. The trade clears, at roughly two and a half times the gem rate it needs.

It clears on a number nobody can watch trade. Just under a third of that $155.35 comes from the Gem Mint row, and the Gem Mint row is the only rung on the card priced by an algorithm instead of by a sale. The 9 is the rung you can actually check, it pays $208 over the whole cost of the submission, and it arrives 17.93 percent of the time against the 10's 2.2.

The shadowless copy is the one to leave alone

Sellers list all three printings under one name, so the first job on this card is working out which of them is in front of you. A shadow band down the right edge of the art window means unlimited, and means this page. A black Edition 1 circle under the left of the art box means the 3.43 percent print, which costs $657.09 raw. Neither mark means shadowless.

That last one is the trap, and it is worth saying plainly. A shadowless Alakazam cost $126.60 raw on October 14, 2026, nearly double the unlimited copy, and it comes back Gem Mint less than a third as often. You are paying twice as much for a third of the odds. Buy it to own it, not to send it.

If the copy in front of you is unlimited and nothing jumps out at you under a lamp, the arithmetic above says send it, and plan on the nine, because the nine is the rung doing the work. If you would rather see where it sits against the rest of the set first, the BetterPop gallery sorts every Base Set row by print, and the same question runs through the cards whose tens stay scarce.

Sources

• GemRate PSA population data via the BetterPop dataset, October 1, 2026 row pull. The 3.07 times split, the ninety nine card comparison, the fifteen holo rankings, the pooled 434,849 / 85,157 / 45,341 grade totals and the two stage decomposition were computed across all 111,054 rows on October 14, 2026. Rows carry their own pull dates; the Base Set 2 Alakazam figures are from its September 19, 2026 row.
• PriceCharting, Alakazam #1 Pokemon Base Set and its shadowless and 1st Edition rows, price tables and completed sales tape all read October 14, 2026. Graded eBay rows on that tape are masked at $6, so the dated graded figures used here are auction house results: PSA 9 $395.00 (Fanatics, October 11, 2026), PSA 8 $112.24 (Goldin, August 17, 2026), PSA 7 $95.00 (Fanatics, October 7, 2026) and $43.92 (Goldin, August 17, 2026). No PSA 10 sale on the tape carries a readable price.
• PSA, grading service pricing, read October 14, 2026, for the Standard tier fee, maximum insured value and turnaround, and for the paused Value services.
• Illustrator credit, HP, Pokemon Power and attack text, species line, flavor text, card number and copyright line read from the card face of Base Set Alakazam 1/102 in the unlimited printing, verified against the shadowless scan for the shadow band and the absence of an Edition 1 stamp.
• Release date cross checked on October 14, 2026 against the TCGdex base1 set record, which gives January 9, 1999 and 102 cards. The Damage Swap deck archetype is community record from published 1999 and 2000 deck archives, not a Wizards document.