Felt hat Pikachu pop report: the biggest census in Pokemon, still climbing

Published August 15, 2026 · Pop figures refresh with every site build; the current pull is August 13, 2026

The felt hat Pikachu census passed Base Set Charizard and kept going. 116,286 copies graded by PSA as of the August 13, 2026 pull, against 104,121 for the unlimited Base Set Charizard that had a 24 year head start. A museum giveaway from September 2023 is now the most graded Pokemon card on the census, and the strange part is that the price survived it.

What does the felt hat Pikachu pop report say?

116,286 graded. 49,787 PSA 10s, 54,648 PSA 9s, 6,052 PSA 8s, and just 80 Authentic labels. Ninety percent of every copy PSA has ever seen sits at 9 or 10, because virtually all of them traveled from factory sealed packaging straight into a submission box. The gem rate is 42.8 percent, the 9 is the modal grade, and the 30 day pop trend reads -23%, so the flood is slowing from its peak. Slowing, not stopping: 1,604 more grades landed in the last reporting period.

Where it started: a community snapshot from November 9, 2023 counted 2,126 total graded with a 53 percent gem rate. The lifetime rate has slid ten points since, the classic arc of early cherry picked submissions giving way to mass mailed everything.

How did a museum promo end up with a six figure census?

Because the "limited" card never stopped being distributed. It launched September 28, 2023 for the Van Gogh Museum's 50th anniversary, free to visitors who finished the museum's art hunt and bundled with Pokemon Center orders. Launch day collapsed into scalper crowds; The Pokemon Company apologized within 24 hours. On October 12 TPCi announced a re-offer with purchase minimums, and two days later the museum pulled the card from its own building entirely, citing visitor safety. In January 2024 it fired four employees, two for embezzling boxes of the cards, per Dutch reporting picked up by Euronews and Artnet. Then, in February 2024, a Dutch retail wave put the promo back in circulation at Intertoys, Media Markt, and half the toy shops in the Netherlands.

No official print run was ever announced. The census is the only supply number that exists, and it says: not scarce. What the pop report cannot count is demand, and a Pikachu painted after Van Gogh's 1887 self portrait, by Naoyo Kimura, a veteran with roughly 300 English cards to her name going back to the Neo era, turned out to have plenty.

The sealed copy problem

Raw trades above the PSA 9 today, an inversion you almost never see, because most ungraded copies still sit sealed in their original distribution packaging and carry that premium. Crack one to grade and you are betting on the gem: land the 9 and you paid $1,078 plus the fee for a $950 slab. The fee line is Express, with a disclosed catch: a gem outcome comps slightly above Express's $2,500 insured cap, so PSA can upcharge the winners.

The second act matters too. A June 2025 community snapshot had the PSA 10 around $851; PriceCharting reads $2,850 today. A tripling, on the most printed census in the hobby, during the same stretch its pop grew by tens of thousands. Population and price are supposed to pull opposite directions. Demand does not read the census.

Crack it, grade it, or leave it sealed?

Sealed copies are their own asset class; think hard before cracking. If yours is already open and clean, the modal outcome is a 9 that roughly refunds the raw price, with a 42.8 percent shot at the line that pays. If you are buying graded, the fake slab problem in the video above is real for exactly the reason the census is huge: volume attracts counterfeiters. Compare this census to the Pikachu Illustrator pop report, the other end of the same species: 56 graded copies, one perfect ten. Both are Pikachu promos. Only one of them is rare, and our guide to low pop Pokemon cards is about telling that difference. The whole census, this card and the other 109,085 rows, sorts live in the BetterPop gallery.

Sources

• PSA population via the GemRate pull of August 13, 2026; figures refresh with each site build
• PriceCharting: Pikachu with Grey Felt Hat #85, read August 15, 2026
• BBC News, October 17, 2023: the museum pulls the card; Euronews, January 26, 2024: the firings
• Gizmodo (October 12, 2023) on the re-offer; PokeGuardian (February 2, 2024) on the Dutch retail wave
• cllct via Yahoo Sports (July 3, 2025) on the card becoming PSA's most graded; @resellnews November 9, 2023 pop snapshot; Elite Fourum June 2025 price thread
• Artist credit verified on the card scan and the pokemontcg.io record; catalog count via tcgdex