Fossil Dragonite pop report: sixty tens, and none since 2024

Published October 19, 2026 · Pop figures refresh with every site build; the current pull is October 1, 2026

Wizards printed Dragonite four different ways in 1999. Three of those prints returned a Gem Mint 10 this year. The print collectors actually mail in last produced one on December 11, 2024. At the October 1, 2026 pull the Fossil Dragonite pop report reads 60 tens from 17,293 submissions, a gem rate of 0.35 percent.

PSA has opened 288 of these for every one it has called Gem Mint.

The Fossil Dragonite census is 17,293 deep and 60 wide

17,293 graded. 60 tens, 1,507 nines, 4,145 eights, and 11,563 copies finishing at a 7 or lower, which is 66.87 percent of the census. 387 joined last period against 300 the period before, so submissions are speeding up on a card that turned 27 on October 10.

Read the ladder from the bottom and the shape makes more sense. 226 copies have come back a PSA 1, 2,348 a 5, 3,479 a 6 and 3,916 a 7, before the census finally peaks on a PSA 8 at 4,145. Among everything that clears a 7, 72.6 percent stops at the 8 and goes no further.

Measured against its own set that is poor rather than merely vintage. Pool Fossil's fifteen unlimited holos past 2,000 grades and they return 1.09 percent across 130,219 grades. This card returns 0.35, three times worse, while carrying 10.3 percent of the set's unlimited grades by itself. Only two English cards past 15,000 submissions do worse: the Jungle Vaporeon at 0.21 percent and the Base Set 2 Charizard at 0.28. These figures count the unlimited holo alone, and what a population report actually counts explains why a census tracks submissions rather than surviving cards.

Four prints, and only one of them stopped

Dragonite appears in Fossil twice, as the holo at 4/62 and as a plain rare at 19/62, and Wizards ran both through a 1st Edition and an unlimited printing. All four sit in the census.

Read on October 19, 2026, the 1st Edition holo holds 236 tens from 8,835 grades, 2.67 percent, and PSA last gemmed it on August 11, 2026. The unlimited plain card holds 238 tens from 3,832 grades, 6.21 percent, last gemmed July 30, 2026. The 1st Edition plain card holds 533 tens from 4,132 grades, 12.90 percent, last gemmed July 1, 2026. Those three carry 1,007 tens between them on 16,799 grades, which is fewer submissions than the unlimited holo has absorbed on its own.

One print in four is doing most of the submitting and none of the gemming.

A last gem date is worth controlling rather than trusting, because a population column can sit still for reasons that have nothing to do with the card. This one moves. Across the dataset, 240 of the 368 cards dated 2001 or earlier that have passed 3,000 grades carry a last Gem Mint date in 2026. Inside Fossil the plain rares were gemming through the autumn: Geodude, Kabuto and Magmar all on October 1, Slowpoke and Krabby on September 29. The field is live. This row is not, and only Aerodactyl, waiting since September 7, 2024, has waited longer.

Why the foiled unlimited run specifically, when the foiled 1st Edition run still gems, is the part the census shows without settling. Ten of Fossil's fifteen unlimited holos last gemmed in 2025 or earlier while the plain rares kept going, which is the same split the Base Set commons show against their own holos. Put foil on a 1999 card and the top of the ladder narrows.

Wizards spent its last Starlight foil on this set

Fossil reached English shelves on October 10, 1999, 62 cards, the third expansion behind Base Set and Jungle. Bulbapedia records it as the final expansion to use the Starlight holofoil pattern, with Base Set 2 switching to Cosmos the year after. A few Fossil cards came off the line with Cosmos foil anyway, and PSA has graded 34 of them across fourteen of the fifteen holos. Not one is a ten. Four of them are this Dragonite.

Kagemaru Himeno illustrated it, credited on the card face, with Dragonite seated rather than in flight and the foil filling the window behind it.

One supply difference between these holos can be named exactly, and it settles less than it ought to. Fossil shipped two theme decks on release day, BodyGuard and LockDown, each carrying a single holo: Muk at 13/62 in the first, Lapras at 10/62 in the second. A deck copy never passed through a booster pack or a playground trade pile, so both ought to grade well. Muk is the best gemmer in the set at 3.40 percent. Lapras is the third worst at 0.37. Dragonite, which came out of packs only, sits at 0.35. Deck copies are a minority of either card's supply, so read that as a hint rather than a finding, but the hint points away from the channel and back at the foil.

Price the eight, because the eight is what turns up

The gem line carries a caveat that has to come before anybody acts on it. PriceCharting's PSA 10 column is an algorithmic estimate, and the sold tables on that same page have shown masked eBay prices since early October 2026. The most recent PSA 10 sale it still prints a price for is November 8, 2022, at $2,450. Seventeen more tens have traded since, the latest on June 27, 2026, at figures the page no longer shows. A $12,800 estimate sitting above a four year old printed result of $2,450 is a gap to respect rather than to bank.

The number that actually decides this is further down. A copy worth submitting is a Near Mint copy, and Near Mint is not the $154.99 market figure, which pools every scuffed card on the shelf. Six Near Mint sales ran through the raw tape between June 29 and September 27, 2026, at $159.99, $184.00, $185.00, $198.98, $199.98 and $219.98. The median is $191.99.

Call it $192, add Standard service at $59.99, and a submission costs about $252 before it ships. PriceCharting's PSA 8 estimate is $253.30, and the 8 is where 72.6 percent of everything clearing a 7 comes to rest. The likeliest decent outcome hands back what you paid, and then eBay takes its cut of that.

Standard caps declared value at $1,000 and quotes 90 to 100 business days, read live on October 19, 2026. That ceiling fits the grade this card returns and sits nowhere near the grade it is chased for, which is the trade in one line: the tier priced for the outcome you will get cannot insure the outcome you want.

Before you pay the fee

Turn the card over first. On Wizards era stock the reverse is where an off centre cut shows up earliest, and a clean face sitting on a 60/40 back is a PSA 8 you have paid $59.99 to have confirmed. After that, run a fingernail along the bottom border for the soft fray that comes off years in a binder page, the kind of thing dealers buying vintage collections by the box say they sort out before anything goes in a submission envelope.

A copy that survives both checks is still a 0.35 percent ticket into a grade PSA has not awarded this print since December 2024. Sell it raw into a Near Mint market that cleared $199.98 on September 27, or buy a graded 8 outright for roughly what a submission costs and skip the hundred day wait. Every figure quoted here is live in the BetterPop gallery, and populations this thin behave differently from ordinary scarcity.

Full Fossil pop report

Sources

• Population figures, last Gem Mint dates and trailing gem rates: GemRate PSA population tracking, pulled October 1, 2026. Set pooling, the four print comparison and the vintage last gem control computed across the full dataset on October 19, 2026.
• Set history, English release date, Starlight holofoil, theme deck lists and the illustrator credit: Bulbapedia, Fossil (TCG), Dragonite (Fossil 4), BodyGuard (TCG) and LockDown (TCG), read October 19, 2026.
• Prices, grade estimates and dated sold results: PriceCharting, Dragonite #4 Pokemon Fossil, read October 19, 2026.
• Grading fees and service tiers: psacard.com/pricing, read October 19, 2026. Value services paused, Standard $59.99 at a $1,000 maximum insured value, 90 to 100 business days.