Jungle Kangaskhan pop report: print order beats edition

Published November 1, 2026 · Pop figures refresh with every site build; the current pull is October 23, 2026

Two versions of this Kangaskhan came off the same unlimited press run in 1999. One of them gems at 0.28 percent. The other gems at 2.041 percent, and the only thing separating them is a small flower symbol under the right edge of the artwork that Wizards of the Coast forgot to print.

Same edition. Same foil. Same Mitsuhiro Arita drawing. Seven times the odds.

The Jungle Kangaskhan pop report has almost no top

10,482 submissions, 29 Gem Mint 10s, 969 nines, 2,475 eights, and 7,000 copies finishing at PSA 7 or lower, which is 66.78 percent of everything mailed in. PSA added 129 grades last period on a +24% thirty day trend. The last Gem Mint it awarded on this row is dated September 24, 2024.

The October 1, 2026 ladder shows where the card actually dies. It stacks up fine through the middle, peaks at 2,475 copies on the eighth rung, and then falls off a shelf: 969 nines, 29 tens. Of every hundred copies that reach a 9 or better, fewer than three carry the ten. Across the other fifteen unlimited Jungle holos, measured inside the same snapshot, that figure runs between 3.50 and 7.82 percent. This card sits under all fifteen, though 29 is a thin enough numerator that the Vaporeon's 3.50 is level with it rather than behind it.

Wizards forgot the set symbol and dated the sheets

Jungle shipped in English on June 16, 1999, two years and three months after the Japanese parent set. Somewhere in the changeover from the 1st Edition run to the unlimited run, a batch of holofoil sheets went to press without the Jungle flower.

PSA's own error guide describes it plainly: on a particular print run of the unlimited Jungle set, all 16 holofoil cards are missing the flower set symbol, located below the lower right corner of the card artwork. Bulbapedia's entry for this specific Kangaskhan goes a step further and says when. Early prints of the unlimited holofoil version were printed without the symbol, and the error was corrected later in the print run.

That sentence is the useful part. A missing symbol is not a condition grade or a rarity tier. It is a position in the press queue, stamped onto the card and still readable twenty seven years later.

The misprint grades like a 1st Edition copy

Line the three English prints of this card up by press order and the gem rates sort themselves. The 1st Edition holo reads 1.977 percent on 3,541 grades. The early unlimited holo, the one missing its symbol, reads 2.041 percent on 1,127. The corrected unlimited holo, the one almost everybody owns, reads 0.28 percent on 10,482.

The error print beats the 1st Edition print on this card. Not by much, and 23 tens is a thin numerator, so treat that particular ordering as a coin flip rather than a finding.

What is not a coin flip is the set. All sixteen Jungle holos gem better without the symbol than with it, sixteen for sixteen, and the pooled figures are 2.323 percent across 21,349 no symbol grades against 0.798 percent across 109,500 corrected ones. The 1st Edition rows pool at 2.709 percent across 62,824. Press order explains that ladder; edition does not, because the early unlimited sheets sit beside the 1st Edition sheets and nowhere near the sheets that followed them. Kangaskhan runs the widest gap of the sixteen at 7.4 times, ahead of the Vaporeon at the bottom of the same set at 5.5 and Snorlax at 4.9.

The obvious objection is that nobody submits a no symbol copy unless it already looks clean. The ladders argue otherwise. Pooled across the set, 24.9 percent of no symbol grades finish at a 6 or lower against 29.1 percent for 1st Edition, and the no symbol conversion from 9 to 10 is 9.42 percent against 1st Edition's 10.73. Owners cherry picking their best copies would push both numbers past 1st Edition, not land them beside it. On Kangaskhan the two early prints are nearly the same card: 25.2 and 26.2 percent finishing at a 6 or lower, 8.21 and 8.11 percent converting the 9 to a 10. The corrected print reads 45.6 and 2.91.

Base Set Alakazam separates its printings more sharply than anything else in its own set, and the reading there was about which print you hold. Jungle says the printings are standing in for something cruder, which is how far into the run the sheet was cut.

Mitsuhiro Arita, and a 90 HP Basic that draws

Arita signed the artwork, a mother Kangaskhan standing over a baby that is mostly pouch, and the Pokedex line printed on the card does the rest: the infant rarely ventures out of its mother's protective pouch until it is three years old. Fetch draws a card for one Colorless energy. Comet Punch flips four coins for 20 damage each, which in 1999 was how you lost a game slowly.

The same drawing went to press in four places, and the foil is the variable that keeps turning up. The Japanese holo from March 5, 1997 reads 12.020 percent on 2,579 grades. English Jungle printed Arita's art twice, holo at 5/64 and flat at 21/64, and the flat copy reads 12.121 percent on 594. Base Set 2 reprinted it flat again at 26/130, where it reads 24.031 percent on 258. The only print of this card that cannot gem is the one with a foil window on it.

Only one rung clears the fee

Prices here are PSA titled eBay sales only, read November 1, 2026, with the CGC, BGS and TAG rows dropped because PriceCharting's grade columns pool graders together and read low. A PSA 7 medianed $38.58 across 17 sales between September 12 and October 26. A PSA 8 medianed $70.00 across 13 between September 26 and October 28. A PSA 9 medianed $147.00 across 14 between July 21 and October 30.

Against a $18.98 raw copy and $59.99 of Standard service, $78.97 goes out the door and roughly $93 has to come back to break even after selling costs. Only the 9 and the 10 clear that bar, and together they are 9.59 percent of the census. Weight every rung by how often it actually happens and a submission returns about $54, so the average mailing loses around $25. The ten is worth a fortune and contributes $14 of that $54, because 29 out of 10,404 is not a plan.

The ten did move, though. Seven PSA 10 sales between December 2020 and November 2025 ran $678.00 to $1,275.00. The four since have cleared $5,352.05 on April 4, $5,000.00 on June 26, $4,193.25 on August 27 and $7,000.00 on October 25, 2026. Five of the eleven PSA 10 sales on record put the population count in the listing title, and they are the five most recent. Buyers are paying for the pop number itself. Standard service also insures to $1,000, so the outcome everyone is chasing is the one that tier does not cover.

Check the corner under the artwork before you pay

If you own a corrected copy, the arithmetic says leave it alone, and the guide to low pop Pokemon cards covers why a 0.28 percent rate and a cheap raw price travel together. If you are buying one to grade, buy the error. PriceCharting's ungraded column reads $8.75 for the corrected print and $24.97 for the no symbol print, so about sixteen dollars of extra cost buys seven times the gem odds. Before you pay either number, look under the right edge of the artwork for the flower. Both rows keep updating themselves in the BetterPop gallery.

Full Jungle pop report

Sources

• Population figures: GemRate PSA population data, pull dated October 1, 2026; full grade ladders and the September 24, 2024 last Gem Mint date from the October 1, 2026 snapshot.
• The no symbol error, affected cards and its location on the card: PSA, Pokemon error guide, read November 1, 2026.
• Press order of the error, card text, illustrator and set dates: Bulbapedia, Kangaskhan (Jungle 5) and Bulbapedia, Jungle (TCG), read November 1, 2026.
• Prices: PriceCharting, Kangaskhan #5 Pokemon Jungle and the no symbol product page, graded and raw sold tape read November 1, 2026, filtered to PSA titled rows.
• Grading fees: PSA grading pricing, read November 1, 2026. Standard $59.99 at a $1,000 maximum insured value, quoted at 70 to 80 business days.