Mega Charizard X ex pop report: nine months to a six figure census

Published August 19, 2026 · Pop figures refresh with every site build; the current pull is August 13, 2026

A card that went on sale in November 2025 is about to overtake the 1999 Base Set Charizard on the PSA census. As of the August 13, 2026 pull, PSA has graded 102,624 copies of Mega Charizard X ex, card 023 of the Mega Evolution Black Star Promos, against 104,121 for the unlimited Base Set 4/102. The gap is 1,497 cards.

Then look at the speed. The Mega Charizard X ex pop report shows 14,688 copies added in the last reporting period. The 1999 Charizard added 1,649 in the same window. Hold both rates steady and the 1,497 card gap closes in three or four days, so the order has probably already flipped. One of these cards has been on the market for nine months.

What the Mega Charizard X ex pop report counts

102,624 graded. 49,101 tens, 38,826 nines, 12,365 eights, 4 Authentic, and 2,328 sitting at PSA 7 or lower. That is a 47.8 percent gem rate, and the 30 day trend reads -11%.

Only five Pokemon cards in the 109,086 card dataset carry six figure censuses. A Japanese McDonald's Pikachu leads at 325,223. The felt hat Pikachu census holds 116,286 off a 2023 promo. Base Set Charizard has taken 104,121 since 1999, and Charizard ex from Scarlet and Violet 151 has taken 102,881 since 2023. That last one led the Mega by 257 grades at the pull, a gap the two cards' own rates close inside a day.

The shape of the failures matters more than the top line. Only 2,328 copies out of 102,624, or 2.27 percent, came back below an 8. Almost nothing reaches PSA damaged. These arrive clean, and slightly more than half of them still miss the ten.

One illustration, two print runs

Saboteri drew this Charizard once. It has been printed twice, and the two prints do not grade alike.

The Japanese original is 223/193 in the High Class Pack MEGA Dream ex, issued at the new Mega Attack Rare tier. It has taken 62,732 grades and returned 57,131 tens, a 91.07 percent rate at the same August 13, 2026 pull. Same illustrator, same 360 HP, same Inferno X attack for 90 damage a card. The English promo gems at 47.8 percent. Forty three points of daylight between two versions of one picture.

The layouts even swap languages: Latin capitals reading INFERNO X on the Japanese card, katakana on the English one. Everything else lines up, silver prismatic frame included.

That frame is the likeliest mechanism. There is no white border to hide behind on a full art, so the guillotine lands inside the artwork and a grader reads the surviving band of silver against itself. English promo sheets have a long reputation among people who submit in volume for cutting looser than Japanese ones, and this is the kind of card where a loose cut has nowhere to hide. That reputation is submitter folklore rather than a published tolerance, so read it as an inference drawn from two censuses.

The census does supply one clean control. Oricorio ex, card 024, came out of the same sealed box on the same day. It has taken 54,955 grades at 52.51 percent, 4.66 points better than the Charizard. Packaging cannot explain that, because the packaging was identical. What differs is which copies get mailed in: a ten on the Oricorio was worth $96.90 on August 19, 2026 against $181.25 for the Charizard, and the bigger number talks people into submitting a copy they are unsure about.

The box that made a hundred thousand of them

The Mega Charizard X ex Ultra-Premium Collection reached retail on November 14, 2025 at $119.99: two foil promos, 18 booster packs, 65 sleeves, a playmat, a deck box, a metal coin, and six dice. Every graded copy of card 023 came out of one of those boxes, because that is the only place it was ever sold.

Which makes the census a box counter. One promo per box means 102,624 submissions is a floor on how many of those boxes have been cut open and had the Charizard mailed away rather than sleeved.

Saboteri is credited on both faces. When PokeGuardian ran the reveal on September 3, 2025, this was the card the entire product was teased on.

The ten is down 66 percent since December

PriceCharting's history on this card is short and steep. A PSA 10 charted $413.41 that first month, peaked at $534.97 in December 2025, and read $181.25 on August 19, 2026. That is 66 percent off the high. A PSA 9 went $115.88 in November 2025 to $123.58 in December to $47.16 now. Raw copies halved, $78.75 down to $39.55.

The dated solds back the algorithm here, which is not always the case: a ten at $180.00 on August 19, a nine at $45.00 the same day, a raw copy at $35.63 on August 18.

The sealed box went the other way. PriceCharting listed the unopened Ultra-Premium Collection at $225.99 on August 19, 2026, nearly double the $119.99 it shipped at. Boxes appreciate, the cards inside them fall, and 14,688 more slabs every reporting period is the reason the two lines diverge.

A 70 percent breakeven against a 48 percent card

The gem outcome clears its costs and the nine does not, which is where most people stop reading. Frequency is the part that decides it, and frequency is not a price.

Take PriceCharting's own ladder on August 19, 2026: $181.25 for a ten, $47.16 for a nine, $35.00 for an eight, $28.00 at 7 and below, $39.55 raw. Weight those by the census this card actually produces, knock 15 percent off every payout for the platform fee and shipping a slab, and a submission returns about $93 against $119.54 of raw card plus PSA's Regular service at $79.99. Roughly $27 of loss per card, repeated.

The number that settles it is the breakeven. Holding that price ladder, this submission needs a gem rate near 70 percent to come out level. The census says 47.8 percent. You are 22 points short, and no amount of pre screening moves a population that has already counted 102,624 attempts.

Regular service also means 40 to 50 business days, checked on psacard.com on August 19, 2026, with Value services still paused. On a card whose ten has fallen every month since December, that queue is not neutral. It is two and a half months of price risk you pay $79.99 to take.

The honest move on this one

The finished slab is cheaper than the gamble. A PSA 10 read $181.25 on August 19, 2026, less than a raw copy plus the fee plus a flip you lose more often than you win, and somebody else already absorbed the 52 percent that missed. If you are holding a raw one, the sealed box it came in has been the better asset all year. For a census where the submission genuinely pays, the Base Set Charizard pop report shows what real scarcity does to a price, and our guide to which low pop cards are genuinely scarce covers how to tell that apart from a merely large number. Pull the raw counts on any of it yourself in BetterPop's card gallery.

Sources

• PSA population via the GemRate pull of August 13, 2026; every figure above refreshes with each site build
• The six figure census ranking, the Japanese MEGA Dream ex rate, the Oricorio ex rate, and the 109,086 card dataset total were computed from that same pull
• PriceCharting: Mega Charizard X EX #23, Pokemon Promo, prices, dated solds, and the monthly history read August 19, 2026; the Oricorio ex and sealed Ultra-Premium Collection figures read the same day
• PSA service levels and fees, read August 19, 2026, showing Value paused and Regular at $79.99
• The Saboteri credit, 360 HP, and the Inferno X attack read off the official Pokemon TCG card database entry for MEP 23 and off scans of both card faces, August 19, 2026
• Release date, price, and full box contents via Bulbapedia and PokeGuardian's September 3, 2025 reveal, both read August 19, 2026
• The Japanese card's set, number, rarity, and illustrator via TCG Collector, read August 19, 2026