Moltres Zapdos Articuno GX pop report: the promo PSA cannot stop counting
PSA is grading a 2019 Elite Trainer Box promo faster than it is grading the unlimited Base Set Charizard. In the thirty day window ending at the August 13, 2026 pull, 1,932 copies of Moltres & Zapdos & Articuno GX SM210 came back from the graders, against 1,649 for the Charizard. Exactly one card printed before 2020 drew more submissions than this promo in that window, and it was a giveaway from a cinema lobby in 2000. The Moltres Zapdos Articuno GX pop report is the record of a card that has never had a quiet month.
The Moltres Zapdos Articuno GX pop report, and the three prints it beats
The card is SM210 in the SM Black Star Promo series, English print, the full art foil packed inside the Hidden Fates Elite Trainer Box. PSA has returned 42,586 Gem Mint 10s from 75,758 submissions, a gem rate of 56.2 percent. 26,437 came back 9. 4,371 came back 8, 2,362 landed at 7 or lower, and 2 came back Authentic with no grade.
That census is the interesting part, because the same Pokemon appear on three other English cards from the same release. Hidden Fates 44/68 has drawn 20,641 grades and gems at 65.01 percent. The full art at 66/68 has drawn 19,287 and gems at 50.19. The rainbow secret at 69/68 has drawn 26,531 and gems at 63.50. All three figures are from the August 13, 2026 pull.
Add those three together and you get 66,459 submissions. The promo on its own has 75,758.
So the version nobody could pull from a booster pack has been graded more often than every packed version combined, and it is not close. Its gem rate is the second worst of the four, which rules out the easy explanation that people submit it because it grades well.
Why the queue keeps filling with a 2019 promo
Supply is the first half. Pokemon.com's product page for the Hidden Fates Elite Trainer Box, launched September 20, 2019, lists the contents plainly: ten booster packs, 65 sleeves, 45 Energy cards, dice, markers, and "a full-art foil promo card featuring Moltres & Zapdos & Articuno-GX." One per box, guaranteed, no pull rate involved. Every box sold is a copy of this card in circulation.
The second half is that the boxes kept coming. Hidden Fates arrived on August 23, 2019 and sold out immediately, and retailers including TotalCards still list a separate SKU titled "Hidden Fates Elite Trainer Box (Reprint)" carrying the identical contents. Treat the shortage stories as retail and community reporting rather than anything the manufacturer published, but the reprint SKU itself is sitting on storefronts with the same promo inside it. A chase card with a print run that answered demand instead of ignoring it.
Both halves point the same direction. This card was never scarce, and the census keeps growing because there is still a stack of sealed boxes somewhere with an ungraded copy in each one. Compare that with the Celebrations ETB promo that gems once in nineteen tries, where submitters are chasing a cliff. Nobody here is chasing a cliff. They are working through inventory.
Three artists, and the one you cannot pull from a pack
Read the credit line at the bottom of the four English cards and they do not match. The 44/68 print reads Illus. Mitsuhiro Arita. The 66/68 full art and the 69/68 rainbow both read Illus. 5ban Graphics, the studio behind most of the computer rendered full arts of that era. The promo reads Illus. HYOGONOSUKE, and the artwork is nothing like the other three: the birds are rendered as a stained glass window, flat panels of color held in heavy black leading, more church transom than trading card.
That illustration exists on this card and nowhere else in the English run. The one version you could not open a pack to find is also the one that looks least like a Pokemon card.
HYOGONOSUKE debuted in the Pokemon TCG with a Jirachi in Team Up, the set immediately before Hidden Fates, and Bulbapedia credits them with 96 cards plus outside work on Pokemon Quest, Love Live! and Doraemon. Nothing published explains why the stained glass treatment went to the box promo rather than the set, so that one stays a question.
The nine is worth what the raw card is worth
PSA's Value tiers were still paused when their pricing page was read on August 30, 2026, so Regular at $79.99 is the way in, insured to $1,500 and quoted at 70 to 80 business days. Roughly four months between paying the fee and having something to sell.
| Grading math | Amount |
|---|---|
| Raw copy (as of August 30, 2026) | $151 |
| PSA grading, Regular service | $80 |
| PSA 10 sale (as of August 30, 2026, PriceCharting sold tape) | $417 |
| PSA 9 sale (as of August 30, 2026, PriceCharting sold tape) | $164 |
| Margin if it gems | +$187 |
| Margin at PSA 9 | -$67 |
The PSA 9 row is the one to sit with. Across the fifteen most recent sold rows on PriceCharting, read August 30, 2026, a 9 cleared a median $164.00 and an ungraded copy cleared $150.50. That is a difference of $13.50 for a slab that cost $79.99 and four months to obtain. 26,437 copies of this card are sitting in that grade, better than a third of everything ever submitted, and collectively they are worth close to what the same cards were worth loose in a sleeve.
Which makes this a ten or nothing card, and the odds are the whole trade. GemRate's trailing thirty day gem rate for SM210 was 53.0 percent on August 28, 2026, a few points under the 56.2 percent lifetime figure, and that trailing number is the one to plan against. Dock 15 percent off the payout for eBay fees and shipping a slab and breakeven lands near 42 percent. A 53 percent card clears that, with eleven points of room and no more.
The room has been shrinking. PriceCharting's PSA 10 figure peaked at $450.00 in June 2026 and read $422.32 on August 30, down 6.2 percent, while the ungraded price finished August at $159.50, within fifty cents of its own all time high. The payout is easing off and the input cost is not. Whether that is the market pricing in a census that grows by roughly two thousand a month, or just a summer, the sold tape cannot say.
Decide before the queue decides for you
If you own a sealed Hidden Fates Elite Trainer Box, the promo inside it is the cleanest copy you will ever handle, and a 53 percent shot with a $187 upside is a real bet worth taking. If you own a loose copy with any question over the centring or the black leading on that window, note that the 9 sells for $13.50 more than the raw card and costs $79.99 to reach, so sell it raw instead. Want one in a slab without the wait? A PSA 10 at $417 costs less than a raw copy plus a fee plus four months of finding out.
You can pull the current count on all four prints side by side in the BetterPop gallery, and if the grade columns above are not doing much for you yet, start with how a population report is put together. The shape here is worth knowing on sight, because it repeats: a huge nine column that has quietly stopped being worth grading for, which is also the story of the Prismatic Evolutions Umbreon.
Sources
- GemRate PSA population data via the BetterPop dataset, August 13, 2026 pull; trailing thirty day gem rate read August 28, 2026.
- PriceCharting, Moltres & Zapdos & Articuno GX #SM210, price table, sold tape and monthly history read August 30, 2026.
- Pokemon.com, Hidden Fates Elite Trainer Box product page, launch date and contents, read August 30, 2026.
- PSA, grading service pricing, read August 30, 2026.
- Illustrator credits read from the card faces of SM210, Hidden Fates 44/68 and 66/68.
- Bulbapedia, HYOGONOSUKE and Hidden Fates entries, read August 30, 2026.
Every number above is one row of 109,086. Sort the whole census yourself, free, no login.
Open the BetterPop gallery