Neo Genesis Lugia pop report: the ten PSA stopped awarding

Published October 22, 2026 · Pop figures refresh with every site build; the current pull is October 1, 2026

In December 2017 PSA published a count of its own. Writing up the Neo Genesis 1st Edition set for its Set Registry, it put the Lugia at 389 submissions and 32 Gem Mint 10s, better than one ten in every twelve. That same row has since taken 6,801 more submissions and returned thirteen more tens, a rate of 0.19 percent.

The unlimited print is what this Neo Genesis Lugia pop report covers, and it is harsher still: 12,544 submissions, 15 tens. Of the 303 English rows in the dataset past 12,000 grades, none gems worse. The unlimited Jungle Vaporeon is next at 0.21 percent, and it keeps the record past 15,000 grades only because it has taken 16,783 submissions to Lugia's 12,544.

Fifteen tens, and the Neo Genesis Lugia pop report has not moved since 2022

12,544 graded. 15 tens, 495 nines, 2,078 eights, and 9,944 copies finishing at PSA 7 or lower, which is 79.27 percent of everything ever sent in. PSA added 254 more last period on a thirty day trend of -5%.

The commonest verdict is a PSA 7 at 2,658 copies, with a PSA 6 a hundred and twenty three behind it. Look at the clean end instead and the shape gets specific: of the 2,588 copies that cleared a 7, four out of five stopped at the 8. This card does not fail at the bottom any harder than its neighbours. It fails at the top.

Then there is a date. GemRate records the last Gem Mint 10 on this row as August 2, 2022. Four years and change. That field is not stuck, and it is worth proving rather than asserting: of the 330 dataset rows dated 1998 to 2001 with 3,000 grades or more, 202 carry a 2026 date in it. Inside Neo Genesis, ten of the nineteen unlimited holos gemmed in 2025 or 2026, Bellossom as recently as September 26. The Lugia's August 2022 is the oldest dated value in the set.

The 1st Edition print stopped two days earlier, on July 31, 2022. Both printings of one card, done gemming inside the same week, and nothing since.

The 1st Edition gap is everywhere, so it explains nothing here

The obvious move is to blame the unlimited print. The 1st Edition Lugia gems at 0.63 percent on 7,190 grades, five times better, so the two prints clearly behave differently.

They behave differently everywhere, though. Across ten English Wizards sets, 1st Edition holos gem between 2.1 and 4.4 times better than their unlimited twins, and it holds on every single paired holo in all ten, Base Set and Fossil and Jungle and Team Rocket included. Neo Genesis sits mid table at 3.34. Whatever this is, the set did not invent it.

Inside Neo Genesis the gap is also foil specific. The nineteen unlimited holos pool to 1.01 percent against 3.37 percent for the 1st Edition holos, while the ninety two paired non holos pool to 17.84 and 20.87, a difference of 1.17 times and not much of a story. Same stamp, same packs, same era of handling, and the gap all but vanishes once the holofoil window does. The Japanese prints of the period are flatter still, running 1.04 to 1.34 times across eight sets.

So the separation lives on the foil, not on the little black circle.

Yoshida gave the grader almost nothing to work with

English Neo Genesis landed on December 16, 2000, the first set to carry Generation II and the first with Darkness and Metal energy. Holos ran roughly one in three packs, eleven cards a pack, thirty six packs a box. The first nineteen cards in the set are the holographic ones, and Lugia is number nine.

Hironobu Yoshida drew it. His illustration puts a white Lugia in the middle of a dark speckled foil field and leaves the rest of the window open. Zack Browning, who built the number one Neo Genesis 1st Edition set on the PSA Set Registry, described it to PSA in exactly those terms: the card "almost looks like a Pokemon that's just stuck up there with a lot of holofoil around it." Of the set's other mostly foil card, the Metal Energy, he said the holo "is always scratched in some way."

That is the mechanism, and it is a boring one. A big uninterrupted foil field is a big uninterrupted surface for factory scratch, binder scuff and press noise to land on, with no artwork detail to hide in. The card reaches the 8 comfortably and then runs out of road.

By gem rate the hardest unlimited card in Neo Genesis is not the Lugia at all. It is Typhlosion 17/111, at four tens from 4,329 grades, and PSA's own article called that nine years ago: Scott Pratte named #17 "hands down the most difficult card in the set to grade" and blamed poor left to right centering. The dataset agrees with him. The Lugia is simply the hard card that people actually want, which is why its census is nearly three times the size of any other holo in the set.

Five hundred and thirty dollars to find out

Read the PSA 10 row as fiction. Fifteen copies exist, none has been awarded since 2022, and PriceCharting's graded sold tape masks recent eBay results, so $32,100 is an algorithm extrapolating from almost nothing. The auction house rows in the same tape are real, and they are the useful ones: a PSA 7 cleared $900.00 at Fanatics on October 6, 2026, within thirty dollars of the estimate for that grade. Three CGC 9s cleared $1,929.00, $1,850.00 and $1,600.00 between September 24 and October 14. PriceCharting's Grade 9 column pools every grader, so those three results are already inside the $3,065.20 it publishes, and it still sits roughly a thousand dollars above all of them. Treat that row as a ceiling, not a quote.

Weight every grade by how often this card actually lands there and the submission survives better than the gem rate suggests, for a reason that has nothing to do with the ten. Low grades hold their money here. A PSA 4 cleared $519.72 at Goldin on October 5 and a PSA 5 cleared $400.00 at Fanatics on October 10, against raw copies whose last twenty two eBay sales ran a $500.00 median. A miss is a lateral move rather than a loss, and that, not the one in eight hundred shot at the top, is what makes this worth sending.

Priority at $79.99 insures to $1,500, which covers the 8 that one submission in six returns. It does not cover a 9. Express buys a $2,500 ceiling for $199.00 and seventy fewer business days, which on a four percent chance at a three thousand dollar card is a real calculation rather than a formality.

Buy the eight, or buy the one you can already see is clean

If the goal is a slab in a binder, the PSA 8 is the card. It is a sixth of the census, it carries a $1,337.50 Grade 8 value across graders, and it is the grade this printing was always going to hand you. Chasing the ten means betting that PSA will award one in a year it has not awarded one in four.

If the goal is to submit, screen the foil before the corners, the reverse of the usual vintage order, because the open window is where this card loses its grade. Check it under flat light across the whole surface rather than at an angle, since an angled look flatters scratch. Populations this thin behave differently from ordinary scarcity, and the Fossil Dragonite census is the closest twin for a famous card that simply stopped gemming. Every row quoted here is live in the BetterPop gallery.

Full Neo Genesis pop report

Sources

• Population figures: GemRate PSA population tracking, pulled October 1, 2026. Comparative figures across prints, sets and the full English dataset computed on October 22, 2026.
• The 2017 count, the Browning and Pratte quotes, pack structure and set release: PSA Set Registry, "Collecting the 2000 Pokemon Neo Genesis 1st Edition Set" by Kevin Glew, published December 19, 2017, read October 22, 2026.
• Set history and card text: Bulbapedia, Neo Genesis (TCG) and Lugia (Neo Genesis 9), read October 22, 2026. Illustrator credit confirmed off the card face and TCGdex.
• Prices, grade estimates and dated auction house results: PriceCharting, Lugia #9 Pokemon Neo Genesis, read October 22, 2026.
• Grading fees and service ceilings: psacard.com, read October 22, 2026. Value services paused, Priority $79.99 at a $1,500 maximum insured value and 70 to 80 business days.