Paldea Evolved Magikarp pop report: one in four comes back an 8

Published October 7, 2026 · Pop figures refresh with every site build; the current pull is October 1, 2026

PSA has sent back 4,002 Gem Mint copies of this Magikarp and 6,954 eights. The identical illustration, printed in Japan, has sent back 59,091 tens and 789 eights. At the October 1, 2026 pull the Paldea Evolved Magikarp pop report reads 4,002 tens from 26,090 submissions, a 15.3 percent gem rate, against 90.94 percent on 64,975 grades for card 080 out of Triplet Beat.

Same art. Same artist. Same year.

What 26,090 submissions returned

26,090 graded. 4,002 tens, 13,130 nines, 6,954 eights, 5 Authentic and 1,999 at PSA 7 or lower, with 373 more returned in the last reporting period on a 30 day trend of +6%.

Nineteen English Illustration Rares have passed 20,000 grades. This one gems worst of them, and it is not close: the next card up is the Obsidian Flames Ninetales at 21.91 percent, so Magikarp sits 6.57 points below a field of eighteen.

The number that explains it is not the one at the top. 26.65 percent of this census came back an 8, the largest eight band of those nineteen cards, and another 7.66 percent landed at a 7 or below. Roughly a third of every copy mailed in is coming back with something a grader can point at.

The Paldea Evolved Magikarp pop report has a Japanese twin

Triplet Beat reached Japanese shelves on March 10, 2023, and Paldea Evolved reached English ones on June 9. Shinji Kanda's Magikarp is in both, numbered 080 out of 073 in Japan and 203 out of 193 in English, and both card faces carry the same credit line. The only things that move between the two scans are the language and the set symbol.

The English print stops at an 8 twenty two times as often as the Japanese one, and falls below a 7 six times as often.

That shape matters, because the Mega Gengar ex census ran the same comparison on a 2026 card and found the entire gap parked at the 9 to 10 line, with both languages arriving equally undamaged. This card does not behave that way. Eights and sevens are not a measurement landing just outside the band; they are creasing, chipping, surface marks and print lines. Whatever is happening to these English copies is happening before anybody measures the centering.

Not the card, and not the artist

Paldea Evolved printed 36 Illustration Rares, and they have taken 102,693 grades between them for a pooled 17.69 percent. The tier runs from 12.16 percent on Maushold to 23.70 on Dudunsparce. Magikarp gems second worst of the 36, which makes it a low card in a low tier rather than a broken one.

So why does this fish own the record and not Maushold?

Volume. Magikarp holds 25.41 percent of every grade the tier has ever taken and has been submitted 2.60 times as often as the next card in line, the Tyranitar at 10,030. It is the only Illustration Rare from this expansion that anyone mailed in at scale, so it is the only one that clears the 20,000 grade bar where the record gets counted. The rest of the tier grades just as badly in private.

The same packs settle the artist question too. Paldea Evolved's 15 Special Illustration Rares have taken 57,474 grades at 47.70 percent, with an eight band of 6.71 percent against the Illustration Rare tier's 24.90. Two print tiers, one booster pack, one factory, and the eights run 3.7 times heavier on one of them.

305 of 306

Pair every Japanese Art Rare against the English Illustration Rare of the same card, keep only the names with exactly one row on each side and at least 500 grades on both, and 306 pairs survive. The Japanese print gems better in 305 of them. The median gap is 52.04 points, and the single exception is a Togekiss.

Magikarp's 75.60 point gap ranks 16th of the 306, and it carries 91,065 grades across the two prints against 24,062 for the next biggest pair in that top twenty. Nothing else this lopsided has been measured this heavily.

Two things keep this from being a story about Illustration Rares specifically. The gap turns up in every tier the two regions share: 40.10 points on the special illustration tier, 42.42 on ordinary base cards, 26.84 on ultra rares. And the Japanese side holds still while the English side wanders. Japanese Art Rares pooled 84.28 percent in 2023, 83.84 in 2024, 83.95 in 2025 and 90.23 in 2026, with the eight band never leaving a 0.68 to 2.87 percent window. Over those same years the English Illustration Rare tier ranged from 12.03 percent in the Scarlet and Violet base set to 63.86 in Mega Evolution.

A flat control line across 2.28 million grades is the useful part. If PSA had tightened or relaxed what it does to a textured full art card, both lines would have moved together. Only one of them moves, which puts the variable upstream of the grading room. A population count cannot say whether that is a press, a cutting tolerance, a packaging decision or a submitter in Osaka who screens harder before mailing. It can say the Japanese copies are not arriving damaged and the English ones are.

What a 15 percent gem rate is worth at $323 a card

One caveat sits on top of that table and it is a large one. PriceCharting began masking recent graded sold prices this autumn, so every eBay row in the PSA 7 through 10 tables now reports a placeholder, and this card is too young to have the auction house results that survive the mask. The grade figures above are PriceCharting's algorithmic estimates, not sales anybody can date. The raw column is real: 30 eBay sales between September 22 and October 7, 2026 cleared a $301.07 median while 30 TCGplayer Near Mint sales since July 28 cleared $379.39, and the $323.04 the table uses sits between those two layers.

Take the estimates at face value and the trade looks generous. Weighting each payout by the grades this census actually returns, and taking 15 percent off every sale for fees and shipping, a submission returns $752.86 against $383.03 of cost, with breakeven at a 2.26 percent gem rate against the 15.3 percent this card delivers. PSA's Standard tier runs $59.99 for an estimated 90 to 100 business days at a $1,000 maximum insured value, read live on October 7, 2026, and a $323 raw copy declares comfortably inside that cap.

The cushion is one number wide. Nearly the whole expected value is the $3,702.50 PSA 10 estimate, the single figure on this page nobody can currently check against a dated sale. The $18 margin on a PSA 9 is the honest picture of what the other 85 percent of outcomes pay: you get your money back and the grader keeps the fee.

Buy the finished slab or buy the other print

If you want this card in a 10, buy one already in a 10 rather than a gamble that lands on 8 more than a quarter of the time. If you want the odds, Kanda drew the same fish for Triplet Beat and that print gems nine times in ten. Submitting raw English copies only makes sense if you believe a PSA 10 estimate that PriceCharting will no longer show you the sales behind.

Before you send anything, pre screen for the failure this census actually punishes. The eights here are surface, not centering, and the art is a near black field of fine scratched linework inside a silver border, which is the worst possible backdrop for the hairline foil scuffs that pack and sleeve handling leaves behind. Check the dark areas against a window before you check the edges.

For what a count like this can and cannot tell you about the copy in your hand, start with our guide to reading a population report. To line this card up against its Japanese print with live numbers, open the BetterPop gallery, and for what happens when one Pokemon gets three prints and three different answers see the Base Set Gyarados census.

Sources

• PSA population via the GemRate pull of October 1, 2026; every figure in the data blocks above refreshes with each site build
• The Japanese Triplet Beat 080 census, the 36 card Illustration Rare tier and its 102,693 grades, the 15 Special Illustration Rares at 47.70 percent, the nineteen English Illustration Rares past 20,000 grades, the 306 matched pairs and their 52.04 point median gap, the per tier regional gaps, and the Japanese Art Rare rates by year were all computed from that pull
• PriceCharting: Magikarp #203, Pokemon Paldea Evolved, price table and dated sold tape read October 7, 2026. The raw median uses 30 eBay sales from September 22 to October 7 and 30 TCGplayer Near Mint sales from July 28 to October 7. Every graded row across all fifteen sold tables returned a masked placeholder, so no dated graded comp was available and the grade figures are the site's own estimates
• PSA pricing, read October 7, 2026, giving Standard at $59.99 for 90 to 100 business days at a $1,000 maximum insured value, Priority at $79.99, Express at $199.00, and the continuing pause on Value services
• Limitless TCG: Magikarp, Paldea Evolved 203 and Triplet Beat 80, read October 7, 2026, for the Illus. Shinji Kanda credit and the Japanese equivalent. The credit line, the 203/193 and 080/073 numbering and the 2023 copyright were read off scans of both card faces
• Serebii: Triplet Beat, read October 7, 2026, for the March 10, 2023 Japanese release date, and The Pokemon Company press materials for Paldea Evolved for the June 9, 2023 English release and the 36 Illustration Rare count, which matches the dataset row for row