Perfect Order Clefairy pop report: the gem rate belongs to the tier

Published October 31, 2026 · Pop figures refresh with every site build; the current pull is October 23, 2026

A PSA 10 of this Clefairy was worth $445.00 on May 1, 2026 and $90.15 on October 1. Five consecutive monthly readings have come in lower than the one before, and PriceCharting's raw column fell from $35.73 to $13.85 over the same stretch.

Nothing went wrong with the card. The Perfect Order Clefairy illustration rare pop report puts it at a 69.3 percent gem rate, which is a good number by any modern standard, and that is most of the problem.

Eleven illustration rares, and this one lands eighth

10,956 submissions, 7,596 Gem Mint 10s, 2,759 nines and 401 eights, with 200 copies finishing below that. PSA added 4,088 grades last period on a +7% thirty day trend. The card went on sale on March 27, 2026.

Perfect Order shipped exactly eleven illustration rares. Pooled across all of them, that tier returns 69.82 percent Gem Mint on 20,567 grades, and the eleven individual rates run from 66.91 percent on the Aurorus at 092 to 73.31 on the Probopass at 096. A band 6.4 points wide, holding every card in the group. Rank the eleven and Clefairy sits eighth. The other ten pool to 70.37 percent, which is a point better than the card this page is about.

So the gem rate is not telling you anything about Clefairy. The census size is.

This row holds 53.3 percent of every grade in its own rarity tier, and 6.4 times as many as the next illustration rare in line, the Dedenne at 093 on 1,707. It is also the most graded card in the whole set, ahead of the Meowth ex special illustration rare at 121 on 8,973. Submitters picked one card out of eleven that grade alike, and they were not picking on grading odds.

Elsewhere the set sorts the way a modern set usually does. Six special illustration rares pool 72.11 percent on 26,727 grades, eighteen ultra rares 62.82 percent, the base prints 40.48 and the reverse holos 34.74. Then the ladder breaks at the very top: Mega Zygarde ex at 124, the set's mega hyper rare and its scarcest pull, gems at 25.74 percent on 3,182 grades. Rarity and gradeability run opposite there, which the Charizard VSTAR promo census ran into from the other direction.

The same rarity gemmed at 20 percent three years ago

Hold the rarity still and walk it forward through the release calendar. Obsidian Flames, from 2023, put twelve illustration rares into circulation and they pool 20.42 percent on 85,986 grades. Mega Evolution, released September 26, 2025, pools 63.86 percent on 149,226. Ascended Heroes on January 30, 2026 reads 65.32 percent on 93,049. Perfect Order on March 27 reads 69.82 on 20,567. Chaos Rising, the set that followed it on May 22, reads 70.95 on 10,486.

That is a 50 point move in the same rarity slot in under three years, and the group identity holds at every step: Bulbapedia's own set descriptions name twelve, twenty two, thirty three, eleven and eleven illustration rares for those five expansions, which matches the dataset's row count for each one exactly. The tier being counted is the tier Bulbapedia means.

What actually changed is harder to pin down than the measurement is. Candidates run from the cut and the stock to the texture pass to simple submitter behavior on a cheaper card, and the data here cannot separate them. What it can say is the level the change happened at: whatever moved, it moved across a whole rarity at once rather than card by card. Seven special illustration rares out of 151 landed inside a 3.3 point band in 2023 on the same logic, and the Obsidian Flames Charizard ex finishes last in that era's version of this tier at a rate Perfect Order's worst card beats by more than 45 points.

Read in that order, 69.3 percent stops being a fact about a Clefairy and becomes a date stamp.

Cona Nitanda drew both halves, and the cheap half is the one people mail

The signature on the card face reads Illus. Cona Nitanda. The regular print of the same Clefairy at 030 carries Natsumi Yoshida instead, so the two prints in the set are two different drawings by two different people, and the illustration rare is the borderless one: Clefairy on its back in a mossy flowering grotto, pink cloud sky, a dark rock mass closing off the right edge. Bulbapedia records the drawing as half of a pair, forming a combined illustration with the Mega Clefable ex special illustration rare at 119, which Nitanda also signed. The English card first appeared in Japan as Nihil Zero 086/080.

Collectors who want the pair have to buy two cards, and the two cards are priced nothing alike. The Clefairy raw sits at $13.85 against a $90.15 ten, a 6.5 times step. Mega Clefable ex raw sits at $40.50 against a $103.50 ten, a 2.6 times step. Both read October 31, 2026.

Then look at what got sent in. The Mega Clefable ex half carries 3,908 grades at 77.10 percent, so it gems better, sells for more, and has been submitted 2.8 times less often than its partner. The multiple is the thing being chased, not the card and not the odds, which is a pattern the First Partner Bulbasaur census shows running at an even larger scale on a 2026 promo.

Where $59.99 lands against a $90 ten

Thirty PSA titled sales of the ten cleared between October 24 and October 31, 2026 at a $90.00 median. Twenty one PSA 9 sales across October 25 to 31 medianed $30.00, and twenty three PSA 8 sales from August 10 to October 28 medianed $19.51. All three drop the CGC, TAG and ACE rows that share the listing titles on this card, and there are a lot of them. PriceCharting's algorithmic PSA 10 column reads $90.15 against that $90.00 tape, which is as close as those two numbers ever get.

Those are gross figures. Take 15 percent off for fees and shipping and the ten hands back $76.50 against $73.84 of raw card plus fee, so a hit pays $2.66. Run the whole ladder at this census's own proportions and a submission returns about $60 on $73.84 spent, which is a loss near $13 a card. The gem rate that would actually clear the fee, with misses landing on the $30.00 nine, is roughly 95 percent. Of the 565 illustration rare rows in the data carrying 100 grades or more, the best one anywhere reads 82.86 percent.

PSA Standard was $59.99 at a $1,000 maximum insured value and 70 to 80 business days when psacard.com was read on October 31, 2026, with Priority at $79.99 and 50 to 60 days. Value remains paused. Four months of queue is the part worth weighing twice on a card whose ten has posted a lower price every month since May.

One number in the table is two days stale: it uses PriceCharting's ungraded column at $15.00 from the site's October 29 price refresh, against $13.85 read today. The margin moves by about a dollar and the conclusion does not.

The cheaper way in is to let somebody else eat the fee

Thirty sealed tens changed hands in the eight days to October 31 at a $90.00 median, every one of them paid for and waited out by a submitter who is not you. Buy from that tape rather than joining it. For the raw copies already in your binder, the honest reading is that they have been the falling side of this trade since May and a $59.99 fee will not turn that around. The pop report guide covers what the gem rate column is actually measuring before you lean on one, and every row quoted here keeps updating itself in the BetterPop gallery.

Sources

• Population figures: GemRate PSA population data, pull dated September 20, 2026; tier and set comparisons computed within that same snapshot.
• Set facts, card text, illustrators and the combined illustration note: Bulbapedia, Clefairy (Perfect Order 30) and Perfect Order (TCG), read October 31, 2026. Rarity counts for the comparison sets read the same day from the Mega Evolution, Ascended Heroes, Chaos Rising and Obsidian Flames expansion pages.
• Prices: PriceCharting, Clefairy #94 Pokemon Perfect Order, grade columns, monthly series and sold tape read October 31, 2026, filtered to PSA titled rows. Partner card figures from the Mega Clefable ex #119 page, same date.
• Grading fees and turnaround: PSA pricing, read October 31, 2026. Standard $59.99 at a $1,000 maximum insured value and 70 to 80 business days, Priority $79.99 at $1,500 and 50 to 60 days, Value paused.