Pokemon Day 2026 Pikachu pop report: the stamp costs four points

Published October 23, 2026 · Pop figures refresh with every site build; the current pull is October 1, 2026

PSA has handed back more 9s on this Pikachu than every other grade on it combined. At the September 20, 2026 pull the Pokemon Day 2026 Pikachu pop report reads 2,165 Gem Mint 10s from 13,703 submissions, a 15.8 percent gem rate, with 8,674 copies stopped at a 9.

It is a common. It came in a box with a coin and three booster packs.

What does the Pokemon Day 2026 Pikachu pop report say?

13,703 graded. 2,165 tens, 8,674 nines, 2,451 eights, 5 Authentic and 408 at PSA 7 or lower, with 3,760 more returned in the last reporting period against a 30 day trend of +2%.

Eighteen English rows dated 2026 have passed 10,000 grades at this pull. Their median gem rate is 72.43 percent and they pool at 69.21. This Pikachu is second from the bottom of that group, and the only row under it is the N's Zekrom out of the Ascended Heroes Elite Trainer Box at 12.71 percent on 12,525 grades. Eleven of the eighteen are promos out of a sealed box rather than a pack, and nine of those eleven gem better than 72 percent, so the box alone is not the answer.

Its own expansion says the same thing from the other direction. English Temporal Forces carries 362 rows and 158,824 grades, pooling 38.75 percent, or 40.91 with this card removed, and every rarity tier in it lands between 33.64 and 44.54 percent. Thirty rows in the set have passed 1,000 grades. This is the worst of them.

Nothing about that is a damage story. 2.98 percent of the census came back a 7 or worse, so better than ninety seven copies in a hundred arrive at PSA in one piece and measure wrong anyway.

Pokemon ran the control itself, fourteen months early

Bulbapedia's release notes for card 051 record two Cosmos Holofoil printings. The first went into the Fall 2024 Collector Chest from November 15, 2024. The second went into the Pokemon Day 2026 Collection from January 30, 2026, and the only difference the entry names is that the later one also carries a Pokemon Day stamp.

Same artwork, same foil pattern, both shipped inside a sealed box rather than a booster pack. Here is what PSA did with them, with 95 percent intervals, at the September 20, 2026 pull.

The order is clean and the separation is not. Those two pack rows sit on three hundred grades apiece and their intervals swallow each other, so 572 submissions cannot settle the gap between them. What does survive is the top and the bottom. The stamped print's interval clears the unstamped one by more than a point and clears both pack prints outright, on 13,703 grades against 1,108.

Four points of gem rate, and a stamp is the only thing anyone has written down that changed.

Why a stamp would cost anything is the harder half. The foil speckle runs across the entire face of this card, over the yellow border and through the text box, so no edge on it is bare enough to absorb a scuff. The Phantasmal Flames Mega Charizard census landed on the same physical argument from a gold printing with no frame at all. The stamp sits over the bottom right of the illustration, crossing the art frame. A grader looks straight at both. Neither is proof, and a population count will not supply any.

The Pokemon Day stamp has been getting worse since 2024

Five English rows carry a modern Pokemon Day stamp. Sorted by how they graded at this pull, something moves with them.

As the gem rate falls the 8 column climbs, from under five percent on the 2024 and 2025 cards to 17.89 percent here and a third of the census on the Bulbasaur. The two 2026 rows are the bottom two. An 8 is not a centering grade the way a 9 usually is; it is PSA saying it found something on the card. Whatever started happening to this promo line, it started recently, and it is leaving marks.

Nor is this an old number dragged along by early submissions. Difference the August 13, 2026 pull against this one and 4,987 copies were graded in between, returning 739 tens for 14.82 percent. The envelopes arriving now are doing what the first ones did.

kodama drew a card that was never meant to shine

The credit on the face reads Illus. kodama, the card is a 70 HP Basic with Random Spark and a black dot rarity symbol, and it carries a 2024 copyright line, two years older than the collection it shipped in. It began life in the Japanese Cyber Judge expansion as 023/071 and reached English as 051/162 on ordinary matte stock. Everything above comes from a decision to put a holofoil treatment on a card drawn for matte printing, twice, the second time with a stamp on top.

Japan did the opposite with the same card. The M-P Promotional reprint handed out at McDonald's in August 2025 kept the text and commissioned fresh artwork from Yuu Nishida, and that census runs 87.53 percent on 338,112 grades. Different illustration and a different print origin, so not a matched pair, but the odds are better than five times over.

Sixty dollars of grading, aimed at a four dollar card

PSA's Standard tier runs $59.99 for an estimated 90 to 100 business days at a $1,000 maximum insured value, read off psacard.com/pricing on October 23, 2026, with Value services still paused. A best outcome near $172 declares nowhere near that cap, so Standard is the tier and anything faster widens the hole.

Take 15 percent off every sale for fees and shipping. A guaranteed ten returns $146.49 against roughly $64 of cost, which reads like a 129 percent gain and is the trap. Weight those payouts by the grades this census actually returns and the envelope settles at $37.64, a loss of $26.41 a card, or 41.2 percent. Breakeven needs 36.23 percent against a 15.8 percent lifetime rate and 14.82 over the trailing window, so the card has to grade better than twice as often as it does.

The miss is what makes it brutal. Twenty four titled PSA 9 sales between October 13 and October 22, 2026 cleared a $22.04 median and sixteen PSA 8 sales from October 4 to October 23 cleared $14.82, against thirty PSA 10 sales from October 4 to October 22 at $172.34. Eighty four copies in a hundred come back worth less than the fee that was paid to grade them.

Those are real sales, and they sit within two dollars of PriceCharting's algorithmic column at the 8, the 9 and the 10.

Skip the envelope

Buy the finished ten if you want one, because at $172 it asks you to risk nothing and the $113.00 low on that October tape is a real entry. If you own a raw copy, look at the border under the stamp before you think about mailing it, since that strip of foil is where this card's 8s are coming from.

For what a count this size can and cannot say about the copy in your hand, start with our guide to reading a population report. To line the four prints of card 051 up against each other with numbers that refresh, open the BetterPop gallery.

Sources

• PSA population via the GemRate pull of September 20, 2026; every figure in the data blocks above refreshes with each site build
• The four prints of card 051 and their 95 percent intervals, the five modern Pokemon Day stamped rows and their PSA 8 shares, the 18 English rows dated 2026 past 10,000 grades with their 72.43 percent median and 69.21 pooled rate, the Temporal Forces totals of 362 rows and 158,824 grades, the 33.64 to 44.54 percent tier band, and the thirty rows in the set past 1,000 grades were all computed from that one pull. The trailing figures come from differencing the August 13, 2026 pull against it, 4,987 grades and 739 tens
• Bulbapedia: Pikachu (Temporal Forces 51), read October 23, 2026, for the two Cosmos Holofoil printings and their November 15, 2024 and January 30, 2026 dates, the Cyber Judge 023/071 origin, and the Yuu Nishida McDonald's reprint of August 2025
• The Pokemon Company, Pokemon Day 2026 Collection, read October 23, 2026, for the January 30, 2026 launch and the contents of one stamped foil Pikachu, one coin and three booster packs
• PriceCharting: Pikachu [2026 Pokemon Day] #51, Pokemon Temporal Forces, price table and dated sold tape read October 23, 2026. Medians use titled PSA rows only, so CGC, BGS, TAG and ACE sales were dropped: PSA 10 is thirty sales from October 4 to October 22 ranging $113.00 to $249.95, PSA 9 is twenty four from October 13 to October 22, PSA 8 is sixteen from October 4 to October 23. Raw sales split by venue, forty eBay sales at a $5.77 median against thirty TCGplayer Near Mint sales at $3.33
• PSA pricing, read October 23, 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 Value pause
• The kodama credit, the 70 HP, the Random Spark attack, the black dot rarity symbol, the 2024 copyright line, the TEF EN 051/162 number, the foil speckle running across the border and text box, and the stamp placement over the bottom right of the illustration were read off a 1143 by 1600 scan of the card face. Card data cross checked against the TCGdex record for sv05-051, read October 23, 2026, which lists the Common rarity, the kodama credit and four variants including one holo with a cosmos foil and one holo carrying a Pokemon Day stamp