Shrouded Fable Special Illustration Collection pop report: twelve points between two promos

Published September 24, 2026 · Pop figures refresh with every site build; the current pull is September 20, 2026

Two promo cards left the same product line on the same day in August 2024, and their censuses are still within five percent of each other. One of them gems twelve points better.

At the September 20, 2026 pull the Shrouded Fable Special Illustration Collection pop report puts Greninja ex #132, the full art promo in the SV Black Star Promo set, at 14,877 Gem Mint 10s from 38,083 submissions, a 39.1 percent gem rate. Kingdra ex #131, the promo that sat in the other box on the same shelf, holds 18,606 tens from 36,438 submissions and gems 51.1 percent.

The Shrouded Fable Special Illustration Collection pop report has two answers

38,083 graded. 14,877 tens, 19,285 nines, 3,179 eights, 4 Authentic and 738 copies at a PSA 7 or lower. PSA added 515 more in the last reporting period, against a 30 day trend of -12%.

Rank the fifteen SV Black Star Promo rows that have passed 20,000 English grades and Kingdra sits third at 51.1 percent, behind only the two Prismatic Evolutions figure box promos. Greninja sits seventh. Those fifteen rows run from 18.0 percent up to 60.2, so both cards land inside the ordinary range for a modern promo. Neither lands inside the same part of it.

Twelve points is a lot for one product line

The Pokemon Company's product page, read September 24, 2026, gives the collection an August 2, 2024 launch and lists what shipped: one full art foil promo featuring Kingdra ex or Greninja ex, two foil cards from that promo's evolution chain, five Shrouded Fable booster packs and a code card. Two boxes, one promo each, sold at Pokemon Center and wherever Pokemon TCG products are sold. Supply was set the same way for both, and the census agrees, since 38,083 submissions against 36,438 is a 4.5 percent difference.

Against a control that tight, twelve points is large in a specific way rather than in general. Group every English Black Star Promo row by the product label it shipped under and this pair ranks seventh widest of twenty one groups. Each group above it either mixes card types, the way the Vaporeon, Jolteon and Flareon VMAX Premium Collections each pair a V against a VMAX, or pools more than two cards under one label. Narrow the list to products that carried exactly two promos of the same card type and the next widest spread is 4.75 points, between the Mega Charizard X ex and the Oricorio ex that shared its box.

Tighter still is the Prismatic Evolutions Premium Figure Collection, which put both of its etched foil promos inside every unit. Espeon ex gems 60.24 percent, Umbreon ex 57.49, and 2.74 points is the whole distance. Those two travelled in one carton by construction, while the Greninja and the Kingdra travelled in two cartons of the same design.

The gap is not a centering gap

Greninja stops at a PSA 9 on 50.64 percent of submissions. Kingdra stops there on 42.55 percent. That much is what anyone would expect, since a 9 on a modern card usually means a measurement came back a fraction out.

The bottom of the scale is where these two separate in a way centering does not cover. Greninja lands at a PSA 8 or lower on 10.29 percent of its census against 6.38 percent for Kingdra, so the weaker card is not merely missing the ten. It is taking real damage 61 percent more often.

Hold the two faces up and there is an obvious suspect. Greninja's illustration is a dark collage, black bamboo and gold leaf over a near black Greninja, with the lower third of the card almost entirely unlit. Kingdra's is white foam and pale blue water under a yellow moon. Neither carries a coloured frame, so the print gives a grader no straight line to judge and the weight falls onto the foil. A dark field shows a hairline that a pale one swallows. A census cannot see a scratch, though, so that is where the grades point rather than a finding about any copy.

akagi's other Greninja gems better than this one

The credit lines read Illus. SIE NANAHARA on card 132 and Illus. akagi on card 131. TCGdex's illustrator catalogues, read September 24, 2026, hold 17 English cards under the first name and 40 under the second.

akagi also drew Greninja ex 214/167, the Special Illustration Rare in Twilight Masquerade, worth putting beside the promo because it is the same Pokemon dressed the same way. That card holds 10,007 Gem Mint 10s from 23,067 submissions, 43.4 percent, ahead of the promo by 4.3 points.

None of which makes an illustrator answerable for a gem rate. Art travels with a print run, a foil recipe and a box, and a population report cannot pull those apart. The faces do record one clean difference: Greninja carries a G regulation mark and 300 HP, Kingdra an H and 310, so the two promos in this product came out of different rotation blocks.

The nine pays seven dollars over a raw copy

PSA's Standard tier costs $59.99 for a $1,000 maximum insured value and an estimated 90 to 100 business days, read off psacard.com/pricing on September 24, 2026, with Priority at $79.99 and the Value tiers still paused. Where it turns unkind is the middle grade. A raw Greninja cleared a $92.48 median across 58 PriceCharting sales to September 22, 2026, and a titled PSA 9 cleared $100.00 across 28 sales to September 23. Seven dollars and fifty two cents separates the two, and 50.64 percent of this census sits on that side of the line.

The ten is where the money is, at a $427.92 median across 28 titled sales. Take 15 percent off a sale for fees and shipping and a submission needs a 24.2 percent gem rate to break even, which the lifetime 39.1 percent clears easily.

Run the same line on the Kingdra and something backwards falls out. Its breakeven is higher, 29.4 percent, because a Kingdra ten pays 3.6 times its own nine while a Greninja ten pays 4.3 times. Weight each card's payouts by the grades its census returns and Greninja hands back about 26 percent on cost against Kingdra's 32. Twelve points of gem rate shrink to six points of return, because the market already discounted the harder card.

Then use the rate that applies to a copy mailed tomorrow. Differencing the August 13 pull against this one, PSA returned 652 Greninjas and 122 of them were tens, an 18.71 percent window, against 753 Kingdras at 29.35 percent. At those rates a Greninja gives back roughly $134 on $152 of cost and a Kingdra roughly $144 on $145. Both stop working. Read that fall against its cohort before blaming either card, though: of the fifteen SV Black Star Promo rows past 20,000 grades, twelve came in under their lifetime rate across the same window and the median row gave up 15.87 points, a stretch that caught the Unova Victini promo as well. These two fell together, 20.35 points and 21.71, which leaves the distance between them intact.

Read the dark end of the card first

On a Greninja, put the lower third under a lamp and look across the foil rather than into it. That unlit stretch is where a hairline or a soft crease shows, and it is doing most of the work inside that 10.29 percent. On a Kingdra the edges matter more, because the white foam runs out to the border and takes handling as a grey line.

If the dark field reads clean, the lifetime numbers say send it and the last month's numbers say wait a quarter. If it does not, sell it near $92 and skip the queue. For what a census this size can and cannot tell you, start with our guide to what a pop report actually measures, and to pull these counts or any other promo's for yourself, 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 Kingdra ex #131 counts, the fifteen row SV Black Star Promo ranking, the twenty one group spread comparison, the Twilight Masquerade and Prismatic Evolutions figures and the August 13 window rates were computed from that pull and the August 13, 2026 pull held beside it
• The Pokemon Company's Shrouded Fable Special Illustration Collection page, read September 24, 2026, for the August 2, 2024 launch, the contents of each box and the distribution
• The Prismatic Evolutions Premium Figure Collection contents, both promos in one box, from the archived Pokemon Company page of January 16, 2026, since the live page renders empty
• PriceCharting: Greninja ex #132 and Kingdra ex #131, price tables and dated sold tape read September 24, 2026, filtered to titled PSA rows
• PSA pricing, read September 24, 2026, giving Standard at $59.99 for 90 to 100 business days and a $1,000 maximum insured value, Priority at $79.99, and the continuing Value pause
• The illustrator credits, regulation marks, HP and card numbers read off the faces of SVP 131, SVP 132 and TWM 214/167; the catalogue counts from TCGdex's illustrator listings, read September 24, 2026