This is just my own speculation but I doubt there are many (or perhaps *any*) PSA 10s that were cracked and submitted to BGS. It’s possible the two BGS 10s were originally PSA 10s though, I’m not sure of their origin.
I’d imagine that anyone looking to crossover their PSA 10s sent them in with the PSA case. The only time it was worth attempting to cross over a PSA 10 was after the last BGS 10 sold, which would have been a $20k+ gamble to be cracking a PSA 10 at the time.
Overall, I can’t think of any practical way to quantify how inflated the pop is for any given card unfortunately.
I know the first Bgs 10 was part of an older guys ungraded collection he had sitting around that he just decided to grade. Not sure about the other though.
I’ve been monitoring the sales and prices of PSA 10 Charizards for years (a hobby of mine that goes back until at least 2009 when I originally purchased the card myself). I’ve definitely noticed a significant decline in the availability of the card within the last year or so. Right now on eBay, for example, there are only two listed - one for $150K in which the seller states that he is “not entertaining offers right now” and another listed for $41K in which the owner essentially states the card is misgraded and refuses to show the back of it (apparently it’s known that the back of the card is busted).
Here’s my theory for why the availability of the card has fallen off: The copies that were most likely to be sold off in a sudden price spike were already sold off within the recent past.
It wasn’t until a couple of months after Pokemon Go took off that we saw a huge spike in the prices of 1st edition base set. Prior to 2016, the price of the Charizard had been holding fairly steady between $5K and $6K. Then suddenly one sold for $12K and shortly thereafter several copies were sold in the $20K range. The price had nearly quadrupled within the span of a few months. I think it was when the card hit this level that there was a little bit of a selloff. $20K is a very significant amount of money and I can imagine there were some owners of the card who were concerned that there was a Pokemon Go bubble that they had to capitalize on before it popped. For a little while, we saw an increase in the availability of the card. But during this period the $20K price simply did not fall. Availability dried up. And then the price started ticking up toward the $30K mark in the following two years until we hit another spike with this new $40K going rate. But compared to when the card initially spiked at $20K, we haven’t seen a wave of Charizards hit the market this time around. If there were still people who own Charizards waiting to capitalize on a spike, one would think that now would be their opportunity. Rather, it would seem that just about everyone who owns the card at this point is in it for the long haul.
The total population of the card simply isn’t big enough to support the immense demand for it. It’s notable that the number of newly-graded Charizards added to the PSA 10 population has slowed down within the last year or so (even with record prices). The booster boxes have become too expensive to open. Random people finding mint copies in their old collections and re-graded PSA 9s will continue to add to the PSA 10 population over the years, but not even close to enough to satisfy demand.
My conclusion is that the price of the card will continue to go up.
Another thing to consider is the 1st edition base set box that just went for $60k. If the boxes keep selling for higher and higher the psa 10 cards will most likely follow the same trend.
I just went back and checked and apparently at this time last there were 115 PSA 10 Charizards. Now there are 118. So only 3 have been added to the registry in the last calendar year.
Barring pure coincidence, I think the most obvious conclusion to draw from this is that people stopped opening boxes / packs.
In the months following Pokemon Go, there was a period of time in which the Booster Boxes were undervalued compared to what individual cards were selling for. There was more money to be made by opening a box, grading every single card, and selling them all individually than there was to be made by selling a sealed box. A few sellers noticed this trend and took advantage of it.
After a while of lagging behind, the price of the unopened boxes finally got closer to the point they deserved to be given the value of the individual cards within them. Once the boxes crossed a certain threshold, it no longer made sense for sellers to open the boxes, especially since (1) opening a box is a huge risk, (2) every time a box is opened the individual cards become more common and the boxes become rarer, and (3) a box can always be opened later anyway.
The fact that only 3 Charizards were added to the registry during a year in which the card started at a price of near $25K and ended at $40K is a great sign for the future of the card.
