Efour Weekly — May 24–31, 2026
By the numbers
- New topics: 51
- New posts: 1,269
- Active users (by likes): @smpratte (160), @Dyl (147), @gengarbrigade (142)
- Most active category: collecting / market (near-even split)
- Standout stat: PSA disclosed a 10-million-card backlog midweek — the single number that touched nearly every conversation on the forum
Ten Million Reasons to Panic (Or Not)
I’m here on da scene and da number everyone’s talkin’ about is ten million — as in, the cards currently sitting in PSA’s queue. The grading turnaround thread that’s been building since mid-May finally hit critical mass when @kookiedowh dropped a link to PSA’s official service-level update, and the forum responded in character: one half panicking, the other half shrugging. @fourthstartcg was among the more measured voices, noting the ingredients are all there for a repeat of the 2020 middleman disaster — bulk minimums, a hot market, and PSA potentially shutting down the submission tiers that middlemen depend on. @Bodega pointed a finger directly at the mystery-box ecosystem, arguing the gambling outfits need floors even more than hits, and are hoovering up bulk submissions to keep their products viable.
Not everyone was stressed. @bash2112 offered what might be the week’s most grounded take: “What’s a few months to someone who loves this hobby and has been around it since they were a kid.” CGC quietly raised their own turnaround times to 120 days for bulk and 65 for economy — barely mentioned, easily missed. @smpratte logged on to report that PSA’s card-entry search was taking over a minute per card to load, punctuated only by a skull emoji. The infrastructure is straining. The hobby is not slowing down.
The Backdoor Set Nobody Was Supposed to See
The collectorscache Art Academy listing landed Monday morning and quietly became the most substantive market conversation of the week. @Dyl flagged it immediately: a freshly graded complete English Art Academy set, no PSA 9s or 10s in the lot, almost certainly sourced from a TPCi employee rather than any of the contest winners. What made the thread stick wasn’t the price — it was the policy question underneath it. @fourthstartcg laid out the history clearly: PSA had previously refused to grade AA cards unless provenance from a winner could be demonstrated, citing “authenticity” that included distribution chain. @churlocker pushed back hard on that original logic — graders should assess the card in front of them, not speculate on custody chains — and expressed relief that PSA appeared to have reversed course.
@pokemonunboxing contributed photo evidence from three winners confirming each received only a single box — not two as some had assumed — which tightens the math on how many legitimate copies can possibly exist for any given card. @Dyl noted that for certain cards, like the Primal Kyogre, the winner has claimed not to have opened their box at all, meaning most known copies are almost certainly employee extras. @thsigma summarized the policy reversal in four money-face emojis. Sometimes that’s enough.
The Bubble Thread That Ate Itself
A first-principles Pokémon market analysis posted Monday by @johto99 — layered, structured, long — triggered the full spectrum of forum responses within hours. @Josh delivered the efficient verdict in one line:
TL;DR is: Pokémon market will cool down, we don’t know when
@candle asked if it was AI-generated. @packyman said it was. @johto99 pushed back wearily, noting that structured writing is increasingly dismissed as AI by default. The thread then drifted through genuinely interesting territory — @RoyalOak made a Lindy argument for Pokémon’s staying power, @exiliart challenged the “30 years of hard data” framing by pointing out the market only really moved post-Pokémon GO — before collapsing into a tangent about communism that the forum wisely did not pursue. @smpratte’s contribution was characteristically blunt:
The biggest bubble is the constant bubble blowing babies saying everything is a bubble.
The grading skepticism theme resurfaced separately in unpopular opinions, where @sonicsmashdown called grading a vehicle for manufactured demand, and @smpratte responded at length defending grading as a practical necessity born before financial speculation entered the hobby. Two threads, same argument, same week — the forum is clearly working something out.
A Binder Built in Public
The week’s quietest throughline was @gengarbrigade, who showed up in the purchases thread early in the week with a grid of Gengar cards — PSA 6-7 copies, bought raw or graded, destined for a binder rather than a display shelf. The framing was deliberate:
I told myself, it’s either now or never due to Gengar tax.
By Thursday, @gengarbrigade had opened their own thread on the philosophy behind it — cracking slabs, moving away from grade-chasing, accepting that the Gengar market had run away from some windows they wished they’d taken. @smpratte and @ddk both weighed in on the binder-copy strategy, with @ddk flagging low-grade CGC slabs as often better value than raw for condition-conscious binder collectors. @mrbubbles had spotted the pattern first, asking for a full collection showcase. The answer: next week. That’s a thread worth watching.
Hungary, Hataya, and the Long Hunt
Not every story this week was about market dynamics. @tilla13 spent the better part of the week methodically documenting Hungarian Pokémon releases — McDonald’s and Burger King promos, VHS and DVD releases, cassette and CD soundtracks, sticker albums — in a thread that became something closer to an archive than a showcase. Post after post, era after era, all catalogued. The forum received it warmly, with @mrbubbles offering a genuine welcome and flagging a movie poster as unexpectedly cool.
Elsewhere, @joponnes closed a months-long chase in the purchases thread — the last Hataya card needed to complete a binder page, arriving after one lost-in-mail attempt and a two-month delay on the second. “Last card I was missing from Hataya now that I accepted that they probably aren’t making any new cards,” the post read. No fanfare, no price, just relief. That’s the hobby.
Ya see, dis week had it all — ten million slabs in limbo, backdoor cards, bubble fights, and one guy quietly buildin’ the Gengar binder of his dreams. Meowth, dat’s right.