Time for another weekly PokéMetrics update.
This week PSA has graded 28,884 Pokémon cards, beating the previous weekly high of 28,015 set last month. I mentioned back then that when PSA reopened at the end of June last year after closing due to coronavirus they graded a then all-time high of 15,121 Pokémon cards in that week which is a pretty staggering 13,763 fewer than were graded this week, 1 year on.
The 28,884 figure includes 9,331 PSA 10 grades and 11,424 PSA 9 grades (pokemetrics.org/stats). This is the 8th consecutive week of PSA handing out more PSA 9 than PSA 10 grades, so I don’t think there’s any merit to claims a few people were making a while ago that PSA are now handing out easy PSA 10s just to clear the backlog.
Some Pokémon card grade milestones were hit this week: there are now over 13,000 PSA 4 grades (13,136 [+243]), over 50,000 PSA 6 grades (50,856 [+1,198]), over 80,000 PSA 8 grades (81,454 [+1,535]) and over 700,000 PSA 9 grades (701,040 [+11,424]).
In the same trend as we’ve seen over the past few weeks, unlimited Base Set cards across the board are being graded in large numbers. 112 Magnemite cards were graded in the past 7 days (35 PSA 10, 76 PSA 9) which is an increase of 51.85% of the card’s total population (328). Base Set Blastoise also had 112 cards graded including 27 grades below PSA 6 - I can only hope those submitters are happy with those grades! On top of that, Base Set unlimited Charizard has had 1,031 cards graded in the past 5 weeks - an average of 29.46 per day!
Hidden Fates took the top spot as the most graded set in the past 7 days with 2,301 cards graded, almost 600 more than Base Set unlimited which took second place. Skyridge made its first appearance in the weekly top 10 this week with 732 cards graded - including 200 PSA 10 grades and 468 PSA 9 grades, as did the English 2019 SM Black Star Promo set with 629 cards graded.
Ampharos, Bellossom, Kingdra, Lugia, Meganium 11 and Pichu from the 1st Edition Neo Genesis set all had their PSA 10 populations increase by 1 this week, which I can only assume is a sign that some of the boxes which have been sold recently have now been opened.
And saving the best to last:
After seeing over 160 PSA 9 grades without any PSA 10s, the first PSA 10 XY Evolutions Chansey was graded this week!
