How to Read a Pokémon Card's Population Report

A slab's price depends on two things: the grade on the label, and how many other copies carry the same one. A PSA 10 of a card with twelve PSA 10s in existence and a PSA 10 of a card with twelve thousand are different assets, even when the cards look identical. The second number lives in the population report, and most collectors only glance at it.

This guide walks through what a population report counts, the three numbers on it worth reading, and the places where it misleads. The examples use real counts from the PkmnPrices catalog, pulled on October 21, 2026.

The short version

• A population report counts how many copies of a card a grader has graded, at each grade.
• The three numbers that matter: the population at your grade, the gem rate, and the share graded higher.
• Graders grade differently. Compare gem rates within one grader, not across them.
• A pop report counts slabs, not cards, and only the copies someone thought were worth sending in.

What a population report counts

Every grading company keeps a running tally of what it has graded. For each card it records how many copies it gave a 10, how many a 9, and so on down the scale. PSA, BGS, CGC and SGC each publish their own report. None of them sees the others' numbers, so a card's full graded population is the sum of four separate reports, which GemRate merges into one.

The report counts each printing separately. A reverse holo and a holo of the same card are two entries with two populations, because they are two different cards to a buyer. The cheaper printing often has a fraction of the graded copies, since fewer people thought it was worth the fee.

Reading one: Charizard ex 223 from Obsidian Flames

Take the Special Illustration Rare Charizard ex from Obsidian Flames, one of the most graded modern cards. PSA, BGS, CGC and SGC have graded 66,316 copies between them. PSA alone accounts for 58,449, about 88%.

Most copies come back a 9: there are more than twice as many 9s as 10s. A PSA 10 of this card is one of 12,976, which is plenty for a liquid market and nowhere near scarce. A buyer paying a large premium for a gem mint copy is paying for its condition, since there are thousands of others.

The three numbers worth reading

The population at your grade. This is the number collectors quote ("pop 400"), and it is the closest thing a report has to a supply figure. Read it for the grader on your slab: a PSA 10 competes with other PSA 10s on resale, not with CGC 10s.

The gem rate. The share of graded copies that came back at the grader's gem grade or better: PSA 10, BGS 9.5 and up, CGC and SGC 10 and up. Across all four graders, 22.4% of these Charizards made it. A low gem rate on a card means 10s are genuinely hard to get, usually because of centering or surface problems the print run is known for.

The share graded higher. For any grade, the share of graded copies that beat it. For this Charizard, 24% of graded copies are 9.5 or better, and 73% are 9 or better. That second figure is the usual starting point for a grading decision: of the copies people sent in, about three in four came back a 9 or higher.

Graders do not grade the same way

Pop reports are four separate ledgers, and they are not interchangeable. The 2024 McDonald's Charizard is a clear case. PSA has graded 2,819 copies and given 14.2% of them a 10. CGC has graded 930 and given 46.7% of them a 10 or better, 49 of those a Pristine 10.

The numbers do not say why: stricter standards, a different mix of submitters, or both. They do show that a gem rate only means something next to other gem rates from the same grader. Reading PSA's 14% against CGC's 47% and concluding the CGC copies are better cards is an easy mistake to make with a merged report.

What a population report cannot tell you

It counts slabs. A slab cracked open and sent back in for a higher grade can be counted again, and a card crossed over from one grader to another can show up in both reports. For heavily resubmitted cards, the population at the top grades runs higher than the number of physical cards that exist at that grade.

It only sees what was worth sending in. Nobody pays to grade a card they expect to come back a 6. The 73% that graded 9 or better is the hit rate of copies collectors chose to submit, usually their best ones, so a random pack-fresh copy does worse. Treat the share graded higher as a ceiling on your odds.

It lags. A grader's count moves when slabs leave its building. Cards submitted this month and still in the queue are not in it yet, which matters most for new sets, where the population can double in a few weeks.

Population on PkmnPrices

Every card page in the catalog now has a graded population section under the price history, for the printing you are looking at. It shows the total, the gem rate, and every grade with its copies and the share graded higher. You can switch to one grader's numbers and open its own report. In your collection, a graded entry tells you where it stands: how many copies its grader has given the same grade, and how many it has graded higher.

The counts cover PSA, BGS, CGC and SGC, are refreshed weekly, and are free on the site. For developers, the same data is one request on the Pro plan and above:

curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_API_KEY" \
  "https://api.pkmnprices.com/v1/cards/25487/population"

The response has one entry per printing, with the summed grades, gem_rate, percent_higher for every grade, and each grader's own report. The population docs cover every field. With a card's graded eBay sold comps next to it, you can see what a slab sells for and how many others exist.

What is a population report for Pokémon cards?

A population report is a grading company's count of how many copies of each card it has graded, broken down by grade. PSA, BGS, CGC and SGC each publish their own. A card's full graded population is the sum of the four, which GemRate merges into one report.

What does pop 1 mean on a graded card?

Pop 1 means the grader has given that grade to only one copy of that card. It is the scarcest a graded card can be at its grade, but only within that grader: a PSA 10 pop 1 can sit beside many CGC or BGS copies at the same grade, and the count can rise as more copies are graded.

What is a good gem rate for a Pokémon card?

There is no fixed benchmark, because gem rates vary by card and by grader. A card where fewer than one in ten graded copies reach a 10 is hard to gem, usually because of centering or surface problems in the print run. Compare a card's gem rate with other cards from the same grader, not with another grader's numbers.

Does a high population make a graded card worth less?

Not necessarily. A popular card with a large population can still sell for a lot, as long as more buyers want it than there are slabs for sale. A low population helps most on cards that are already in demand, where buyers compete for every copy at the top grade.

How often are population reports updated?

The graders update their own reports continuously as slabs are finished. PkmnPrices refreshes its population data weekly, merged across PSA, BGS, CGC and SGC by GemRate, so a card's numbers on the site are at most about a week behind the graders' own reports.