$9,357: Genius or Idiot?

A 1st Edition Misty's Gyarados in PSA 10 drew 34 bids and closed at 1.7x the median of the 9 matched sales we could verify.

Someone paid $9,357 for a 2000 Pokemon Gym Challenge Misty’s Gyarados, Holo 1st Edition #13, graded PSA 10, in a 34-bid auction that closed on October 9. Nine matched sales of the same card in the same grade put the median at $5,500.

Why it matters

A $3,857 gap over the comparable market means one of two things: a card the comps have not caught up with, or a bidder who got carried away. It came out of open bidding rather than a private deal, which changes what the number is worth.

By the numbers

• $9,357 — the price paid, against a $5,500 median across 9 matched sales of the same card and grade.
• 1.7x — the multiple over that median, a $3,857 premium.
• 34 bids — an auction, not a fixed-price listing. A room set this price.

The intrigue

The case for the buyer: the market underneath the price is moving. The 5 most recent sales in the matched pool ran 9.1% above the pool median, and 34 bids is clean price discovery: full marks, 15 of 15, plus 12 of 15 on trend. A card clearing on heavy bidding into a rising pool is what a repricing looks like before the comps catch up.

Reality check

Nine sales is a thin foundation, and our own floor is 8 — one fewer and we would have refused to price this card at all. The pool is internally tight, with p25 at $4,799.99, p75 at $6,000 and an interquartile ratio of 1.25. The problem is where the sale sits against it: the pool runs $4,200 to $8,500, and the buyer paid above every one of those 9 sales. That is 14 of 40 on comp deviation, and the whole reason this is not a stronger verdict.

What's next

48 of 100, and the verdict is FAIR BUY — comp deviation 14 of 40, trend 12 of 15, liquidity 3 of 15, price discovery 15 of 15, scarcity 4 of 15. Nothing was capped. Three inputs are absent because we do not have them and will not invent them: no pop report, no sell-through, no card-level search volume. Liquidity is the weakest line: 9 matched sales is the exit market. Watch whether the next copies clear nearer $9,357 or back toward $5,500. More in sports collectibles.

Between the lines

The biggest sale we tracked that day was a 2005 Pokemon EX Unseen Forces #105 Lugia EX Holo in PSA 10 at $145,100, and it could not be priced. 64 sales sat above this one and none cleared the comp gate: 52 returned too few matched sales to quote a median, 6 could not build a specific enough comp query, 1 had a pool spanning different cards, 2 were rejected for free on their own titles before any comp was bought, and 3 had already been covered. Our pull hit its row cap, so it samples the day — every market-wide figure here is a floor, not a total. Yesterday’s edition walked a different board.

How we track this

RazMania monitors completed eBay sales daily and filters out multi-card lots, reprints, altered cards and accepted best offers, so every price above is one somebody actually paid. The comparable-sale median here is computed from 9 verified sales of the same card in the same grade, with the sale being judged excluded from its own pool. We request a fixed comp window but do not record the span we received, so no claim is made about the period those 9 sales cover. The day’s market-wide counts come from a category browse that hit its row cap, which makes them floors rather than totals. eBay reports sold date, not sold time.