$6,600: Genius or Idiot?

A 26-bid auction pushed a PSA 10 Pikachu promo to $6,600 — $600 above the median of the 10 matched sales we could verify.

A 2003 Pokemon Black Star Promo #012 Pikachu Holo in a PSA 10 holder sold at auction for $6,600 on September 17. The matched-comp median for the same card at the same grade is $6,000, which scores this buy 64 of 100 and lands it in FAIR BUY territory.

Why it matters

The premium is $600, on a card whose middle 50% of sales sits between $5,640 and $6,155. That gap is real, not rounding. It also rests on a shallow base: 10 matched sales is thin against our floor of 8, and a median drawn from a pool that size is weakly supported.

By the numbers

• $6,000 — the median of 10 matched sales of the same card at the same grade, with the buyer’s own sale excluded.
• 1.1x — what was paid against that median.
• 0.0% — the 7 recent sales in the pool against the full window. Nothing has moved.

The intrigue

The strongest plank in this buy is price discovery, the only component to take full marks at 15 of 15. 26 bids means the market set the number, not one seller naming it. Pool quality backs that up: an interquartile spread of 1.09x is tight, and comp deviation 30 of 40 still rewards a fill this close.

Reality check

$600 over the median is still $600 over the median, and bidding heat does not convert a premium into a discount. Liquidity 6 of 15 and trend 9 of 15 are both held down by the same shallow pool — 10 sales is a narrow exit market. Scarcity 4 of 15 rests on the grade alone; the card carries no serial numbering and no autograph. The full pool runs from $5,191.03 to $7,000, and patience was available.

What's next

64 of 100 is a FAIR BUY, and no cap applied: comp deviation 30 of 40, trend 9 of 15, liquidity 6 of 15, price discovery 15 of 15, scarcity 4 of 15. Three inputs this model does not have and will not guess at: population report data, sell-through, and card-level search volume. Watch whether the next copies clear above or below $6,000 — in a flat market the card has to rise before that premium earns itself back, the same test running through the last edition of this column and our wider collectibles coverage.

How we track this

RazMania picks one confirmed eBay sale a day and scores it against comparable sales of the same card. Best Offer rows are dropped outright, because eBay publishes the seller’s asking price on those and never the settled figure. The comparable pool is built by matching year, card number, grader and numeric grade to the lead, with the lead’s own sale excluded; this edition’s pool held 10 such sales after filters, and we refuse to quote a median below 8. A pool whose dispersion shows it spans more than one card is thrown out rather than averaged. eBay reports sold date, not sold time.