How Much More Is a PSA 10 Worth Than a PSA 9? Measured Across 2,964 Pokémon Cards

Everyone quotes a rule of thumb for this: a PSA 10 is worth "two to five times" a PSA 9. We measured it instead, across every Pokémon card where we have recorded at least five completed sales at each grade. That is 2,964 cards and the answer is wider than the rule of thumb in both directions.

The short version

• The typical PSA 10 sells for 4.0× the PSA 9 of the same card. Half of all cards fall between 2.7× and 6.2×.
• Over a third of cards (1,128) carry a 5× or larger premium.
• Only 54 cards have a PSA 10 worth less than 1.5× the 9. Almost all are modern Japanese cards with very high gem rates.
• The premium depends far more on how hard the card is to gem than on how old or how valuable it is.

By era

Modern cards gem easily, so a 10 is not rare and the market does not pay much extra for it. Vintage and mid-era cards were printed with worse centering and softer stock, and a clean 10 is scarce.

By gem rate, which is the real driver

This is the number to check before you grade. If half of all submissions already come back a 10, the 10 is the ordinary outcome and the 9 is the disappointment. If one in ten does, the 10 is the prize.

Thirty cards people actually ask about

Medians of completed sales. The count in brackets is how many sales sit behind each number. Click a card for the full price table at every grade and every grading company, with the sales listed.

The extremes

The largest premium we have measured on five or more sales each side is the Undaunted Umbreon Prime: a PSA 9 sells for about $1,080 and a PSA 10 for about $72,000, 67×. The Evolutions Charizard above is 44×, the Celebrations Pikachu and Mew about 29×. All of them share one thing: a gem rate in the low single digits on a card that was printed in enormous numbers. Thousands of 9s, a handful of 10s.

At the other end, three Japanese Mega cards from the latest sets sell a PSA 10 for barely more than a 9, because eight in ten submissions gem. There is nothing scarce about the 10.

What this means before you grade

1. Look up the card's gem rate before the price. Below 20% and the 10 is a lottery ticket with a big payout. Above 50% and you are paying $20 or more in fees for a near-certain small bump.
2. Price the 9, not the 10. For most cards the 9 is the likelier outcome. If the 9 does not cover the fee, the submission only works if you can grade cards yourself with a sharp eye.
3. Use the card's own numbers. The 4× average is useless for any single card; Charizard Base Set is 2.9×, Charizard Evolutions is 44×.

Every card page on PokeInvest shows the price at every grade, from PSA 10 down to raw, for PSA, CGC, BGS and the rest, with the completed sales each number was built from. The PSA calculator runs the fee math for one card; the Grade Report runs it across the whole market and lists the cards that pass.

How these numbers were made

Each price is the median of completed sales at that exact grade, recorded from eBay, TCGplayer, Goldin, Fanatics Collect, Heritage and other marketplaces. A card is only in this analysis when it has at least five recorded sales at both PSA 9 and PSA 10 within the last year. Sales we hold out, because the listing was a different printing, a lot, a reprint, a proxy, or a damaged copy, do not count. Figures are as of 7 October 2026 and update nightly on the card pages.