How far below the shop price do Pokémon cards sell?
The short answer
Across the 548 Japanese Pokémon cards we can match, the median Yahoo! Auctions sale over the last 90 days closed at 65% of the shop's asking price, with half the cards between 54% and 75%. A card a shop lists at ¥10,000 typically fetches about ¥6,500. Modern Special Illustration Rares keep about three quarters of the ask; old and expensive cards, about half.
The question matters to anyone pricing a card in Japanese yen: a collector abroad deciding whether a shop ask is fair, or a seller working out what a card will actually fetch. The price CardMochi shows first is what a shop asks. This is our first full measure of how far sales sit below it.
What we compared
For each card we took two numbers from our own data on 3 Oct 2026:
- The ask: the lowest price a Japanese shop lists it at, Card Rush or Yuyu-tei, as the site shows it. All but three of the 548 asks were read on 3 Oct.
- The sale: the median of Yahoo! Auctions listings that ended in the last 90 days, for the same card and the same version.
We only use cards whose sales we trust: at least three sales in 90 days, and a match we're confident is the same printing. Our sold data only covers cards asking ¥3,000 or more; the cheapest card here asks ¥3,180. That leaves 548 cards, with a median of 14 sales each.
The sold price by card type
| Group | Cards | Median sold ÷ ask | Middle half |
|---|---|---|---|
| All cards | 548 | 0.65 | 0.54 to 0.75 |
| Special illustration rare | 134 | 0.73 | 0.67 to 0.80 |
| Super rare | 48 | 0.66 | 0.56 to 0.75 |
| Ultra rare | 151 | 0.59 | 0.49 to 0.68 |
| Hyper rare | 42 | 0.56 | 0.49 to 0.67 |
| Double rare | 26 | 0.53 | 0.43 to 0.58 |
| Shiny super rare | 22 | 0.48 | 0.41 to 0.65 |
Special Illustration Rares keep the most of their ask; every one in our sample is from 2022 or later. The Ultra Rares are mostly older: 105 of the 151 come from 2017 to 2019. Shiny super rares sit lowest, at under half.
Age, price and how often a card sells
Three things move the ratio, and they move together: age, price and how often a card sells. The widest gaps are by price and age.
| Group | Cards | Median sold ÷ ask |
|---|---|---|
| Released 2023 onward | 188 | 0.72 |
| Released 2019 to 2022 | 236 | 0.61 |
| Released before 2019 | 124 | 0.51 |
| Ask ¥3,000 to ¥9,999 | 314 | 0.68 |
| Ask ¥10,000 to ¥99,999 | 210 | 0.60 |
| Ask ¥100,000 or more | 24 | 0.45 |
| 20+ sales in 90 days | 225 | 0.71 |
| 3 to 7 sales | 173 | 0.56 |
We can't separate the three with this data. New cards trade often and cost less, and shops and auctions roughly agree on them. Old, expensive cards trade a few times a quarter, and a shop can hold a high ask for months.
The extremes make the point. Lillie (リーリエ) from 2017 asks ¥998,000 at Card Rush; its seven auction sales have a median of ¥350,000, 35% of the ask. Latias & Latios GX (ラティアス&ラティオスGX) asks ¥498,000 and sold for a median ¥199,944 across ten sales. At the other end, Mega Rayquaza ex (メガレックウザex) from Storm Emeralda asks ¥69,800 at Yuyu-tei; its 87 recorded sales, all in the last 30 days, have a median of ¥61,800, or 89%.
The popular modern chase cards sit near two thirds. Pokémon Card 151's Charizard ex (リザードンex) asks ¥62,800 and sold 42 times at a median ¥41,750 (0.66). Terastal Fest ex's Umbreon ex (ブラッキーex) asks ¥59,800 and sold 15 times at ¥40,000 (0.67).
Only 12 of the 548 cards sold above their ask, and ten of those ask under ¥10,000.
Is "about 60%" right?
Our posts have used a rule of thumb: cards sell for about 60% of the asking price. On this data the median is 65%, and 209 of the 548 cards (38%) sell for less than 60%. For a card asking ¥10,000 to ¥99,999, the rule is spot on at 0.60. It is too low for modern, liquid cards, at 0.72 for anything from 2023 onward. And it is too generous for cards from before 2019 (0.51) and cards above ¥100,000 (0.45), where half the ask is closer.
The two shops behave alike: cards whose lowest ask is at Card Rush sell at a median 0.66 of it, Yuyu-tei 0.63. The 30-day picture is close to the 90-day one: for the 392 cards with three or more sales in the last 30 days, the 30-day median is 0.64 against 0.67 over 90 days.
What this means for you
If you're buying: a shop ask on an old or expensive card is a ceiling, not the market. Check the "Sold for" figure next to "Shops ask" on the card's page before you pay ¥100,000 or more. For a modern SAR, a shop ask about 1.4 times the auction price is normal.
If you're selling at auction in Japan: expect about 0.7 of the ask for a card from 2023 onward that sells weekly, and about half for a pre-2019 card. Auction fees and postage come out of that.
If you're valuing a collection: the collection tracker totals shop asks. Multiply by about two thirds for a realistic sale value, and by about half for vintage-heavy binders.
Method and limits
- Asks are what shops charge (Card Rush, Yuyu-tei), not sales. Sold prices are Yahoo! Auctions final prices, before the seller's fees. Mercari, shop buy prices (買取) and sales outside Japan aren't included.
- We only show a sale median when it sits between a third of and three times the ask (a guard against matching the wrong version), so ratios outside 0.33 to 3 can't appear here. 110 cards failed that check and 188 had too few sales; neither group is in the 548. Several cards sit right at the 0.33 floor, so the real gap on some old cards may be wider.
- One version per card number: special mirror versions (Poké Ball, Master Ball patterns) aren't in the sold data yet, and an auction title that doesn't name the pattern could slip a mirror sale into a plain card's median.
- Sale counts are capped. Each card's search reads one page of up to 100 ended auctions, so for the busiest cards the count is what fit on that page, not every sale in 90 days. Before the median, we drop single sales below 0.4 times or above 3 times that card's own median.
- The sold medians cover 90 days; the asks are from 3 Oct. For a card whose price moved in that time, the two can drift apart.
- Rarity comes from our card database; 7 of the 14 30th CELEBRATION cards here have no rarity label yet. The 14 close at a median 0.79. Leaving them out moves the overall median from 0.65 to 0.64.
- How we pick the shop price is on our pricing methodology page.
Sources
- CardMochi data file cards-sold-vs-shop-price-2026-10-03: shop asks and Yahoo! Auctions 90-day and 30-day sold medians for 548 Japanese Pokémon cards, with sale counts, rarity, release date and which shop sets the ask.
- Yahoo! Auctions ended listings (落札相場): auctions.yahoo.co.jp/closedsearch (example search: Charizard ex SAR, 151), 90 days to 3 Oct 2026.
- Card Rush, Pokémon singles: cardrush-pokemon.jp, read 3 Oct 2026.
- Yuyu-tei, Pokémon singles: yuyu-tei.jp, read 3 Oct 2026.
Researched with AI tools, checked and edited by the CardMochi team. Prices are Japanese shop asking prices on the date shown. About CardMochi · How we price