Mega Darkrai ex #120 from Pitch Black is creating one of the strangest grading markets I have seen from a new Pokémon set this year.
The raw card is currently worth around $170.
A PSA 10 recently sold for $1,950. Another sold for $2,500.
That puts the current PSA 10 market at more than 10 times the price of the raw card, depending on which sale you use.
Normally, a spread that large would immediately make a card look like an obvious grading candidate.
There is one problem.
PSA has graded just 16 copies.
Only six have received a PSA 10.
That makes the current PSA 10 price interesting, but it also makes it extremely dangerous to treat that price as established market value.
The PSA Population Is Tiny
As of August 27, PSA has graded 16 copies of Mega Darkrai ex #120.
The population currently breaks down like this:
6 PSA 10s
9 PSA 9s
1 PSA 8
That gives the card a current PSA 10 rate of 37.5%.
Six PSA 10s is almost no supply at all.
It only takes a handful of aggressive collectors to create a huge price when there are this few copies available. That is exactly what appears to be happening with Darkrai.
Recent PSA 10 sales include $1,525 on August 5, $1,950 on August 16 and $2,500 on August 21.
Those are real sales, and they show that collectors are willing to pay serious money for the card.
What they do not tell us is whether collectors will still pay $2,000 when there are 50 PSA 10s available instead of six.
That is the question that matters.
Raw Darkrai Is Doing the Opposite
The raw market makes the PSA 10 price even more unusual.
Near Mint copies of Mega Darkrai ex #120 are currently around $170, and the card has actually fallen since Pitch Black released.
That is normal behavior for a new chase card.
More packs are opened, more copies reach the market and sellers begin competing with each other. Unless demand grows faster than supply, prices usually come down as the set gets further away from release.
The graded market has not had time to go through that process yet.
PSA submissions take time.
That creates a delay where raw supply can already be relatively abundant while graded supply remains extremely limited. The first PSA 10s therefore enter a market where collectors who want the card immediately have almost nothing to choose from.
That is where premiums like this can appear.
Six PSA 10s Cannot Establish a Mature Market
I would be very careful calling Mega Darkrai a $2,000 PSA 10 right now.
It has sold for more than $2,000.
That is different.
A mature graded market needs enough copies and enough transactions to show us what buyers are consistently willing to pay. Darkrai does not have that yet.
With six PSA 10s in existence, one buyer can move the market considerably.
Once the population reaches 50, 100 or 500 copies, that becomes much harder.
Pitch Black only released on July 24. There are almost certainly many copies currently sitting at PSA or waiting to be submitted.
The population we see today is not going to be the population we see six months from now.
The Gem Rate Is the Number to Watch
The current population gives us one other useful number.
Six of 16 graded copies have received PSA 10s, which works out to a 37.5% gem rate.
I would not put too much weight on that percentage yet because the sample is tiny. Early submissions can also be biased toward cards that collectors believe have a strong chance at a 10.
But if Darkrai continues grading anywhere close to that rate as the population grows, maintaining a $2,000 price becomes considerably harder.
Imagine another 500 copies eventually reach PSA.
At a 37.5% gem rate, that would theoretically produce around 188 PSA 10s.
That is very different from six.
I am not predicting that PSA will receive exactly 500 copies or that the gem rate will remain 37.5%. The point is that today’s scarcity can disappear very quickly when the starting population is this small.
That is why early PSA populations need to be treated differently from established vintage populations.
The PSA 9 Market Could Become Just as Important
There is another number in the population report that I find interesting.
Nine of the 16 copies graded so far are PSA 9s.
If that pattern continues, a large amount of graded Darkrai supply could end up in PSA 9 holders rather than PSA 10s.
That matters because the raw card is only around $170.
If PSA 9 prices eventually settle close to raw value, grading becomes a much more aggressive bet. Collectors would essentially be paying the grading fee and taking the risk that the card receives a 9 in exchange for the chance at the enormous PSA 10 premium.
That can look attractive while a 10 is worth $2,000.
It looks much less attractive if the PSA 10 falls to $700 or $800 as population grows.
The grading decision therefore depends heavily on where that premium settles.
Darkrai Still Has Real Collector Demand
None of this means Mega Darkrai ex is a bad card.
Darkrai is a popular Pokémon, Pitch Black has put it at the center of a major modern set, and the Mega Hyper Rare treatment gives #120 a distinct identity.
The $2,500 sale also tells us something useful.
There are collectors willing to spend serious money to own one of the first PSA 10 copies.
That demand is real.
The question is whether the demand is for Mega Darkrai itself or for the temporary scarcity of having one of only six PSA 10s.
We will not know until supply increases.
What I Would Watch From Here
The PSA population is now more important to me than the next individual sale.
If the population climbs quickly and the PSA 10 price remains above $1,500 or $2,000, that would make the market considerably more convincing.
If the population rises from six PSA 10s to 20, then 50, then 100 while prices steadily fall, we will know the early buyers were paying a scarcity premium.
I would also watch the gem rate.
If the 37.5% rate falls dramatically as more normal submissions reach PSA, PSA 10s could remain relatively difficult.
If it stays around that level or moves higher, supply could grow much faster than the current market is pricing in.
That is what makes Darkrai interesting to track.
My Read on Mega Darkrai ex
At $170 raw and more than $2,000 in the first PSA 10 sales, Mega Darkrai ex looks like an incredible grading opportunity on paper.
I would not assume that spread lasts.
The PSA 10 premium exists partly because there are only six PSA 10s right now. That is an extremely small population for a modern chase card from a set that released about a month ago.
More copies are coming.
The question is how many.
If the population grows substantially while the PSA 10 continues selling anywhere near $2,000, then we can start talking about a genuinely unusual grading premium.
Until then, I would treat the first sales for what they are: collectors paying a lot of money to own a card before graded supply has had time to catch up.
The $170 raw price is established by a growing supply of cards.
The $2,000 PSA 10 price is being established by six.
I know which number I would be more careful with.
