Base Set Pop Report (2026): PSA 10 Population for Every Holo, Every Printing
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There are 5,865 PSA 10 Base Set cards in existence across the 27 printings we track — and this page lists every one of them: the PSA 10 population of every Base Set holo, in every printing (1st Edition, Shadowless, Unlimited), with the gem-mint price next to each count. PSA's own population report now sits behind a login; ours is free, built on exact GemRate population chains, and refreshed monthly. It is one chapter of the full WOTC pop report — and the cost side of the same data lives in what a complete PSA 10 Base Set costs.
How Many PSA 10 Base Set Cards Exist?
5,865 PSA 10s across the tracked chase printings — 24 of 27 counts are exact GemRate chains (modeled estimates are marked †, and 2 printings with no resolved chain at all — 1st Edition Mewtwo #10 and 1st Edition Hitmonchan #7 — are omitted from the table rather than guessed). The table below is the census, scarcest first. The pattern worth noticing before you scroll: the rarest gems in Base Set are not the 1st Editions. Shadowless and even Unlimited printings own the lowest counts, because the 1st Edition stamp drove thirty years of grading submissions while the unstamped cards went unslabbed.
How Many PSA 10 Charizards Are There?
124 1st Edition, 58 Shadowless, and 487 Unlimited — 669 PSA 10 Base Set Charizards in existence, total, across all three printings. Read that against demand: the 1st Edition trades at $504,000 with 124 gems to go around, and the Shadowless — with less than half that supply — trades at a tenth of the price. Here is the full grade pyramid behind the most-graded card on the planet:
101,739 gradings, 487 tens — a 0.48% gem rate. The PSA 10 premium on this card is pure condition scarcity: the raw card is everywhere, the gem is one submission in two hundred. That premium is live here:
Real sold comps from CardboardSniper's pricing engine · 3 sales(eBay & Fanatics).
View live data on CardboardSniper →What Is the Rarest Base Set Card in PSA 10?
The Shadowless Blastoise, at pop 44 — rarer than every 1st Edition card in the set, at $18,600. The Shadowless Poliwrath (pop 48) and Shadowless Charizard (pop 58) follow. For scale: there are more PSA 10 1st Edition Charizards (124) than PSA 10 Shadowless Blastoise and Poliwrath combined. Scarcity in Base Set lives in the middle printing nobody graded, and it is still priced like a footnote:
Real sold comps from CardboardSniper's pricing engine · 6 sales(eBay & Fanatics).
View live data on CardboardSniper →Are 1st Edition or Unlimited Base Set Cards Rarer in PSA 10?
Card by card, it flips more often than the price tags suggest. The stamp made 1st Editions worth grading, so their populations are deep; plenty of Unlimited holos were only ever slabbed by accident. The side-by-side census — the orange number is the rarer printing:
| # | Card | 1st Ed pop 10 | Unlimited pop 10 | Rarer printing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1 |  Alakazam | — | 457 | — |
| #2 | Blastoise | 101 | 61 | Unlimited |
| #3 |  Chansey | — | 147 | — |
| #4 | Charizard | 124 | 487 | 1st Ed |
| #5 |  Clefairy | 66 | 167 | 1st Ed |
| #6 |  Gyarados | 89 | 534 | 1st Ed |
| #7 |  Hitmonchan | — | 212 | — |
| #10 |  Mewtwo | — | 596 | — |
| #11 |  Nidoking | 32† | — | — |
| #13 |  Poliwrath | — | 567 | — |
| #14 |  Raichu | 89 | 255 | 1st Ed |
| #15 |  Venusaur | 145 | 589 | 1st Ed |
| #16 |  Zapdos | 136 | 685 | 1st Ed |
And that table doesn't even include the Shadowless column — pop 58 Charizard, pop 44 Blastoise — which undercuts both printings on the marquee cards. When a pop-44 card trades at $18,600 while pop-124 trades at $504,000, the market is pricing the stamp, not the census.
Which Base Set Cards Are Hardest to Gem?
Gem rate is the other half of a pop report: not how many 10s exist, but what fraction of all submissions earned one. Base Set holds some of the most brutal gem rates in the hobby — 1999 print quality plus twenty-five years of binder wear:
| # | Card | Gem rate | PSA 10s / total graded | PSA 10 price | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | | 1999 Base Set Shadowless Charizard #4 | 0.4% | 58 / 14,462 | $58,800 |
| 2 | | 1999 Base Set Unlimited Charizard #4 | 0.5% | 487 / 101,739 | $31,200 |
| 3 | | 1999 Base Set Unlimited Blastoise #2 | 0.5% | 61 / 11,626 | $8,100 |
| 4 | | 1999 Base Set Shadowless Blastoise #2 | 0.6% | 44 / 7,458 | $18,600 |
| 5 | | 1999 Base Set Unlimited Chansey #3 | 0.9% | 147 / 15,788 | $13,200 |
| 6 | | 1999 Base Set Shadowless Mewtwo #10 | 1.1% | 75 / 7,101 | $4,440 |
| 7 | | 1999 Base Set Unlimited Hitmonchan #7 | 1.3% | 212 / 16,909 | $2,187 |
| 8 | | 1999 Base Set Unlimited Clefairy #5 | 1.3% | 167 / 13,260 | — |
| 9 | | 1999 Base Set Unlimited Venusaur #15 | 1.3% | 589 / 45,434 | $3,672 |
| 10 | | 1999 Base Set Shadowless Venusaur #15 | 1.4% | 101 / 7,383 | $7,800 |
Every card on that list under 1% is a card where the PSA 10 is the trophy and the PSA 9 is the market. If you're weighing a raw submission, the PSA 10 value calculator turns these gem rates into expected value.
Is Base Set Scarcity Priced In?
Not evenly — and that spread is the most useful table on this page. Price divided by PSA 10 population is what the market pays per unit of gem supply:
| Card | PSA 10 price | PSA 10 pop | Price per pop unit |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1999 Base Set 1st Edition Charizard #4 | $504,000 | 124 | $4,065 |
| 1999 Base Set Shadowless Charizard #4 | $58,800 | 58 | $1,014 |
| 1999 Base Set Shadowless Blastoise #2 | $18,600 | 44 | $423 |
| 1999 Base Set 1st Edition Gyarados #6 | $28,800 | 89 | $324 |
| 1999 Base Set 1st Edition Raichu #14 | $25,800 | 89 | $290 |
| 1999 Base Set 1st Edition Venusaur #15 | $33,600 | 145 | $232 |
The 1st Edition Charizard costs $4,065 per unit of supply; the Shadowless Blastoise — the rarest card in the entire set — costs $423. Attention, not census data, sets vintage prices. The full ranked scarcity list across all fifteen WOTC sets is in the 50 rarest WOTC cards.
Base Set Pop Report FAQ
How many PSA 10 1st Edition Charizards are there?
124 as of the July 2026 GemRate snapshot. The Shadowless Charizard is rarer at pop 58; the Unlimited sits at 487 from over 101,000 total gradings.
What is the rarest Base Set card in PSA 10?
The Shadowless Blastoise, pop 44 — rarer than any 1st Edition in the set. Among 1st Editions specifically, Clefairy is the sleeper at pop 66.
Is the PSA pop report free?
PSA's official population report now requires an account login. This page — and the full WOTC pop report it belongs to — is free, exact where GemRate chains resolve, and refreshed monthly.
Do pop counts change?
Every month. We snapshot the full grade pyramid monthly, and starting August 2026 the monthly market report publishes the diffs — how many new PSA 10s of each card were minted that month.
Trade the census:every population above links to the card's live price page, the Base Set index prices the whole set daily, and the live deal feed is where underpriced supply surfaces.
