Market Update #1: Blastoise is on fire??
The card market is hot and we're breaking down the most profitable cards you can target right now, including Pokémon 151, Shohei Ohtani, Konnor Griffin, and more.
Pokémon cards are back, Konnor Griffin is the next Shohei Ohtani (based on recent sales), and Shohei Ohtani is still Shohei Ohtani. It’s a great market for card graders right now, and this post will break it all down.
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Sports Card Targets
Right now, the three main guys we’re targeting in sports are:
While Ohtani and Wemby have been top targets for months now (we’ve bought 9 Ohtani cards just this week), Konnor Griffin is the new addition to this list.
After his recent 2 homerun Spring Training game, Griffin’s market has exploded, leading to significant Expected Profitability on his cards. I admit this is a bit of a risky play, as Griffin’s market could rise or fall quite quickly, but the profitability is too strong to ignore.
Pokémon Card Targets
Pokémon is also emerging as a huge area of focus for us. The entire market seems to be trending up, and basically all of the big names are becoming profitable to buy right now. This includes Pikachu, Charizard, Gengar, Umbreon, etc.
Per CardLadder, Pokémon cards are up 15.30% over the last 30 days, which more or less matches what we’re seeing in the market.
The biggest takeaway you should have from this post is that if you’re grading for profit, you need to start paying attention to Pokémon now.
Cards On Our Radar
2025 Topps Basketball Product: This is on my radar, especially Cooper Flagg cards which at some point we will buy tons of. But for now, I’m still waiting for the market to stabilize.
2026 Pokémon Ascended Heroes (English): We’re already targeting some of the Japanese Ascended Heroes cards which released in 2025. We’ll target the English release sometime in the next 2 months.
2023 Pokémon 151: This post will look at the Pokémon 151 Blastoise card that’s skyrocketing right now, but this whole set is surging right now, especially the other Generation 1 Pokémon. I will cover this in detail in a future post, after prices settle.
Other Notes
PSA turnaround times have sped up: Our most recent Value Plus submission popped in just 5 weeks, which is a huge change from just a few months ago.
PSA offers have been very aggressive: After seemingly months of ignoring PSA’s Partner Offers, we’ve accepted more than 20 offers this week.
2025 Downtown Football: After writing this set as a main target of ours, we’ve seen very high pricing on raw cards lately. We didn’t buy any of these this week, but we still have lots of stock being graded with PSA.
Now let’s take a look at some specific cards.
Analysis based on Expected Value (EV). Read the full EV tutorial here.
Expected Value = PSA 10 Value x Gem Rate + PSA 9 Value x (100% - Gem Rate) - Grading Costs - Selling Fees
Profitable Cards To Grade Now
2024 Bowman Chrome Konnor Griffin Refractor #BDC22
Values & Gem Rate
Raw Value | $120
PSA 10 Value | $450
PSA 9 Value | $145
Gem Rate | 55.0%
Profitability
Expected Value | $222.09
Expected Profit | $102.09
Expected ROI | 85.1%
Notes: I highlighted this card during last week’s Konnor Griffin post, but it’s increased in value since then so we’re coming back to it here. I’m seeing a ton of these on the market right now and Expected Profitability is very strong, so this has become a top target of ours. We’ve paid as high as $138 for this card.
2023 Prizm Silver Victor Wembanyama #136
Values & Gem Rate
Raw Value | $500
PSA 10 Value | $1475
PSA 9 Value | $515
Gem Rate | 63.0%
Profitability
Expected Value | $927.37
Expected Profit | $427.37
Expected ROI | 85.5%
Notes: Star power goes a long way with sports cards, and Victor Wembanyama certainly has that. Any time we find a well-centered copy of this card with sharp corners for under $600, it’s an automatic buy. Many of the other Wemby Prizm Parallel cards are also profitable for around market price, so keep an eye on those too.
2025 Mega Gengar ex Mega Dream JP #240
Values & Gem Rate
Raw Value | $310
PSA 10 Value | $690
PSA 9 Value | $340
Gem Rate | 87.2%
Profitability
Expected Value | $440.66*
Expected Profit | $130.66
Expected ROI | 42.1%
Notes: This is from the 2025 Pokémon Ascended Heroes Japan release and has emerged as one of our top targets. Japanese quality control is generally great, and we’re seeing that as most of these are well-centered and sharp leading to very high gem rates.
We’re also seeing plenty of supply of this on the market, which is great for volume buying. We’re looking for these at around $300 and have bought 4 so far.
*Due to the recent release, we applied a 10% Market Adjustment to this card. You can read about this here.
2025 Pikachu ex Mega Dream JP #234
Values & Gem Rate
Raw Value | $180
PSA 10 Value | $485
PSA 9 Value | $215
Gem Rate | 83.2%
Profitability
Expected Value | $294.24*
Expected Profit | $114.24
Expected ROI | 63.5%
Notes: Like the Gengar, this is also from the 2025 Ascended Heroes Japanese set, so the notes from above apply here. We’ll target these for as high as $210 to $220.
*Also applied a 10% Market Adjustment to this card. You can read about this here.
2023 Blastoise ex Pokémon 151 #200
Values & Gem Rate
Raw Value | $235
PSA 10 Value | $900
PSA 9 Value | $270
Gem Rate | 31.2%
Profitability
Expected Value | $345.00*
Expected Profit | $110.00
Expected ROI | 46.8%
Notes: By the time you read this, this card will probably be worth even more. The price increase on this card has been relentless (as I update this article before publishing I am revising market values up again), which has made it tough to actually buy. Market Movers can’t even keep up…
Right now I’d be buying clean copies for as much as $270 (we just got one for $246), but who knows what tomorrow will look like.
*Included 10% PSA 8 probability in EV calculation as this card is more prone to low grades than the others.
2025 Mega Charizard X ex Phantasmal Flames #125
Values & Gem Rate
Raw Value | $775
PSA 10 Value | $1750
PSA 9 Value | $725
Gem Rate | 64.3%
Profitability
Expected Value | $1,097.06
Expected Profit | $322.06
Expected ROI | 41.6%
Notes: Back in January, I wrote about this as one of the most profitable cards you could buy. While the Expected Profitability has come down a bit, this card is still very profitable.
One of the biggest challenges with this card is that it’s often printed on a slant, which makes evaluating the centering tricky. With that said, all three of these that we’ve submitted that have finished grading have graded as PSA 10s, so this hasn’t been a big issue in practice.
We generally evaluate the slant by picking the spot on the card where centering is worst, and measure from there. If it’s close to 55/45, we’re willing to buy. I’ll make a full post covering this soon.
Right now, we’re targeting well-centered copies of these for $800 or less.
2021 Charizard Celebrations Classic Collections #4
Values & Gem Rate
Raw Value | $180
PSA 10 Value | $550
PSA 9 Value | $190
Gem Rate | 60.8%
Profitability
Expected Value | $307.77
Expected Profit | $127.77
Expected ROI | 71.0%
Notes: This is one of our most bought cards lately. Profitability is great, these are abundant on the market, and they grade well. We’re targeting these for $200 or less.
2025 Team Rocket’s Mewtwo ex Destined Rivals #231
Values & Gem Rate
Raw Value | $510
PSA 10 Value | $1,175
PSA 9 Value | $480
Gem Rate | 56.7%
Profitability
Expected Value | $710.26
Expected Profit | $200.26
Expected ROI | 39.3%
Notes: This was one of our huge winners when we first started grading Pokémon, and it’s still a good buy now. These are very profitable and grade well, just beware of centering on these (but that applies to most Pokémon). We like these around $500 to $550.
Honorable Mentions
Drake Maye Prizm Silver #329: Surprisingly still profitable around market price, even after the Super Bowl loss.
2022 Topps Chrome Cal Raleigh Rookie Auto #RACR: Across the board, Raleigh autos are profitable, and have been since last April.
Cynthia’s Garchomp ex Destined Rivals #232: Around 30% Expected ROI with abundant supply on the market.
2018 Topps & Topps Chrome Shohei Ohtani: Wrote about this last week, there are tons of profitable variations of these.
2024 Bowman Chrome Draft Konnor Griffin Auto #CPAKG: Similar ROI to the Bowman Chrome Draft Refractor card, but 7x the price point.
These posts are my absolute favorite!