PSA had graded 93,573 Base Set Unlimited Charizards by March 2, 2026, the newest date for which its grade-by-grade numbers can be read, and just 487 of them are PSA 10s. The Unlimited Charizard PSA population is shaped like a hill, not a pyramid: the biggest piles sit at PSA 6, 7 and 8, and fewer than one slab in ten reaches PSA 9 or better.
Those counts come from an Internet Archive copy of PSA’s price page for the card, which prints the population beside every grade. PSA’s live population report now sits behind a login, so the archive copy is the newest per-grade record we can show. A later headline total exists: Goldin, writing up a PSA 10 for its auction closing in late October 2026, says PSA’s census holds “more than 105,365” of these cards. That is Goldin’s figure, and it comes without a grade split.
As of October 23, 2026: PSA, March 2, 2026 capture: 93,573 slabs, 487 at PSA 10 (0.52%), 8,911 at PSA 9 or better. Goldin’s October lot: more than 105,365. CGC’s live report: 14,977 on the main Unlimited Charizard line. TAG’s live report: 1,472. These are separate tallies of slabs, and they are never added together here as a count of cards.
Unlimited Charizard PSA population, grade by grade
The table is PSA’s own numbers from the March 2, 2026 capture. “Graded higher” is PSA’s Pop Higher column, which counts every slab above that grade, half grades included. The share column is our division of each grade by the 93,573 total.
| Grade | PSA population | Share of all PSA slabs | Graded higher (PSA) |
|---|---|---|---|
| PSA 10 | 487 | 0.5% | 0 |
| PSA 9 | 8,424 | 9.0% | 487 |
| PSA 8 | 15,407 | 16.5% | 9,441 |
| PSA 7 | 15,852 | 16.9% | 24,971 |
| PSA 6 | 16,460 | 17.6% | 40,885 |
| PSA 5 | 14,673 | 15.7% | 57,374 |
| PSA 4 | 9,140 | 9.8% | 72,108 |
| PSA 3 | 5,005 | 5.3% | 81,290 |
| PSA 2 | 3,234 | 3.5% | 86,343 |
| PSA 1.5 | 114 | 0.1% | 89,601 |
| PSA 1 | 3,719 | 4.0% | 89,715 |
| PSA Auth | 85 | 0.1% | 93,488 |
Read down the population column and the shape is obvious. PSA 6 is the single biggest grade at 16,460 slabs, PSA 7 has 15,852 and PSA 8 has 15,407. Add PSA 5 and the four middle grades hold 62,392 slabs, or 66.7% of everything PSA has graded on this card.
The thin ends tell the rest of the story. PSA 1 and PSA 2 together are under a tenth of the population, and only 85 copies came back as “Authentic”, judged genuine but given no number grade. At the top, the 8,424 PSA 9s are a crowd next to the 487 PSA 10s.
Where the 93,573 comes from
PSA’s price page does not print a grand total for the card. It does print, for every row, how many slabs sit above it. The lowest row, Authentic, therefore carries almost the whole population in its Pop Higher column: 93,488 slabs graded above Authentic. Add the 85 Authentic slabs themselves and you get 93,573. That is our arithmetic on PSA’s two numbers, and it lines up with a Goldin lot sold that same month, whose description says PSA’s census held “more than 93,000” copies.
The whole-grade rows on their own add up to 92,600. The other 973 slabs are mostly half grades, which PSA lists in the Pop Higher arithmetic but not as rows of their own (the exception is PSA 1.5, which has a row).
The half grades, worked out from Pop Higher
Because Pop Higher counts everything above a grade, the gap between two neighbouring rows reveals the half grade in between. PSA 8’s Pop Higher is 9,441. Subtract the 487 PSA 10s and the 8,424 PSA 9s and 530 slabs are left: the PSA 8.5s. The same subtraction runs down the ladder.
| Half grade | Derived count | How we got it (PSA’s Pop Higher figures) |
|---|---|---|
| PSA 9.5 | 0 | PSA 9’s Pop Higher equals the 487 PSA 10s exactly |
| PSA 8.5 | 530 | 9,441 minus 487 minus 8,424 |
| PSA 7.5 | 123 | 24,971 minus 9,441 minus 15,407 |
| PSA 6.5 | 62 | 40,885 minus 24,971 minus 15,852 |
| PSA 5.5 | 29 | 57,374 minus 40,885 minus 16,460 |
| PSA 4.5 | 61 | 72,108 minus 57,374 minus 14,673 |
| PSA 3.5 | 42 | 81,290 minus 72,108 minus 9,140 |
| PSA 2.5 | 48 | 86,343 minus 81,290 minus 5,005 |
These are derived counts, not numbers PSA prints, and they total 895. Two more gaps have no half grade to explain them: 24 slabs between PSA 2 and PSA 1.5, and 54 between PSA 1 and Authentic. PSA does not say what they are, so we leave them unlabelled. They are small next to the total, but they show the column is not perfectly tidy.
The useful takeaway is how thin the half grades are on this card. The PSA 8.5 band holds 530 slabs against more than fifteen thousand straight PSA 8s, and every other half grade is in double or low triple digits. For a collector hoping to land a half-point bump, that is a quick read on how rarely PSA hands one out here.
Gem rate: how rare a PSA 10 really is
The gem rate is simply PSA 10s divided by everything graded. On the March capture that is 487 out of 93,573, or 0.52%: one in every 192 Unlimited Charizards sent to PSA came back a 10. Goldin’s two lot descriptions frame it the same way, “slightly more than one-half of 1 percent” in March and “fewer than one-half of one percent” in the October listing, after the total had grown.
Stepping down the ladder:
- PSA 9 or better: 8,911 slabs, 9.5% of the population, about 1 in 10.
- PSA 8 or better (including 8.5s): 26.6%.
- PSA 7 or better: 43.6%.
- PSA 6 or better: 61.3%, which is why the middle slab in the whole population is a PSA 6.
The low gem rate has more than one cause. Unlimited Charizards were opened, played with and traded for years before grading caught on, and condition problems such as off-center printing or a scratched holo keep many clean-looking copies short of a 10. PSA’s report cannot separate those causes; it only records the result. For more on why the very top grade behaves differently in price, see our piece on why PSA 10s rise faster than lower grades.
How fast the count is growing
An earlier archive capture, of PSA’s CardFacts page in August 2025, lets us run the same Pop Higher arithmetic: 82,491 slabs graded above Authentic plus 73 Authentic gives 82,564. By the March 2, 2026 capture the total was 93,573, an increase of 11,009 slabs in roughly six months.
Goldin’s October figure of more than 105,365 is another 11,792 on top of March, though Goldin does not say on what day it read PSA’s census, so the pace between those two points cannot be pinned down. The direction is not in doubt: thousands of Unlimited Charizards are still being submitted every year.
One number went the other way. The August 2025 capture shows 489 PSA 10s; the March 2026 capture shows 487. A population can shrink when owners return labels after cracking a slab, and PSA is candid that the count is imperfect:
“Keep in mind, the pop isn’t 100% perfect. Plenty of collectors will crack out their cards to have them signed, resubmit, or sell raw, and, unless we get that label back, there’s no way for us to know that the population needs to be updated.”
So the population counts grading events that have not been reversed, not individual cards. A card cracked out of a PSA 8 and resubmitted until it gets a 9 can sit in the report twice.
CGC and TAG populations beside PSA
PSA holds by far the largest count among the graders whose reports we could read, but it is not the only one. We read CGC’s and TAG’s public reports on October 23, 2026.
| Grader | Date of count | Unlimited Charizard slabs | Top-grade count | 9 or better |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | March 2, 2026 (archive) | 93,573 | 487 PSA 10 | 9.5% |
| PSA (Goldin’s figure) | October 2026 lot | more than 105,365 | under half of one percent | not given |
| CGC | October 23, 2026 | 14,977 | 297 at 10 (285 Gem Mint, 11 Pristine, 1 Perfect) | 9.8% |
| TAG | October 23, 2026 | 1,472 | 2 TAG 10, no 10 Pristine | 3.5% |
CGC’s top end is thicker than PSA’s: 2.0% of its main-line Unlimited Charizards are at a 10 of some kind, and its biggest bands are 8, 8.5 and 7.5, which together hold 4,940 slabs. CGC also keeps separate lines for the Black Dot Error variant (127 slabs) and a 1999-2000 printing, which we leave out of the main figure. TAG’s report is small and spread wide, with only two 10s.
Different graders, different scales, different pools of submitted cards: a CGC 10 is not a PSA 10, and the two reports cannot be read as one ladder. Our Charizard CGC to PSA crossover guide lines the two reports up percentile by percentile.
Why the graders are not added up
It is tempting to add PSA, CGC and TAG and call the result the number of graded Unlimited Charizards. We don’t, for two reasons. Cards cross between companies, so the same Charizard can appear in two reports, and resubmissions inflate each report on its own. CGC says so directly on its report page: population reports “are not an indicator of value or rarity.” Our all-versions Charizard population page totals slabs across companies for October 6, 2026 (more than 121,716), and labels it as slabs, not cards.
How much of the print run has been graded
Pokemon Pricing estimates that about 3 million Unlimited Charizards were printed, most likely somewhere from 2 million to 4.5 million; the method is in our Unlimited Charizard print estimate. Against that central figure, the March 2026 PSA count is about 3.1% of the print, and Goldin’s October figure about 3.5%.
Put plainly, roughly 97 of every 100 Unlimited Charizards printed have never been in a PSA slab, on our estimate. Many of those were destroyed, lost, or are too worn for anyone to pay a grading fee on, so the real pool of gradable raw copies is far smaller than the print number suggests. Even so, the population will keep climbing for as long as raw copies keep surfacing.
Reading the Unlimited Charizard report yourself
Three habits make the numbers more useful:
- Always date the count. 93,573 is a March 2026 figure; more than 105,365 is an October 2026 figure. Quote a pop number without its date and it is already out of step.
- Use Pop Higher, not just the row. It tells you where a grade ranks in the whole population and lets you derive half grades PSA does not list.
- Keep graders apart. Compare a PSA 9 to other PSA 9s, and use a crossover comparison when you need to line up CGC or TAG.
Our walkthrough of how to read a population report covers the columns in more detail, and the Unlimited Charizard price history shows what each grade has been selling for. For what all 93,573 slabs add up to in dollars, see how much all Unlimited Charizards are worth, and for how many Charizards exist across every version, the Charizard count pillar.
The last row on PSA’s March page is Authentic: 85 slabs, with an average recorded auction price of $240.54, close to what PSA 1 and PSA 2 copies averaged.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many PSA Unlimited Charizards are there?
The newest per-grade PSA figures anyone can read come from a March 2, 2026 archive copy of PSA’s price page, which works out to 93,573 slabs. A Goldin lot listed for its late-October 2026 auction put the count at more than 105,365. PSA’s own live report now needs a login.
How many PSA 10 Base Set Unlimited Charizards exist?
PSA had 487 Unlimited Charizards at Gem Mint 10 in the March 2, 2026 capture, about 0.52% of every Unlimited Charizard it had graded. There was no PSA 9.5 or higher half grade above them.
What is the most common PSA grade for an Unlimited Charizard?
PSA 6, with 16,460 slabs, just ahead of PSA 7 and PSA 8. Grades 5 through 8 together hold 66.7% of the population, and the middle slab in the whole count is a PSA 6.
Do PSA population numbers count unique cards?
No. They count grading results. PSA says a cracked-out card stays in the count unless the label is sent back, and a card that moved between PSA, CGC and TAG can appear in more than one report.
How many Unlimited Charizards has CGC graded?
CGC’s live report on October 23, 2026 listed 14,977 on its main Unlimited Charizard line, with 297 at Gem Mint 10 or above (285 Gem Mint, 11 Pristine, one Perfect). TAG listed 1,472.
What share of Unlimited Charizards have been graded?
On our estimate of about 3 million printed, the March 2026 PSA count is about 3.1% of the print and Goldin’s later figure about 3.5%. The print number is Pokemon Pricing’s estimate, not a Wizards figure.
Sources
- Auction Prices Realized: 1999 Pokemon Game Charizard-Holo (population by grade) — PSA, archived by the Internet Archive, Wayback Machine capture of March 2, 2026
- CardFacts: 1999 Nintendo Pokemon Game Charizard-Holo #4 — PSA, archived by the Internet Archive, Wayback Machine capture of August 28, 2025
- What is the POP Report and how do I use it? — PSA, read October 6, 2026
- Goldin lot: 1999 Pokemon Base Set Holo #4 Charizard PSA Gem MT 10 (Pokemon 30th Anniversary Auction) — Goldin, lot page read October 6, 2026
- Goldin lot: 1999 Pokemon Base Set Holo #4 Charizard PSA Gem MT 10 (sold March 2026) — Goldin, lot page read October 23, 2026
- Population Report: Base Set Unlimited (English) — CGC Cards, read October 23, 2026
- Population Report disclaimer — CGC Cards, read October 6, 2026
- Pop Report: 1999 WOTC Pokemon Base Set — TAG Grading, read October 23, 2026
- How many Base Set Unlimited Charizards were printed in total? — Pokemon Pricing, read October 23, 2026
Population figures are snapshots of each grading company’s report on the date shown. Total-value figures on this page are Pokemon Pricing’s arithmetic (copies times a published price), labelled as such: no one could sell every copy at those prices at once. Sale prices are single dated results. This article is collector information, not investment advice. Pokémon and all card names are trademarks of Nintendo, Creatures Inc. and GAME FREAK inc.; Pokemon Pricing is not affiliated with them or with any grading company.