This issue's quiz card is the 2015 XY Ancient Origins Porygon-Z #67 holo in PSA 10, loaded in our $100 machine with a mark of $641. It is a regular holo rare from a 2015 set, worth a couple of dollars raw, and PSA has graded eighteen copies a 10.
Three price shapes, revisited
We have now looked at the three shapes a graded card's price can take. The vintage common (the Base Set Pikachu, the Skyridge Nidoran reverse): worthless raw, scarce in 10, the grade is the whole price. The modern chase (the Sylveon VMAX alt art): valuable in any grade, 14,000 10s, population barely matters. The handled promo (the CD Promo Charizard): valuable in every grade with a cliff above 8. The Porygon-Z is the first shape wearing a 2015 date.
Why XY holos gem so rarely
The 2014-2016 XY sets used a holo foil that is notorious among graders: it scratches in the pack, it shows print lines under angled light, and the cards were cut with loose tolerances. Chase cards from those sets have large 10 populations only because thousands were submitted; the regular holos were not submitted at all, because nobody grades a $2 Porygon-Z unless they are building a gem-mint set. The result is populations in the teens on hundreds of XY-era holos, and a market of set builders who need exactly one of each.
What the 10 is worth and why
$641 is the price of being one of eighteen. The 9 of this card is a few dollars, because a 9 is a nice copy of a card nobody needs a nice copy of; only the 10 completes a gem-mint set. That is the vintage-common shape exactly, and it is why a 2015 card sits next to 1999 commons in the way it is priced.
The practical version
If you own raw XY-era holos, grading them is a long shot with a low hit rate and, since September 14, a five-month wait on the $59.99 Standard tier or four months on Priority. The expected value is poor unless you have screened for foil scratches under a loupe. If you want the card for a set, buy the existing 10 and pay the population premium; it is cheaper than grading six copies to find one. And if you are wondering why a Porygon-Z is in a $100 machine, this is why.
Grade Expectations ran in The Pack Report, October 1, 2026: The Index Is Back: Vintage +5.2% in Sixteen Days. Published by Rip Station.