The Spreadsheet Found Value Hiding in an Espeon. A Golett Found Something Else Entirely.

Welcome to Staten News, where a $309 Espeon and a $12 Golett are both telling collectors the exact same thing, and almost nobody is listening to either one.

The model says four Special Illustration Rares are underpriced by collectors who should know better, but the cards actually moving this week cost less than lunch.

Per Collectrics data, Espeon ex #155 from Prismatic Evolutions is sitting at a market price of $309.39 against a fair-value model of $380.57. That’s a $71.18 gap—the single largest discount on the entire board right now.

It’s not alone.

Team Rocket’s Moltres ex from Destined Rivals is undervalued by $67.75. Pikachu ex from Ascended Heroes by $67.25. Jolteon ex, also from Prismatic Evolutions, by $56.31.

Four Special Illustration Rares.

Four different sets.

All flashing the same signal: the model thinks the market is wrong, and the market hasn’t corrected yet.

Here’s why that matters more than it sounds.

Espeon ex scores a 9.5 on scarcity and a 7.9 on appeal—the kind of combination that usually closes a gap like this quickly.

Prismatic Evolutions launched more than a year ago. This isn’t a fresh chase card still discovering its price. It’s an established, heavily collected card sitting 23% below where the model says it should trade, with no obvious catalyst explaining the discount.

Last week’s biggest mover—and it’s not a chase card at all.

Golett, an Illustration Rare from Black Bolt, posted a +163.3% increase in demand pressure, the largest swing on the board. Ungraded copies sit at $12.13.

Sawk from White Flare followed at +158.6%, also trading for under $15 raw.

Neither card has a Special Illustration Rare ceiling.

Neither one is going to anchor a master set.

That’s not a coincidence.

That’s the floor of the market moving while everyone’s attention stays fixed on the SIR wall.

Translation: two completely different mechanisms are firing at once.

The high-end SIRs are underpriced relative to scarcity and appeal—the kind of gap that closes through slow accumulation by collectors who already know what they’re looking at.

The low-end Illustration Rares are getting hit by pure demand pressure, the kind of spike that often shows up before prices catch up.

One is a value play.

The other is a momentum play.

They aren’t the same trade, and treating them like they are is how collectors end up overpaying for the wrong cards.

The set-level story underneath all of it:

Per Collectrics data, Crown Zenith still holds the highest raw pack-rip value in the format at $11.33 per pack, ahead of Scarlet & Violet 151 ($10.27) and Ascended Heroes ($7.25).

Crown Zenith is now more than three years old.

The fact that a set this far beyond its release window still delivers more expected value than anything currently on shelves says a lot about how modern pull rates compare with earlier releases.

The grading data reinforces that story.

Perfect Order posts the highest average PSA 10 gem rate at 74%, but from a relatively small sample of 2,087 graded cards.

Ascended Heroes sits at 62.8% across nearly 47,000 graded copies—a far more meaningful sample.

Meanwhile, Mega Evolution, the original base set in the current block, has grown into the largest graded population at 288,900 cards with a 59.3% gem rate.

More copies in circulation usually mean tighter spreads and fewer grading arbitrage opportunities.

That’s exactly what’s showing up here.

Mega Latias ex #181 is undervalued by $55.38 on the model while simultaneously posting rising demand pressure—two different indicators pointing in the same direction on a set old enough that most collectors would assume the easy money has already been made.

This week’s calendar anchor:

Mega Evolution: Pitch Black releases July 17, headlined by Mega Darkrai ex.

Watch whether demand pressure on the current Mega Evolution cards begins cooling as collector dollars shift toward prerelease allocations.

Late-cycle sets usually do one of two things:

They get one final push from completionists...

Or they quietly lose attention to whatever comes next.

The data hasn’t picked a winner yet.

This is the week the spreadsheet and the hype cycle are pointing in two different directions.

Only one of them is going to be right.

This is not financial advice. Always do your own research before buying, selling, or grading collectibles.

— The Bandicoots 🎴📊