Pikachu Crosses 200K Submissions in a Single Month as One Piece Luffy Outpaces Ohtani
April's GemRate report is out and the headline is historic: 201,100 Pikachu cards graded in a single month, the first time any character has cleared 200K. Meanwhile One Piece's Luffy outpaced Shohei Ohtani by 60 percent.
The April GemRate report dropped this week and the headline numbers tell you exactly where the hobby's attention has moved. For the first time in industry history, a single character cleared 200,000 graded submissions in a single month. The character is not Mickey Mantle. It is not Michael Jordan. It is Pikachu, with 201,100 Pikachu cards submitted in April 2026.
Pikachu Crosses the 200K Submission Line
The driver is no mystery. April brought the global launch of the 2026 McDonald's Promo set and the rollout of the Destined Rivals expansion, both of which feature multiple Pikachu prints across regular, holo, and promo variants. PSA, CGC, and SGC all reported elevated Pokemon volume, but PSA absorbed the lion's share thanks to its dominant share in TCG.
What 200K Submissions in a Month Looks Like in Practice
- Roughly 6,700 Pikachu cards per day being slabbed across the three majors.
- Enough volume that population thresholds for individual Pikachu prints are now moving fast enough to materially affect price within a single quarter.
- Continued downward pressure on the per-grade premium for common-pull Pikachu cards, even as the high-art versions hold value.
One Piece TCG: Luffy Eclipses Ohtani
The other headline is on the One Piece side. Monkey D. Luffy logged 53,800 submissions in April, roughly 60 percent higher than Shohei Ohtani over the same window. Luffy is now functionally a permanent fixture in the top 20 most-graded characters across all categories, and One Piece's overall grading share has been climbing steadily since Bandai went to a simultaneous worldwide release model with OP-15.
What this means: One Piece is no longer a fringe TCG category for graders. The combination of OP-15's worldwide release and the upcoming OP-16 in late May will keep Luffy and Zoro pop counts moving for the rest of the year.
Reading the Tea Leaves for the Rest of 2026
A few takeaways from the April numbers that should inform how collectors think about the rest of the year:
- TCG continues to lead sports in raw grading volume, a trend that has been accelerating since Q3 2025.
- One Piece has stabilized as a top-five category across the three majors and looks unlikely to give that back even if the secondary market cools.
- Modern Pokemon supply pressure is going to keep flooding the slabbed market, which means the gap between common slabbed cards and high-art chases will likely widen, not narrow.
The May 2026 GemRate report drops in early June and will tell us whether Pikachu can hold the 200K monthly line two months in a row. With Mega Evolution Chaos Rising hitting shelves on May 22, the smart money says yes.