Two May 2026 storylines are competing for the hobby's attention, and at face value they don't fit on the same page. Athlon Sports and Cardlines have been amplifying a "Junk Wax 2.0" overproduction thesis, citing reported figures of roughly 429.7 million cards produced for 2025-26 Topps Basketball with base print runs near 1.26 million copies per player. Meanwhile, GemRate's April 2026 recap just clocked an all-time monthly grading record of 3.10 million cards, up roughly 43% year-over-year, and Fanatics Live tracked its biggest GMV month on record.
Both data sets are real. The disagreement isn't factual — it's a framing problem. "Junk Wax 2.0" treats the modern market as one undifferentiated pile of cardboard. The April data shows a sharply bifurcated market in which dollars and demand concentrate at the top while softness sits in a specific, identifiable slice. Conflating the two produces a tidy headline and a bad investment posture.
The demand side, audited
GemRate's April 2026 report is the cleanest demand signal available. Total cards graded across major TPGs hit 3.10 million — a new all-time high, up roughly 4% month-over-month and about 43% year-over-year against roughly 2.17 million in April 2025. PSA processed 2.21 million, CGC about 690,000 (up 102% YoY), Beckett 97,000, and TAG 48,000. That follows March's 2.97 million, which itself was up about 50% YoY. This is a trendline, not a one-month spike.
The athlete-level data is where the bifurcation starts to show. In April, Shohei Ohtani led with 33,600 graded submissions (up 10% MoM), Cooper Flagg followed at 30,700 (up 18%), Michael Jordan sat at 28,600, and Drake Maye at 16,300. Flagg's 2025 Topps #201 alone surged 76% month-over-month to 7,400 graded — GemRate's highest single-month volume for any modern card in over two years.
Pokemon mirrors the same pattern at the character level. Pikachu hit 201,100 graded submissions in April — the first time any single character has cleared 200,000 in a month — driven by the 2026 McDonald's Promo and Destined Rivals release. The Destined Rivals set has been the volume driver underneath that submission spike.
The auction-side and live-commerce numbers reinforce it. Fanatics Live averaged $17,867 GMV per stream in April 2026, against $8,255 in September 2024, and the platform is on a roughly $928 million full-year 2026 pace versus $561 million in 2025 — about a 65% increase. At the high end, an Aaron Judge 2013 Bowman Chrome Superfractor Auto BGS 9.5 sold for $5.2 million via Fanatics Collect private sale on March 12, 2026, and Logan Paul's Pikachu Illustrator PSA 10 hit $16.49 million at Goldin in February 2026.
The supply side, audited
The Athlon and Cardlines overproduction figures aren't fabricated — but they measure something narrower than the headline suggests. The 429.7 million-card total and the 1.26-million-per-base print run for 2025-26 Topps Basketball describe the volume of non-numbered base cards. They don't describe the print runs on numbered parallels, autographs, or 1/1s — and those are the SKUs that actually move the dollar volume in modern product.
That distinction is the core of the Cardlines counterargument: Fanatics is running a margin-and-scarcity model, not a 1989-94 volume model. Hobby boxes priced between $150 and $1,200 are engineered to make the base abundant and the hits scarce. The 1991 analogy assumed mass-volume cardboard priced for kids at drugstore counters. The 2025-26 product is priced and structured to extract margin from a smaller, older, higher-income buyer who is paying primarily for the chase, not the common.
Print-on-demand is its own category. Cooper Flagg's NBA Topps NOW ROTY card printed 208,735 copies — the set's most popular card ever. That number looks alarming next to a vintage rookie's print run, but on-demand printing isn't sealed-wax overproduction. Every copy was paid for by an end buyer at the point of order. It's a demand artifact, not a warehouse problem.
Where the softness actually lives
Cardlines' retail analysis documents the specific slice that is weak: retail blasters, retail-exclusive parallels such as Pink Ice (down roughly 20%), and non-numbered modern base for non-elite stars (also reported down roughly 20% in resale, in the Paul George / Nolan Arenado tier). This is the part of the market where supply genuinely outruns aftermarket demand.
If you read "Junk Wax 2.0" as "unnumbered modern base and retail-exclusive parallels for mid-tier veterans are oversupplied," the thesis is defensible. If you read it as "the modern hobby is in a 1991-style collapse," the April data doesn't support that.
Where the dollars actually concentrate
Three buckets are doing the heavy lifting. First, modern rookie premium: Flagg's top Bowman sale via eBay best offer hit $12,998, with 1/1 Superfractor Auto offers above $100,000, and the 2024 Bowman Chrome University Superfractor Auto 1/1 sold for $97,600. Second, vintage and modern blue-chips: the Judge Superfractor at $5.2 million, plus Ohtani and Jordan as steady volume leaders in April's GemRate report. Third, Pokemon — the Pikachu Illustrator record and the Destined Rivals SIR chase cards have absorbed an enormous amount of grading and resale capital.
The pattern is consistent: numbered, scarce, or culturally anchored product is clearing. Common, retail-tier modern product is not. That's bifurcation, not collapse.
Why 1991 isn't the right analogy
The 1989-94 era was defined by sealed-wax volume sold to a mass retail buyer at low unit prices, with the assumption that every card would appreciate. The 2025-26 product is sold to a narrower, higher-spend buyer at $150-$1,200 per box, with the explicit understanding that base cards are filler and the hits carry the value. The economics of who buys, what they buy, and what they pay are different enough that pattern-matching to 1991 obscures more than it reveals.
The risk that does rhyme with 1991 is concentrated in retail-channel product and unnumbered base for non-marquee names. That's a real risk worth pricing in. It is not the same as a market-wide reckoning.
The collector takeaway
If you're buying retail blasters of mid-tier veterans hoping for resale appreciation, the supply data is against you and "Junk Wax 2.0" is the right frame for your slice. If you're buying numbered parallels, autos, and 1/1s of marquee rookies, vintage blue-chips, or Pokemon chase cards, April's grading and GMV records describe your slice — and the trendline is up.
The mistake on both sides of the debate is treating the modern market as one thing. It isn't, and the April data is the cleanest evidence of that to date.
What to watch next
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May and June GemRate volume — does the 43% YoY trendline hold, or was April a Flagg-and-Pikachu-driven peak?
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Fanatics Live GMV per stream — sustained $17,000+ averages would confirm the demand-side strength isn't a release-calendar artifact.
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Post-NBA Finals Flagg pricing — rookie pricing typically compresses or expands sharply after the playoff run.
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Destined Rivals secondary supply — how the SIR chase cards absorb into the aftermarket over the next two months.
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Retail blaster and Pink Ice pricing — does the roughly 20% softness widen, signaling the oversupply slice is growing?
Related reading
Sources
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The Hobby Booms: A Record-Breaking April for Card Grading (GemRate April 2026 recap)
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March GemRate Report: PSA, TCG & Rookie Hype Drive Record Card Month (Sports Illustrated)
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Sports Cards Market Growth 2026: From $10B to Junk Wax Era Warnings (Athlon Sports)
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Card Production Surge: Is Junk Wax 2.0 Unstoppable? (Cardlines)
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Cooper Flagg's Top Card Sales From Newly-Released Bowman Basketball (Sports Illustrated)
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Cooper Flagg ROTY Card Breaks NBA Topps NOW Print Run Record (Topps Ripped)
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Pokémon TCG Value Watch: Destined Rivals in March 2026 (Bleeding Cool)
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April 2026 Collectibles Market Outlook: Record March Sales + New Releases (Yardbarker)
Note: This article contains AI-assisted content and has been reviewed in our editorial workflow.
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