Ash's Original Team as an Investment Portfolio

Every 90s kid can recite the roster: Pikachu on the shoulder, Butterfree released to the wild, Pidgeotto forever mid-evolution, Bulbasaur, Squirtle, and the lizard that stopped listening. All six had cards in the 1999 Base Set and Jungle print runs. So here's the thought experiment your inner ten-year-old deserves: had you assembled Ash's original team in PSA 10 back when graded Pokémon was a punchline, how would that binder page have performed against the two most respectable things your parents could have bought instead, the S&P 500 and gold?

$15,502the team in PSA 10sum of six median gems · five at July 27, 2026, Butterfree at September 22

~10–20%/yrflagship CAGR since the mid-2010sPSA 10 Base Charizard, documented range

~13%/yrS&P 500 total return, same decadeapproximate, dividends reinvested

~11%/yrgold, same decadeapproximate

The roster

Six childhood memories, priced as assets

The team's value today is violently top-heavy, and one card carries almost all of it. Charizard is the engine: $12,863 for an unlimited Base Set PSA 10 on fifteen recent sales, which is 83% of the whole team. Butterfree, the Jungle 33/64 uncommon nobody chased in 1999, reads a $442 PSA 10 median on 23 recorded sales at our September 22, 2026 snapshot, and its PSA 9 median is $65.88 on 47. The remaining four, Pikachu and the two Kanto starters plus the bird, combine for barely $2,200. Pidgeotto, the most loyal bird in animation history, is worth less in a gem slab than a modern booster case.

Ash's team, PSA 10 medians (July 27, 2026; Butterfree September 22, 2026)

Team member	Card	PSA 10	Sales n	PSA 9
Charizard	Base Set 4/102	$12,863	15	excluded, comp-mixed
Butterfree	Jungle 33/64	$442	23	$65.88
Pikachu	Base Set 58/102	$999	10	$83
Squirtle	Base Set 63/102	$570	3 (thin)	$105
Pidgeotto	Base Set 22/102	$325	2 (thin)	$43
Bulbasaur	Base Set 44/102	$303	2 (thin)	$120

The team, every card links to live pricing

PSA 10

CharizardBase Set 4/102PSA 10 · $12,863The engine: 83% of team value on its own

PSA 10

ButterfreeJungle 33/64PSA 10 · $442 (n=23)The uncommon: deep comps, ordinary money

PSA 10

PikachuBase Set 58/102PSA 10 · $999The mascot, modestly priced

PSA 10

SquirtleBase Set 63/102PSA 10 · $570

PSA 10

BulbasaurBase Set 44/102PSA 10 · $303

PSA 10

PidgeottoBase Set 22/102PSA 10 · $325

The race

Charizard vs. the S&P vs. gold

The clean comparison uses the flagship, because it's the one card with a documented early market. By contemporaneous auction reporting, a PSA 10 unlimited Base Set Charizard could be had for roughly $2,000–$5,000 in the mid-2010s, when graded Pokémon was still a niche. Against the $12,863 median we recorded on July 27, 2026, a ten-year hold works out to roughly 10% a year if you paid the top of that range, and roughly 20% a year if you caught the bottom. Over the same ten years the S&P 500 returned approximately 13% annually with dividends reinvested and gold roughly 11%, both rounded public figures for the decade ending mid-2026 rather than anything we measure ourselves. Buy the dip of the range and the lizard beat both handily; pay the top and it merely kept pace with the greatest equity bull market of the modern era, while being a picture of a dragon.

Approximate annualized returns, mid-2010s → 2026

Charizard range reflects the documented $2,000–$5,000 mid-2010s entry; benchmarks approximate

PSA 10 Charizard (bottom of range)

20%/yr

S&P 500 (total return)

13%/yr

Gold

11%/yr

PSA 10 Charizard (top of range)

10%/yr

What the team teaches

Three durable lessons hide in the nostalgia. One: franchise flagships behave like fine art, the documented Charizard decade sits between 10 and 20% a year, bracketing both benchmarks. Two: there is no sleeper on this roster. Butterfree reads $442 in PSA 10 on 23 recorded sales and Pikachu $999; the nostalgia bid for the supporting cast never turned into money, and the same population mechanics our grade-ladder study measures explain why: a 1999 uncommon with a deep comp record is not scarce. Three: diversification inside a theme doesn't work like diversification in an index, five of six team slots produced trinket money. Only the engine has a documented entry price, so only the engine can be raced against a benchmark at all; the other five are priced today and nowhere else.

PSA 10/9 figures are median recorded eBay sale prices from moonstone graded market data, with sample sizes shown. The five Base Set members are the medians we held on July 27, 2026: Squirtle (n=3), Pidgeotto and Bulbasaur (n=2) are thin samples and should be read as indicative, and Charizard's PSA 9 median is excluded as comp-mixed (shadowless/1st Edition listings polluting the unlimited window). CORRECTION, 2026-09-22: the Butterfree row originally pointed at /card/base2-12, which is Jungle VAPOREON, and carried a $20,150 PSA 10 median that no reading in our graded record supports for either card. Ash's Butterfree is Jungle 33/64 (/card/base2-33), an uncommon, and its recorded medians are $442 in PSA 10 on 23 sales and $65.88 in PSA 9 on 47, read on September 22, 2026; our graded snapshot tape does not reach back to July 2026 for this card, so that row alone carries a September date. The mid-2010s Charizard entry range ($2,000–$5,000) reflects widely reported contemporaneous auction results, not our own records, and is presented as a range for that reason. Benchmark returns (S&P 500 total return ≈13%/yr, gold ≈11%/yr for the ten years ending mid-2026) are rounded public figures from general market reporting, not a series we hold; they are approximate by construction and are not a like-for-like window against any card series we publish. 'The team' uses each member's 1999-print Base Set/Jungle card in unlimited printing. Nothing here is financial advice: Pidgeotto never forgave Ash either.