Kusajima's Quiet Premium: 202 Cards, One Modest Markup
Hajime Kusajima's catalog carries a 1.03x premium across 202 cards, and the money still concentrates in a handful of vintage holos rather than anything recent.
KEY POINTS
- ›Hajime Kusajima trades at a 1.03x premium across 202 tracked cards
- ›Priciest tracked card: Mew at $411.66
Let's talk about an artist who doesn't need to shout. Hajime Kusajima has 202 cards in the pool carrying his name, and the premium on the whole body of work sits at 1.03x. That's not a number that gets anyone excited on its own. It's barely above parity. But averages hide the interesting part, which is where the actual dollars are sitting.
At the top of the pile is Mew from Expedition Base Set, a Holo Rare marked at 411.66. That's the single priciest Kusajima card in this snapshot, and it's not close. Right behind it, Houndoom from Aquapolis sits at 399.99, another Holo Rare from the e-Card era. Then Gyarados δ out of Holon Phantoms at 349.99, also Holo Rare.
What's notable here isn't one hot card, it's the era. Steelix from Aquapolis is at 299.95, Muk from the same set is at 261.66. That's three Aquapolis Holo Rares in the top eight, all from Kusajima's brush, all still commanding real money years after the set stopped mattering competitively. Ninetales δ from Dragon Frontiers checks in at 251.55, Arcanine from Sandstorm at 246.49, and Milotic, a Shiny Holo Rare from Supreme Victors, rounds out the list at 240.08.
The pattern across this list is vintage-to-mid-era holos holding value on the strength of the illustration work itself, not on tournament relevance or recent hype. A 1.03x premium on 202 cards means the market isn't pricing Kusajima as a brand the way it prices some other artists. It's pricing individual cards on their own merits, and the merits happen to cluster in Aquapolis and Expedition-era holos. That's a collector's read, not a speculator's read. Nobody's chasing this for a quick flip. They're chasing it because the artwork from that stretch of sets has aged well and the print runs from back then weren't exactly generous.
I'd watch whether that 1.03x premium starts moving. Right now it's flat enough to suggest the market treats these as individual holdings rather than a cohesive named set. If that changes, it'll show up in the multiplier before it shows up anywhere else.
Numbers from the TickerMint pipeline. Every call is recorded with its entry price the moment it publishes; scores land at 7, 30, and 90 days on the scoreboard.
CARDS IN THIS BRIEF
