Pokemon card value FAQ
A Pokemon card's value is what the same card in the same grade has recently sold for. This page answers sixteen questions about reading that number, including the two accuracy figures behind it: the next-sale estimate lands within about 2 to 3 percent median error on liquid cards, and the 3-month projection at about 16 percent. Updated 2026-09-27.
What is my Pokemon card worth?
It depends on the exact print you own, its condition, and whether it is graded. Search the card name and its printed number here and you will get the current value for the grade you pick, along with the sold prices that value was worked out from. If you are not sure which print you have, read the guide on identifying a card before you trust any number.
Is the price a guarantee?
No. Every number on this site is an estimate computed from public market data, and it can be wrong. It is not an offer, not an appraisal, and not financial advice. Treat it as the best available read on where a card has been trading, then verify before you buy, sell or trade.
Where do the prices actually come from?
Sold-price history from PriceCharting is the backbone, and it is what every value, trend and projection is computed from. eBay active listings are shown separately as asking prices and are deliberately kept out of that analysis. Card identity comes from the open PokemonTCG/pokemon-tcg-data dataset, synced into a local index on the server.
Why is the eBay number different from the value?
Because they measure different things. The eBay panel shows what sellers are currently asking, and asking prices routinely sit above what cards actually sell for. The value is computed from sales that already happened. Mixing the two would systematically overvalue a collection, so the app keeps them in separate panels.
Should I grade my card?
Grade when the spread between the raw value and the value at the grade you will realistically receive comfortably clears the total cost of grading, and when you are honest about the grade you will actually get. Centering is the usual reason a card that looks perfect comes back a 9. The grading guide walks through the arithmetic.
Which grading companies do you show?
PSA, CGC and BGS, with PSA as the primary grade. When you select a tier such as PSA 10, every graded source shows that same tier. PriceCharting's graded history is mostly PSA, so where CGC or BGS data is thin the PSA figure is shown as a proxy and is labeled as one.
Does it work for Japanese, Chinese and Korean promos?
Yes, through a separate path. The English card catalog does not contain them, so regional promos are found through a local index of regional listings and matched on the exact printed promo number. The match has to be exact, because a Japanese promo and its English counterpart can share a name and still be different cards at different prices.
Do you store my card photos?
No, never. A photo you scan is processed in memory and then dropped. It is never written to disk and never written to the database. The scan log has no column that could hold image bytes or text read from a photo, and the test suite fails the build if one is ever added.
Is there a free plan?
Yes. Free knows and keeps, Plus prices with confidence, Pro runs the table. Without any account you can search and see the current value of any card at any grade, keep a small tray of cards on the device you are using, and read a year of price history. Free adds the trend read and the 3-month call, a synced collection of up to 100 cards, a watchlist of 3, 3 photo scans a day, a sales ledger with no per-plan cap on rows, and 1 dealer day pass and 1 FlipFinder run every 30 days. Plus raises that to 25 scans a day, 1000 cards, 25 watchlist entries, the buyer and seller deal modes with no pass needed, and 4 dealer day passes and 3 FlipFinder runs every 30 days. A dealer day pass opens, for 24 hours at a time, whatever your plan does not already include: on Free that is the buyer and seller deal modes, the trade evaluator, Show Mode and lot pricing with printed offer sheets, and on Plus it is the trade evaluator, Show Mode and lot pricing with printed offer sheets, which are otherwise Pro only. FlipFinder is not part of a day pass: it is metered separately, as a number of runs a month. Pro never needs a pass and adds 200 scans a day, unlimited cards in your collection, unlimited watchlist entries, FlipFinder with no monthly count, the tax export of your sales ledger, CSV export of your own data, and Pokemon color themes. Set performance is cut short by plan rather than locked: Free sees the top 3 of 15 top cards of any set, Plus sees all 15, and Pro sees all 15 and can refresh a set on demand. Fair-use ceilings apply to every plan: 5000 cards, 1000 watchlist entries, 20000 ledger rows. Current prices are shown on the Stripe checkout page, which is the authoritative source for them.
How much of a set's performance can I see on each plan?
Set performance reads a set through its top 15 PSA 10 cards. Without an account you get the set list only. Free sees the top 3 of 15 with the set verdict and the index chart, and is told how many of the ones it is not shown the model calls undervalued or overvalued. Plus sees all 15. Pro sees all 15 and can refresh a set on demand instead of waiting for the cache, 5 times a day. Opening different sets is subject to a daily fair-use limit: 5 a day on Free, 25 on Plus, 100 on Pro, and re-opening one you already looked at today never counts again. Nothing is blurred or invented: what you are shown is the same analysis everyone else sees, cut short, and the set verdict and the price index are computed from all 15 cards for every account.
Do I need an account to look up a card?
No. Card search and price lookup are open to anyone. An account is needed only for the things that have to be saved to you: your collection, your watchlist and alerts, your sales ledger, and the photo scanner.
How often do prices update?
A lookup fetches current data at the moment you run it, so the number you see is as fresh as the source is. Beyond that, the app accumulates the sold comps it sees over time, so a card you check regularly builds a deeper history than any single fetch would return. There is no fixed nightly update you have to wait for.
How accurate is the 3-month projection?
Roughly 16 percent median error in a walk-forward backtest, with direction correct a bit under 60 percent of the time. That is useful as a lean, not as a promise. It is a separate number from the nowcast, which estimates the next sale price and lands within roughly 2 to 3 percent median error on liquid cards. The two accuracy figures are not interchangeable.
Can I export my collection and my sales?
Recording and reading a sales ledger is free on every account, with no per-plan cap on rows. Fair-use ceilings apply to every plan: 5000 cards, 1000 watchlist entries, 20000 ledger rows. The EXPORTS are Pro: the collection and watchlist as CSV, and the sales ledger as a spreadsheet for the year, which is what you want at tax time: what you paid, what you sold it for, and when. Where a cost basis is unknown it is reported as unknown rather than silently entered as zero, because a zero basis quietly overstates your gain. Nothing is locked away on the other plans: everything you entered stays visible inside the app.
How do I delete my account?
You can delete your account yourself at any time, with the Delete account button at the bottom of the Account page in the app. If you pay for a plan, deleting your account means your subscription is cancelled at Stripe right away, rather than at the end of the billing period, and nothing is refunded.
Can I price a sealed booster box or an elite trainer box?
No. The app is built for single cards, and the matching logic deliberately refuses to let a sealed product match a single card. That guard exists because a sealed box matched to a card produces a confidently wrong price, which is the worst possible failure for a pricing tool.
Still stuck?
The long guides go deeper: what is my Pokemon card worth, should I grade my Pokemon card and which price app to use. For the method behind the numbers, read how it works.