What is my Pokemon card worth?
A practical guide. Work through it in order, because step one decides everything after it.
1. Identify the exact card, not the Pokemon
The single most common pricing mistake is looking up a species instead of a card. There are hundreds of distinct Charizards, and they range from a couple of dollars to five figures. Before you look up anything, get four facts off the card itself.
- The name exactly as printed, including the suffix. Charizard, Charizard ex, Charizard EX, Charizard GX, Charizard V, Charizard VMAX and Charizard VSTAR are seven different cards.
- The collector number, bottom corner, printed as something like 4/102. That fraction is the fastest way to pin the exact card, and modern secret rares carry a number higher than the denominator, which is itself a price signal.
- The set. The set symbol sits next to the number on most modern cards. If you cannot read it, the copyright year on the bottom edge narrows the era fast.
- The language. A Japanese card is a different card from its English counterpart, with a different market and often a very different price.
2. Check for the print variations that move the price
Two cards can share a name, a number and a set and still be worth wildly different amounts, because the printing differs. The ones worth checking every time:
- First Edition. A small stamp on the left of the artwork on older sets. Its presence or absence can change the value by an order of magnitude.
- Shadowless. On the earliest Base Set print run, the right edge of the artwork frame has no drop shadow. Easy to miss, expensive to miss.
- Holo, reverse holo, or plain. The holo pattern on the artwork versus a shine across the rest of the card versus neither. These are separate listings at separate prices, and reverse holos are often worth several times the plain version of the same card.
- Promo stamps. Prerelease stamps, staff stamps, championship stamps and black star promos are their own market. A stamp is not a defect and it is not decoration, it is part of the card's identity.
- Errors and misprints. Real, documented error prints have their own following. Most things that look like an error are just a bad cut or ink smudge, which is damage, not rarity.
3. Judge condition the way a grader would
Sellers use "near mint" loosely. Graders do not. Put the card under a bright light, look at it from an angle, and check four things in this order, because this is roughly the order that costs you money.
- Centering. Compare the border width top to bottom and left to right, front and back. Off-centre is the most common reason a flawless-looking card grades a 9 instead of a 10, and it is the one flaw you cannot improve.
- Surface. Tilt the card into the light. Print lines, scratches, a scuff across the holo, or a faint dent from being pressed in a binder will all show up at an angle and be invisible flat on.
- Edges. Look for whitening along the edges, especially on dark-bordered cards where a hairline of white shows instantly.
- Corners. Under magnification, a corner that looks sharp to the naked eye is often slightly rounded or feathered.
Be pessimistic. Most people overrate their own cards by roughly a full grade, and the correction always arrives at the worst moment: when a buyer is looking at it, or when the slab comes back.
4. Decide whether you are pricing raw or graded
A raw card and the same card in a PSA 10 slab are two different products with two different markets. Do not price a raw card off graded sales and then be disappointed. Price the thing you actually have. If you are trying to decide whether to change which of the two you have, that is the grading question, and it is a separate calculation.
5. Read sold prices, never asking prices
An asking price is one person's opinion, and anybody can list a common card for a thousand dollars. A sold price is two people agreeing. Only sold data tells you what a card is worth.
When you look at the sales, look at the shape of them, not just the last number:
- How recent? A sale from eight months ago in a market that has moved is a historical fact, not a price.
- How many? One sale is an anecdote. A card that sells several times a week has a real price; a card that sells twice a year has a range.
- How tight? If recent sales cluster within a few percent, the value is that cluster. If they are scattered across a wide band, the honest answer is a range, and anyone quoting a precise figure is guessing.
- Same card? Check that each comp is your exact print, your exact grade, and your exact language before you count it.
6. Work out what you would actually keep
The market value is not what lands in your pocket. Selling online costs a marketplace fee and payment processing, plus shipping, plus packaging, plus the fraction of sales that go wrong. Selling to a dealer at a show is fast and certain and pays less, and that gap is the price of speed and certainty. Both are legitimate. Just do the subtraction before you decide which one you are unhappy about.
7. Where this app helps
OneZeroTwo does step five for you and shows its work; step six stays yours, because only you know which way you are selling. Search the card name with its number and you get the value for the grade you pick, computed from sold-price history rather than listings, with the comps it used shown underneath so you can check them yourself. Recent-sale clustering, sale frequency and the spread are all folded into a confidence read, and a card without enough recent sales is marked illiquid instead of being given a falsely precise number. Active eBay listings are shown too, in their own panel, clearly labeled as asking prices so you can see the gap between what people want and what people pay.