How Card Prices Are Set, and Why Price Guides Disagree

Look up the same card on three different price guides and you'll often get three different numbers. Sometimes they're close; sometimes one is double another. That doesn't mean two of them are wrong. Each price is an honest answer to a slightly different question. This guide explains where card prices come from, why the sources disagree, and how to use a price guide (including ours) without getting caught out on a trade.

A card has no single price

A trading card has no list price. Nobody sets one centrally after a set's release. The "price" is what a willing buyer and a willing seller agreed on, and that agreement happens thousands of times a day across many marketplaces, in different countries, for copies in different conditions, sometimes graded and sometimes not.

Every price guide does the same basic job: it collects some of those sales or listings, filters them, and reduces them to one number. The differences between guides come from which sales they collect and how they reduce them. Once you know that, the disagreements make sense.

The main sources

TCGplayer market price

TCGplayer is the largest dedicated card marketplace in the United States. Its market price is calculated from recent completed sales on its own marketplace. It's widely used in the US because it's based on actual sales rather than asking prices, and because TCGplayer lists cards by printing, so a holo and a reverse holo get separate prices.

TCGplayer also shows the lowest current listing. That's what you could buy a copy for right now, which is a different thing from what copies have been selling for. The low listing can sit well under the market price when someone is selling a damaged copy cheaply, or well above it when supply has dried up.

This is where MyTCGValue's prices come from. Every price on this site is the TCGplayer market price for that printing, collected nightly.

eBay sold listings

eBay is the biggest general marketplace for cards, and its completed sales are what many collectors check before a big purchase. eBay sales include graded cards, sealed products, bundles and auctions as well as single ungraded cards, all mixed together. Prices include whatever shipping arrangement the seller chose, and auctions can finish unusually high or low depending on who happened to be bidding that week.

Several price guides are built mainly on eBay sales data. They can be very useful, especially for graded cards, but they need careful filtering to separate a near-mint single from a PSA 10 from a lot of five copies.

Cardmarket

Cardmarket is the dominant card marketplace in Europe. It publishes figures such as a price trend and average sell prices, in euros, based on its own sales. European prices can differ substantially from US prices for the same card, because supply, demand, shipping costs and taxes differ.

Shop buylist and sell prices

Card shops publish two prices: what they'll sell a card for, and what they'll pay you for it (the "buylist"). The gap between them is the shop's margin, and it can be large. Neither is the market price. Don't be surprised if a shop offers you well under the price you see online; it has rent to pay and has to resell the card later.

Why the numbers disagree

Different markets

A US price and a European price describe different markets. Japanese cards sell differently in Japan than in the US. Converting a price into your currency doesn't make it a local price: a card that sells for $100 in the US might sell for noticeably more or less, in euros, in Germany. When you're trading with someone, use a price from the market you're both actually in.

Different conditions

Some guides price near-mint copies only. Others average every sale, including played and damaged copies. Others again blend in graded sales. A guide that mixes in PSA 10 sales will show a higher price for the same card than one that only counts raw copies.

Different printings

Many cards exist in several printings: holo and reverse holo, first edition and unlimited, regular and alternate art, foil and non-foil. If a guide merges them, or if you read the wrong line, the price can be off by a lot. Always check that the price you're reading is for the exact printing in your hand.

Different time windows

A guide that averages sales over the last 90 days will lag behind one that uses the last week. After a big tournament result, a ban, a reprint announcement or a viral video, recent sales can jump or crash within days. A longer window smooths out noise but reacts slowly; a shorter window reacts fast but is noisier.

Thin markets

For popular cards, thousands of sales make the market price robust. For obscure or expensive cards, there might be only a handful of sales a month, and one unusually high or low sale can move the number a lot. That's why we show "no market price yet" for cards without enough recent sales instead of guessing.

Outliers and odd sales

Every marketplace sees strange sales: misclicks, sales between friends at a token price, mislabelled items, sometimes deliberate fake sales intended to push a price up. Good price guides filter these out, but no filter is perfect.

Fees and shipping

What a buyer pays and what a seller receives are different numbers. Marketplace fees, payment fees and shipping come in between. A $100 sale might leave the seller with noticeably less. Guides don't all handle this the same way.

A worked example

Imagine a popular holo card. Here is how the same card can produce four different "prices" in one week, all of them honest:

• TCGplayer market price: $40. The average of recent US sales of ungraded copies of that exact printing.
• Lowest TCGplayer listing: $33. One seller is listing a lightly played copy cheaply. You could buy it today, but it isn't near mint.
• An eBay-based guide: $55. Its average includes a few graded copies and two auctions that ran hot.
• A shop's buylist: $24. What a store will pay you in cash, leaving room for its margin.

None of these numbers is wrong. If you're selling a near-mint raw copy to another collector in the US, $40 is a fair anchor. If you're selling to a shop for cash, expect something near $24. If your copy is graded, none of these numbers applies, and you should check recent sales at your grade.

How to use a price guide well

Price guides are a starting point. A few habits make them much more reliable:

1. Match the printing exactly. Set, card number, finish and edition. On our card pages, every printing is listed separately.
2. Adjust for condition. Treat the market price as a near-mint guide and adjust down for wear. Our condition guide explains how.
3. Check the trend, not just today's number. A price chart tells you whether today's price is high or low for that card. A single number can't.
4. Look at recent sold listings for expensive cards. For anything worth serious money, check actual recent sales of the same printing in the same condition or grade.
5. Use the market you're trading in. For a trade in the UK, a US price converted to pounds is a rough guide at best.
6. Be wary of anyone who claims exact accuracy. Cards don't have exact prices. Anyone who says otherwise is selling something.

How MyTCGValue handles this

We've tried to make the limits of our prices obvious rather than hide them:

• One source, clearly named. Every price is the TCGplayer market price, collected nightly. We say so on every card page.
• Every printing separately. Each finish and edition has its own line, with its own market price and current low and high listings.
• History, not just a number. Card pages chart the market price over time from our nightly snapshots, so you can see whether a price is rising, falling or flat.
• Honest gaps. When a card has no market price, we say "no market price yet" instead of inventing one.
• Currency conversion labelled as conversion. Our calculator can show totals in other currencies, but we label them as converted US prices, not local market prices.

None of this makes our numbers correct in an absolute sense. No price guide is. But it should make it clear what each number means, which is what you need to make a fair deal.

Frequently asked questions

Why is the eBay price higher than the market price?

eBay sales include graded copies, shipping and auction dynamics, and eBay buyers sometimes pay a premium for a seller's photos of the exact copy. Compare like with like: same printing, same condition, ungraded.

Why did a card's price jump overnight?

Usually because something changed demand: a tournament result, a ban or unban, a popular video, a reprint announcement, or a new set that made an older card more useful. In thin markets, a single high sale can also move the number.

Why does a shop offer much less than the price online?

Shops buy cards to resell them, and the gap between their buy and sell prices covers fees, rent, staff and the risk of holding stock. A shop offer will nearly always be under the market price.

Which price should I use for a trade?

Agree on one source before you start, and use the price for the exact printing and a realistic condition. Many traders use TCGplayer market price in the US and Cardmarket in Europe. If you're trading across borders, agree which market you're using.

For more on what drives the long-term value of a card, read what makes a card valuable.